Harriet's mother starved her and forced her to wear an agonizingly painful whalebone corset from age 7 in order to ensure her waist would not stretch beyond 16 inches in her lifetime. Its exposition reveals how unhealthy behavior and child abuse is handed down through generations.

McGill does a terrific job of dosing her story with messy family history. This bad behavior will lead to some of the book's most shocking revelations. The story of this dysfunctional family plays out against a classic Upstairs Downstairs backdrop in which the privileged get what they need and want - including sexual favors from the help. After countless hours in the wardrobe, Charlotte is found asphyxiated.

The most prevalent punishment, the one that will prove the death of Charlotte, is locking the children in a dark and stifling wardrobe room, their hands tied with a stocking attached to a ring on the wall. She ties them to trees, deprives them of food. 'How are they ever to learn the effects of their thoughtlessness,' she writes, 'if not by punishment?' In the best Mommie Dearest style, Harriet's diary recollections try to justify the harsh disciplinary measures she practiced on her children. And then more than 70 years later through the reminiscences of nonagenarian Maddie McGlade, the former nanny to the nine Ormond children. The Butterfly Cabinet is told from two perspectives: first through the 1892-93 prison diary of the fictional Harriet Ormond, who is convicted in the death of her daughter Charlotte. Irish author Bernie McGill's The Butterfly Cabinet, a dark, disturbing novel about an Irish aristocrat tried for killing her 4-year-old daughter, is inspired by a true story that took place in Northern Ireland in the late 19th century. Every generation, every country, apparently, has its very own Casey Anthony.

The butterfly cabinet by bernie mcgill