Loathsome Ladies

Writing in The Huffington Post, author Warren Adler has revealed his list of top wicked females in fiction (Female Villains: 10 Evil Women in Literature). Among them are Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth and Euripides’ Medea. Others include Annie Wilkes in Stephen King’s Misery and Nurse Ratched in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  If you want to sample more villainous women in literature, try these:

East of Eden by John Steinbeck (Cathy Ames)

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (Mrs. Danvers)

The Crucible by Arthur Miller (Abigail Williams)

Jezebel: The Untold Story of The Bible’s Harlot Queen by Leslie Hazelton

Double Indemnity by James M. Cain (Phyllis Dietrichson)