Lady or the Tiger

A twisty, darkly seductive anti-hero origin story, starring a teenage killer whose trial in the Wild West is upended when her first victim, her husband, arrives alive with a story to tell.

When nineteen-year-old Belle King turns herself in for murder, the last thing she expects to see is her abusive husband standing outside her Dodge City jail cell, impossibly alive. He was the first man she ever meant to kill, but certainly not the last. She’s since woven a bloody tapestry across the Midwest--tearing the hearts out of men who couldn’t imagine her as more than a lamb.

With her husband’s unexpected arrival to her trial, Belle will be forced to resort to all the tricks in her arsenal to prevent him from ever being in control of her again. But as a girl in the 1880s, the last thing anyone will believe is a woman--even when she confesses to her own crimes.

Cutting through time and patriarchal ties, Lady or the Tiger is the story of how one mountain girl from Kentucky became the wickedest woman in the Wild West in an ode to girls with tigers in their hearts and blood on their teeth in pursuit of the greatest love story of all.

Heather Herrman’s fiction blends beauty and the macabre. She loves prairie winds, tales of wicked women, and landscapes that look like they could eat you. She holds an MFA in fiction from New Mexico State University and is an active member of The Horror Writer’s Association. Heather currently lives outside Dallas, Texas.