70 h 1 minAudiobook7 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when power, money, love and fear become motives for murder?
In Celebrated Crimes (Complete), Alexandre Dumas turns real cases from European history into vivid stories of poison, betrayal and abused power. From Renaissance Italy to the courts and streets of France, each case brings its own setting, cast and growing sense of dread.
Meet the Borgias, the Cenci family of Rome, and the poisoner Marchioness of Brinvilliers. Other cases follow the Marchioness of Ganges, the priest Urbain Grandier, the impostor Martin Guerre and the student Karl Ludwig Sand. These tales ask how power, money, love and fear can push people toward terrible acts.
What you’ll discover
- Power without limits Enter the world of the Borgias, where family ambition meets the power of the Church.
- A household under threat Encounter the Cenci family in Rome, under Count Francesco Cenci’s cruel hold.
- Poison behind noble doors Follow the Brinvilliers case into a France where poison becomes a source of fear.
- Faith and false identity Explore belief and belonging through the cases of Urbain Grandier and Martin Guerre.
- History with a storyteller’s pace Feel Dumas’s eye for scene turn historical cases into tales of mounting dread.
Who will love it
For readers who love history told as story and true crime with period color. It also suits anyone who loved The Count of Monte Cristo and wants Dumas on real events.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Dumas turns real crimes into stories
- The Borgias show power without limits
- The Cenci case shows a family under a tyrant
- French poisoners and wronged wives
- Faith, fear and false identity
- Politics, violence and the weight of history
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- 15-minute summary
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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I delitti celebri
by Alexandre Dumas · 1839
From the Borgias to poisoners and impostors, Dumas explores how power, money, love and fear push people to crime.
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From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Dumas turns real crimes into stories
Dumas did not write as a modern researcher. He gathered trial records, memoirs, chronicles and local tradition, then shaped them into narrative. He believed history was best learned when it was alive, with people who speak, hesitate and scheme. That is why these chapters read more like short novels than like court reports.
The collection appeared as a series, and each volume held several cases. Some are brief sketches. Together they cover many centuries of European life, and they show how law, religion and family honor worked in each place.
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What is Celebrated Crimes by Alexandre Dumas about?
It is a collection of true crime stories from European history, including the Borgias, the Cenci, famous poisoners, a priest at Loudun and the impostor Martin Guerre. Dumas tells each case like a short novel.
Are the stories in Celebrated Crimes true?
They are based on real people and cases, drawn from trials, memoirs and chronicles. Dumas shapes them for drama, so some details are colored or smoothed, and historians advise checking facts elsewhere.
When did Dumas write Celebrated Crimes?
It was published in France in the late 1830s and early 1840s under the title Les Crimes célèbres, in several volumes. Dumas wrote it with help from collaborators, as he did with many works.
The author
Alexandre Dumas
1802–1870 · French novelist and playwright
Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) was a French novelist and playwright. He was born in Villers-Cotterêts, lived in Paris, and died in Puys, near Dieppe. He wrote The Three Musketeers (1844), The Count of Monte Cristo (1844–1846), Twenty Years After (1845), and The Black Tulip (1850).
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