The Burning Bed is a non-fiction book by Faith McNulty about battered Dansville, Michigan housewife, Francine Hughes. After thirteen years of domestic abuse at the hands of her husband James Berlin ("Mickey") Hughes, she set fire to the bed he was sleeping in on March 9, 1977. Mickey Hughes was killed and the house destroyed in the resulting inferno.

On the night of the fire, Hughes told her children to put their coats on and wait for her in the car. She then started the fire with gasoline poured around the bed Mickey Hughes was sleeping in. After the house had caught fire, Hughes drove with her three children to the local police station in order to confess.

Hughes was tried in Lansing and found by a jury of her peers to be not guilty by reason of insanity.