Kathryn Harrison

Masha, the eighteen-year-old daughter of Rasputin, is sent to live in the imperial palace with Tsar Nicholas's family, where she tends the ailing Prince Alyosha, with whom she exchanges comforting family stories when the royal family is arrested.

A Novel

Enchantments

A fully documented, inspiring portrait of the 15th-century peasant-turned-saint draws on historical facts, folklore and centuries of critical interpretation to evaluate the questions attributed to her character. 75,000 first printing.

A Life Transfigured

Joan of Arc

Exquisitely and hypnotically written, like a bold and terrifying dream, The Kiss is breathtaking in its honesty and in the power and beauty of its creation. In this extraordinary memoir, one of the best young writers in America today transforms into a work of art the darkest passage imaginable in a young woman's life: an obsessive love affair between father and daughter that began when Kathryn Harrison, twenty years old, was reunited with a parent whose absence had haunted her youth. A story both of taboo and of family complicity in breaking taboo, The Kiss is also about love—about the most primal of love triangles, the one that ensnares a child between mother and father. Praise for The Kiss “I couldn’t stop reading this. I’ll never stop remembering it.”—Mary Karr, author of The Liars’ Club “Only a writer of extraordinary gifts could bring so much light to bear on so dark a matter, redeeming it with the steadiness of her gaze and the uncanny, heartbreaking exactitude of her language.”—Tobias Wolff, author of This Boy’s Life “Beautifully written . . . jumping back and forth in time yet drawing you irresistibly toward the heart of a great evil.”—The New York Times “Like all good literature, The Kiss illuminates something that we knew already, while also teaching us things we had not even suspected.”—Los Angeles Times “A darkly beautiful book, fearless and frightening, ironic and compassionate.”—Mary Gordon, author of Circling My Mother “Harrison’s story is her own, but it is also a brilliant fiction, densely mythic, sometimes almost liturgical sounding and raw. She is both author and protagonist of a dark pilgrim’s progress.”—The Atlanta Journal and Constitution

A Memoir

The Kiss

Presents advice and instructions on preparing for different types of emergencies, discussing what needs to be done to remain safe during such events as power and communication outages, fire, natural disaster, toxic hazards, pandemics, and terrorist attacks.

How to be Self-sufficient when the Unexpected Happens

Just in Case

In this acclaimed and groundbreaking memoir, Kathryn Harrison transforms into a work of art the darkest passage imaginable in a young woman’s life: an obsessive love affair between father and daughter that begins when she, at age twenty, is reunited with the father whose absence had haunted her youth. Exquisitely and hypnotically written, like a bold and terrifying dream, The Kiss is breathtaking in its honesty and in the power and beauty of its creation. A story both of transgression and of family complicity in breaking taboo, The Kiss is also about love—about the most primal of love triangles, the one that ensnares a child between mother and father.

a family album

True crimes

In poised and elegant prose, Kathryn Harrison weaves a stunning story of women, travel, and flight; of love, revenge, and fear; of the search for home and the need to escape it. Set in alluring Shanghai at the turn of the century, The Binding Chair intertwines the destinies of a Chinese woman determined to forget her past and a Western girl focused on the promises of the future.

or, A Visit from the Foot Emancipation Society

The Binding Chair

The psychological patterns of the past threaten to destroy the present in a story about a young woman who appears to be capable and successful but who actually is caught in a secret, self-destructive cycle. By the author of Thicker Than Water. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

Exposure

A Penguin Life (Penguin Lives) (Penguin Lives)

Saint Therese of Lisieux

The Seal Wife

"A memoir of the author's upbringing by her grandparents in a fading mansion above Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, California"--

On Sunset

Francisca de Luarac, the daughter of a poor Spanish silk grower, is a dreamer of fabulous dreams. Marie Louise de Bourbon, the niece of Louis XIV, dances in slippers of fine Spanish silk in the French Court of the Sun King and imagines her own enchanted future. Born on the same day--in an age when superstition, repression, and the Inquisition reign--the lives of these two young women unfold in tandem, barely touching. Each hoards the memory of her adored lost mother like an amulet. Francica's obsession with her lover, a Catholick priest, will shaper her fate. Marie Loouise is yoked by political expediency to the mad, imptoent Carlos II of Spain. But even as their twin destinies spiral inexorably toward disaster, both Queen and commoner cultivate a dangerous, secret life dedicated to resistance, transcendence, and love. Written in gorgeous prose that has the sheen of silk, Kathryn Harrison's POISON vividlyreminds us of the persistence of desire, the passion that exists between mothers and daughters, and the sorcery of dreams.

Poison

From the bestselling author of The Kiss comes a riveting account of true crime-- the murder of a family in a small Midwestern town-- and the gripping exploration of its haunting aftermath. The Gilley family murders ended a lifetime of physical and mentala

An Inquiry Into the Murder of a Family

While They Slept

A Thousand Orange Trees

Early on an April morning, eighteen-year-old Billy Frank Gilley, Jr., killed his sleeping parents. Surprised in the act by his younger sister, Becky, he turned on her as well. Billy then climbed the stairs to the bedroom of his other sister, Jody, and said, “We’re free.” But is one ever free after an unredeemable act of violence? The Gilley family murders ended a lifetime of physical and mental abuse suffered by Billy and Jody at the hands of their parents. And it required each of the two survivors–one a convicted murderer, the other suddenly an orphan–to create a new identity, a new life.

An Inquiry into the Murder of a Family

Scenes from a Woman's Life

Seeking Rapture

Road to Santiago (Directions)

The Mother Knot

Envy

The author of the best-selling novels, Exposure and Poison, recounts her sexual affair with her long-absent father, who reappeared when she was in her twenties, and the suffering and eventual readjustment that followed. 40,000 first printing. Tour.

Kathryn Harrison

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