Koren Zailckas

The disturbing fate of a runaway older sister is gradually revealed in a tale told from the perspectives of the Hurst family, including a teen girl whose drug use has landed her in a mental ward, an autistic youth, an alcoholic father, and an insidiouslymanipulative mother.

A Novel

Mother, Mother

A twenty-four-year-old survivor of alcoholism recounts her journey from teen experimentation to binge drinking, a process during which she endured depression, rage, sexual exploitation, and troubled relationships before making the decision to heal, in a personal memoir that also offers insight into youth alcohol abuse. Reprint.

Story of a Drunken Girlhood

Smashed

By the New York Times bestselling author of Mother, Mother and Smashed comes a propulsive new thriller: the story of a desperate and devious woman who will do anything to give her family a better life Gracie Mueller is a proud mother of two and devoted wife, living with her husband Randy in upstate New York. Her life is complicated by the usual tedium and stressors—young children, marriage, money—and she’s settled down comfortably enough. But when Randy’s failing career as a real estate agent makes finances tight, their home goes into foreclosure, and Gracie feels she has no choice but to return to the creatively illegal and high-stakes lifestyle of her past in order to keep all that she’s worked so hard to have. Gracie, underneath all that’s marked her life as average, has a lot to hide about where she’s from, who she is, and who she’s been. And when things inevitably begin to spin out of her control, more questions about the truth of her past are raised, including all the ones she never meant to, or even knew to, ask. Written with the style, energy, and penetrating insight that made her memoir Smashed a phenomenon, Koren Zailckas's next novel confirms her growing reputation as a psychological novelist that can stand up to the best of them.

The Drama Teacher

Gracie Mueller is a proud mother of two and devoted wife, living with her husband Randy in upstate New York. Her life is complicated by the usual tedium and stressors--young children, marriage, money--and she's settled down comfortably enough. But when Randy's failing career as a real estate agent makes finances tight, their home goes into foreclosure, and Gracie feels she has no choice but to return to the creatively illegal and high-stakes lifestyle of her past in order to keep all that she's worked so hard to have. Gracie, underneath all that's marked her life as average, has a lot to hide about where she's from, who she is, and who she's been. And when things inevitably begin to spin out of her control, more questions about the truth of her past are raised, including all the ones she never meant to, or even knew to, ask. --Amazon.

a novel

The drama teacher

Growing Up a Drunk Girl

A blisteringly honest chronicle of the consequences of anger displaced and the balm of anger discovered by the author of "Smashed."

A Memoir

Fury

Claire Douglas

Lili Anolik

Shocking, compelling and unputdownable – 3 psychological thrillers that will leave you sleeping with the light on...

The Grip Lit Collection: The Sisters, Mother, Mother and Dark Rooms

All is not well with the Hurst family. There is gentle teenage daughter Violet, whose experiments with fasting and drugs land her in a psychiatric ward; eight-year-old Will who is smart, funny and caring but has already been labelled autistic and is being home-schooled; and mother Josephine, whose subtly controlling and seemingly innocent manoeuvres may just be the source of everyone else's despair. And then there's Rose, the sister who got away. Tired of Josephine's interferences, Rose ran away from home years earlier and hasn't been heard from since. But as her mother's intentions become more terrifyingly clear, Violet begins to wonder whether something far, far worse happened to her older sister.

Read Koren Zailckas's blogs and other content on the Penguin Community. The author of the iconic New York Times bestseller Smashed undertakes a quest to confront her own anger. In the years following the publication of her landmark memoir, Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood, Koren Zailckas stays sober and relegates binge drinking to her past. But a psychological legacy of repression lingers-her sobriety is a loose surface layer atop a hard- packed, unacknowledged rage that wreaks havoc on Koren emotionally and professionally. When a failed relationship leads Koren back to her childhood home, she sinks into emotional crisis-writer's block, depression, anxiety. Only when she begins to apply her research on a book about anger to the turmoil of her own life does she learn what denial has cost her. The result is a blisteringly honest chronicle of the consequences of anger displaced and the balm of anger discovered. Readers who recognized themselves or someone they love in the pages of Smashed will identify with Koren's life-altering exploration and the necessity of exposing anger's origins in order to flourish in love and life as an adult. Combining sophisticated sociological research with a dramatic and deeply personal story that grapples boldly with identity and family, Fury is a dazzling work by a young writer at the height of her powers that is certain to touch a cultural nerve. Watch a Video

Koren Zailckas

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