THE WOMEN ARE NOT FINE
(July 10, 2025)

Inside the Greatest Female-Led Poisoning Scandal in Modern History

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The women of Nagyrév are desperate.
Their husbands are abusive.
They are feeding their newborns to livestock.

At the turn of the 20th century, in the village of Nagyrév, Hungary, midwife Zsuzsanna Fazekas was more than a caretaker — she was a confidante. She helped poor women give birth. She assisted them with abortions. And she listened. Their stories were the same: husbands who drank, who beat them, who made their lives unbearable.

Aunt Zsuzsi saw a different future for these women, and asked: “Why bother with them?”

She had a solution: arsenic. Soon, women began slipping this concoction, made by dissolving flypaper in water, into their husbands’ porridge, stews, and brandy. And over the next twenty years, the quiet village became the epicenter of one of the deadliest poisoning epidemics of the 20th century. According to some estimates, there were up to 300 murders in the region.

Why did they do it? How did these murders spin out of control? How did these women get away with their crimes for two decades?

In The Women Are Not Fine, journalist Hope Reese pieces together archival newspapers, court documents, police records, and the vital work of historians, sociologists, and psychologists, diving deep into the truth behind this extraordinary event. Her findings serve as a stark warning: when women in a community are pushed to the brink, the consequences reverberate through history.

More than a true crime story, The Women Are Not Fine is a timely, haunting, exploration of what happens when suffering goes unanswered.

Published by Brazen Books UK, an imprint of Hachette. Rights sold in Japan and Russia.

Agent: Emma Bal, at The Madeleine Milburn Literary Agency