Scandal Sisters is a historical novel based on the extraordinary—and nearly erased—true story of Catherine and Charlotte Poillon, two sisters who transformed notoriety into strategy during the Gilded Age and Roaring Twenties. From the salons of Fifth Avenue to the courtrooms of New York, from Parisian hotels to prison cells on Blackwell’s Island, the Poillon sisters moved through high society and the underworld with audacity, wit, and a refusal to play by anyone else’s rules.

Catherine, the elder, weaponized scandal with flair. She sued millionaires for breach of promise, outwitted moral crusaders, and understood how to work a courtroom and a headline. Charlotte, younger and wilder, boxed men in underground gyms, dodged vice charges, and navigated power with a mix of charm and menace. Together, they blurred the line between grifter and survivor, spectacle and strategy—reinventing themselves again and again in a world designed to forget women like them.

Told through memoir fragments, actual news coverage, and courtroom transcripts, Scandal Sisters blends fact and fiction, noir edge and feminist bite. It’s a reclamation of two brilliant, troublesome women who refused to disappear quietly—and who understood, far ahead of their time, that survival in America often meant becoming your own myth.

For fans of The Gilded Age, The Paris Library, and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, this is the version of history they didn’t want you to listen to.