Charles Dickens: My Father as I Recall Him

Paris, 1914. While millions of young men march to the trenches, a balding, soft-spoken man with a magnificent beard places a small advertisement in the lonely hearts column of Le Journal. He is looking for a companion. So are hundreds of desperate women — widows, servants, dreamers — adrift in a city emptied by war.

His name is Henri Désiré Landru. Over the next five years, eleven of those women will follow him to a secluded villa in the village of Gambais. None will return.

The Bluebeard of Gambais is a sweeping literary novel that reconstructs one of the most chilling criminal cases in French history. From the gaslit streets of Belle Époque Paris to the bloodstained kitchen stove of a country house, from the tenacious sister who refused to stop searching to the sensational trial that captivated the world, Robert Buckley brings to life the man, the victims, and the era with unforgettable power.