In December 1667, maverick physician Jean Denis transfused calf s blood into one of Paris s most notorious madmen. Days later, the madman was dead and Denis was framed for murder. A riveting expose of the fierce debates, deadly politics, and cutthroat rivalries behind the first transfusion experiments, Blood Work takes us from dissection rooms in palaces to the streets of Paris, providing an unforgettable portrait of an era that wrestled with the same questions about morality and experimentation that haunt medical science today."

In the late 1600s, Louis XIV assigns Nicolas de la Reynie to bring order to the city of Paris after the brutal deaths of two magistrates. Reynie, pragmatic yet fearless, tackles the dirty and terrifying streets only to discover a tightly knit network of witches, poisoners and priests whose reach extends all the way to Versailles. As the chief investigates a growing number of deaths at court, he learns that no one is safe from their deadly love potions and "inheritance stews"-not even the Sun King himself. Based on court transcripts and Reynie's compulsive note-taking, Holly Tucker's riveting true crime narrative makes the characters breathe on the page as she follows the police chief into the dark labyrinths of crime-ridden Paris, the glorious halls of royal palaces, secret courtrooms and torture chambers in a tale of deception and murder that reads like fiction.

In the late 1600s, Louis XIV assigns Nicolas de la Reynie to bring order to the city of Paris after the brutal deaths of two magistrates. Reynie, pragmatic yet fearless, tackles the dirty and terrifying streets only to discover a tightly knit network of witches, poisoners and priests whose reach extends all the way to Versailles. As the chief investigates a growing number of deaths at court, he learns that no one is safe from their deadly love potions and "inheritance stews"-not even the Sun King himself. Based on court transcripts and Reynie's compulsive note-taking, Holly Tucker's riveting true crime narrative makes the characters breathe on the page as she follows the police chief into the dark labyrinths of crime-ridden Paris, the glorious halls of royal palaces, secret courtrooms and torture chambers in a tale of deception and murder that reads like fiction.

Pregnant Fictions explores the complex role of pregnancy in early modern tale-telling and considers how stories of childbirth were used to rethink gendered "truths" at a key moment in the history of ideas. How male medical authorities and female literary authors struggled to describe the inner workings of the unseen--and competed to shape public understanding of it--is the focus of this engaging work by Holly Tucker. In illuminating the gender politics underlying dramatic changes in reproductive theory and practice, Tucker shows just how tenuous the boundaries of scientific "fact" and marvelous fictions were in early modern France. On the literary front, Tucker argues, women used the fairy tale to rethink the biology of childbirth and the sociopolitical uses to which it had been put. She shows that in references to midwives, infertility, sex selection, and embryological theories, fairy-tale writers experimented with alternative ways of understanding pregnancy. In so doing they suggested new ways in which to envision women, knowledge, and power in both the public and the private spheres.