You fall in love, you get married, and you build a lifetime's worth of dreams around each other. Then suddenly, it's gone - the past tainted, the present a living nightmare, the future wiped out.

Divorce is the blade that cuts the still-beating heart out of a marriage. What's left is a gaping wound that festers and can all too quickly become infected. Where once was love, now comes hate, where once was purity, now comes corruption. Dreams of happy ever after are replaced by visions of revenge.

The collapse of a marriage creates a monster that feeds on the basest of our emotions - greed, jealousy, hatred, bitterness. The people in this book weren't born evil, but in the heat of a relationship break-up, all restrain melted and violent passions spiralled out of control.

What makes a model father murder his estranged wife, then go on TV pleading for her to come home?

How does a devoted wife and mum walk into a beauty salon and shoot her ex-husband's pregnant lover in cold blood?

No one ever knows what really goes on behind the closed doors of a marriage in freefall. But, as these shocking, real-life tragedies reveal, there are some people who take the words 'til death us do part' all too literally - with devastating results.