Ordinary Wife: The True Story of America's Forgotten Serial Killer

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Gregg Olsen and his daughter Morgan Olsen, the gripping true-crime story of America's Lady Bluebeard--a seemingly ordinary wife accused of poisoning husband after husband, who very nearly got away with all of it.

On a hot August afternoon in 1920 at Blue Lakes Ranch in Idaho, a new bride set out three saucers of flypaper on the boarding house porch. By nightfall, her husband was on the floor of their canvas tent, clutching his stomach in agony. Within days he was dead.

Lyda Trueblood was everything a wife should be: beautiful, charming, an excellent cook. Men fell for her easily. They also died easily around her too--poisoned by arsenic. One husband, then another, then two more. Her brother-in-law. And, then there was her two-year-old daughter--whose death no one could ever fully explain.

Six deaths in five years, and a 1921 trial that made Lyda Trueblood a national sensation. But what turned a Missouri farmer's daughter into a methodical killer--and how did she elude justice for so long?

Drawing on court transcripts, prison records, and Lyda's own unflinching statements, the Olsens go beyond the lurid headlines to reveal the woman herself--calculating, charismatic, and chilling to the last.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Notorious Press
Published: 10/27/2026
ISBN: 9781918505047
Pages: 264