When Women Kill 
Alia Trabucco Zeran 
(And Other Stories, £11.99)

Phenotypes
Paulo Scott
(And Other Stories, £10)

Only 5 per cent of murders throughout the world are committed by women. In Latin America, it is more common to report a dead woman than a woman who kills, making it one of the deadliest world regions for women to live. 

“Why write now about women who kill?” asks Alia Trabucco Zeran in her tantalising non-fiction book When Women Kill (And Other Stories, £11.99). The Chilean writer, author of the award-winning novel The Remainder, retells here the stories of four infamous Chilean women who committed the capital crime. 

In a fast-paced narrative that involves the author visiting the National Library of Chile and various archives to uncover information about these four cases, the lives and crimes of Corina Rojas, Rosa Faundez, Carolina Geel and Teresa Alfaro come alive in painstaking detail.