Confident Women: Swindlers, Grifters, and Shapeshifters of the Feminine Persuasion,Used

Product DescriptionA thoroughly entertaining and darkly humorous roundup of historys notorious but often forgotten female con artists and their bold, outrageous scamsby the acclaimed author of Lady Killers.From Elizabeth Holmes and Anna Delvey to Frank Abagnale and Charles Ponzi, audacious scams and charismatic scammers continue to intrigue us as a culture. As Tori Telfer reveals in Confident Women, the art of the con has a long and venerable tradition, and its female practitioners are some of the bestor worst.In the 1700s in Paris, Jeanne de SaintRmy scammed the royal jewelers out of a necklace made from six hundred and fortyseven diamonds by pretending she was best friends with Queen Marie Antoinette.In the mid1800s, sisters Kate and Maggie Fox began pretending they could speak to spirits and accidentally started a religious movement that was soon crawling with female con artists. A gal calling herself Loreta Janeta Velasquez claimed to be a soldier and convinced people she worked for the Confederacyor the Union, depending on who she was talking to. Meanwhile, Cassie Chadwick was forging paperwork and getting banks to loan her upwards of $40,000 by telling people she was Andrew Carnegies illegitimate daughter.In the 1900s, a 40something woman named Margaret Lydia Burton embezzled money all over the country and stole upwards of forty prized show dogs, while a few decades later, a teenager named Roxie Ann Rice scammed the entire NFL. And since the death of the Romanovs, women claiming to be Anastasia have been selling their stories to magazines. What about today? Spoiler alert: these artists are still conning.Confident Women asks the provocative question: Where does chutzpah intersect with a uniquely female pathologyand how were these notorious women able to so spectacularly dupe and swindle their victims?Review'Whether she's describing women pretending to be doctors, socialites, or just another nice lady who desperately needed help, Telfer dishes up their scandalous schemes for truecrime fans to relish.' Booklist'Readers who appreciate a wellexecuted sting will enjoy this thoroughly researched yet breezy guide to notorious women.' Library Journal'Grifters! Fake Heiresses! Phony Royalty! Imposter Chinese Princelings! Faux Ghostbusters and More! The brilliantly crazy conniving women in CONFIDENT WOMEN have a helluva lot of nerveand I love it!' Marisa Acocella, New York Times best selling author of Cancer Vixen, Ann Tenna and The Big SheBang: The Herstory of the Universe According to God the MotherAbout the AuthorTori Telfer is the author of Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History and the host of the podcasts Criminal Broads, Why Women Kill: Truth, Lies, and Labels (CBS All Access), and Red Flags (Investigation Discovery). She lives in New York City with her husband and son.