Something that stuck out to me in this collection was how much these women preyed on the very thing women are often derided for: altruism and gullibility. In particular, the section on seers — women claiming to be spirit mediums — made me very sad. Their marks were often people who were grieving and desperate, and the false hope mixed with deceptive manipulation was pretty despicable. On the flip side, some of these stories were wild in that people bought into them at all. For instance, the modern-day spiritualism movement started with a pair of sisters who were trying to freak out their mom with spooky sounds around the house and it got… well, quite out of hand.

Finally, there was a section on tragediennes, aka women who claim connection to something horrible like 9/11 or the Ariana Grande concert explosion. Tefler points out that while these are horrible falsehoods, they are not all that different (and in some cases even less harmful) from other cons that do not draw the same social derision. This chapter in particular led to some excellent book club discussion about what “the line” is in terms of indulgent criminality and unacceptable behavior.