Fifteen “alarming and gorgeous” stories from the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author about the quiet terrors of American life (The Boston Globe). Laura Kasischke, national bestselling author of The Life Before Her Eyes and White Bird in a Blizzard, both adapted for film, looks behind the quietude of domesticity to find the “strange and unexpected and sometimes extraordinary” in this collection of stories that “defies simple definition” (Booklist). In “Mona,” a mother violates her daughter’s privacy certain she’s hiding a dreadful secret. In “You’re Going to Die,” a girl delights in the cruel power she has over her ailing father. In “Search Continues for Elderly Man,” a little boy’s invitation for a lonely old neighbor to come out and play takes a shocking turn. In “Our Father,” children camouflage their sleeping dad in dirty rags to protect him. But from what?; and in the title story, a woman agrees to carry a package aboard a plane for a stranger despite—or perhaps, because of—her fantasizes about potential disaster. Populated by people coming to terms with a life that is just a little bit off—after there is a tiny mummified heart in a dresser drawer of a suburban home, If a Stranger Approaches You is “an important addition to [Kasischeke’s] own body of work and to the contemporary literature of end times” —NPR Books
“Kasischke’s writing does what good poetry does—it shows us an alternate world and lulls us into living in it . . . The language catapults us into another plane of existence, one of facade and reflection.” —New York Times Book Review “Haunting, unsettling, and unforgettable, The Raising limns love, longing, belonging and the things we only think we know about life—and yes, death.” —Caroline Leavitt, author of Pictures of You From Laura Kasischke, the critically acclaimed, bestselling author of In a Perfect World and The Life Before Her Eyes, comes a hypnotic mystery about one girl’s tragic death and the fallout that occurs on her closely-knit college campus. Part Stephen King, part Donna Tartt, and wholly unforgettable , Kasischke’s The Raising sets a new standard for hair-raising literary suspense.
A novel of “sex, mystery, betrayal, intrigue and violence, all wrapped up in the disturbing world of a middle-aged woman’s deepest desires” (USA Today). The first note came on Valentine’s Day. Written with a red pen in an unfamiliar hand, it said: Be Mine. For Sherry Seymour, a community college English professor and recent empty-nester, the anonymous message was amusing and, she had to admit, flattering. When she told her husband, Jon, about it, he raised his eyebrows and looked at her with a kind of attention she hadn’t felt in some time. As the notes continue, Sherry becomes increasingly aroused by the idea that she could inspire such feelings—as does her husband. With Jon’s encouragement, she pursues her admirer and begins a wild affair. But living in a fantasy can never last. As events spiral out of Sherry’s control, she discovers how little she knows about herself—or the men in her life. This darkly erotic thriller explores what we risk when we step away from our daily lives and allow our passions to take control. “If there is any justice in the world, Laura Kasischke will soon be as big as Alice Sebold. . . . Kasischke’s novels are as beautifully written and as daring in their subjects.” —Detroit Free Press “Kasischke has proven herself again to be a bold chronicler of dark obsession.” —Publishers Weekly “What makes this erotic thriller disturbing and, therefore, successful is how convincingly Kasischke renders Sherry’s life and feelings so eerily normal and familiar.” —Booklist
Afterward, Terri will tell everyone that, from the beginning, she knew something terrible was going to happen on spring break. Something bad was going to happen. She knew. It was supposed to be the perfect vacation: hot guys, impeccable tans, and no parents. But for two high school seniors, an innocent car ride will drive them into the heart of their worst nightmare. Feathered is a provocative and eerie tale that flies readers from safe, predictable suburbia to the sun-kissed beaches of Cancún, Mexico, and into mysterious Mayan ruins, where ancient myths flirt dangerously with present realities.
Gardening in the Dark, Kasischke's sixth book of poetry, continues to explore the transformative power of imagination. Her poems take us to the flip side of human consciousness, where anything can happen at any time. Tinged with surrealism, her work makes visionary leaps from the quotidian to sudden, surprising epiphanies.
She has, like all good poets, created a music of her own, one suited to her concerns. When denizens of the 22nd century, if we get there, look back on our era and ask how we lived, they will take an interest both in the strangest personalities who gave their concerns verbal form, and in the most representative. The future will not—should not—see us by one poet alone. But if there is any justice in that future, Kasischke is one of the poets it will choose.” —Boston Review “Kasichke’s poems are powered by a skillful use of imagery and the subtle, ingenious way she turns a phrase.” —Austin American-Statesman Laura Kasischke in her own words: "I realized while ordering and selecting the poems for this collection that much of my more recent work concerns body parts, dresses, and beauty queens. These weren't conscious decisions, just the things that found their way into my poems at this particular point in my life, and which seem to have attached to them a kind of prophetic potential. The beauty queens especially seemed to crowd in on me, in all their feminine loveliness and distress, wearing their physical and psychological finery, bearing what body parts had been allotted to them. For some time, I had been thinking about beauty queens like Miss Michigan, but also the Rhubarb Queen, and the Beauty Queens of abstraction—congeniality. And then—Brevity, Consolation for Emotional Damages, Estrogen—all these feminine possibilities to which I thought a voice needed to be given." Laura Kasischke is the author of six books of poetry, including Gardening in the Dark (Ausable Press, 2004) and Dance and Disappear (winner of the 2002 Juniper Prize), and four novels. Her work has received many honors, including the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Beatrice Hawley Award, the Pushcart Prize, and the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award for Emerging Writers. She teaches at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
“Leave-the-lights-on-tonight frightening, with a quiet edge of horror that is much more effective than gore.” — NPR “If I could stand on a mountaintop and shout over the land, I would do it now: This book is magnificent! It’s a gripping psychological thriller, at once both charmingly domestic and flat-out terrifying.” — Elin Hilderbrand, author of Beautiful Day From Laura Kasischke, the critically acclaimed and nationally bestselling poet and author of The Raising, comes a dark and chilling thriller that combines domestic drama with elements of psychological suspense and horror—an addictive tale of denial and guilt that is part Joyce Carol Oates and part Chris Bohjalian. On a snowy Christmas morning, Holly Judge awakens with the fragments of a nightmare floating on the edge of her consciousness. Something followed them from Russia. Thirteen years ago, she and her husband Eric adopted baby Tatty, their pretty, black-haired Rapunzel, from the Pokrovka Orphanage #2. Now, at fifteen, Tatiana is more beautiful than ever—and disturbingly erratic. As a blizzard rages outside, Holly and Tatiana are alone. With each passing hour, Tatiana’s mood darkens, and her behavior becomes increasingly frightening . . . until Holly finds she no longer recognizes her daughter.
A novella set in the House of David religious colony that bubbles with mystery, scandal, and little-known history. In 1903, a preacher named Benjamin Purnell and five followers founded a colony called the House of David in Benton Harbor, Michigan, where they prepared for eternal life by creating a heaven on earth. Housed in rambling mansions and surrounded by lush orchards and vineyards, the colony added a thousand followers to its fold within a few years, along with a zoo, extensive gardens, and an amusement park. The sprawling complex, called Eden Springs, was a major tourist attraction of the Midwest. The colonists, who were drawn from far and wide by the magnetic "King Ben," were told to keep their bodies pure by not cutting their hair, eating meat, or engaging in sexual relations. Yet accounts of life within the colony do not reflect such an austere atmosphere, as the handsome, charming founder is described as loving music, dancing, a good joke, and in particular, the company of his attractive female followers. In Eden Springs, award-winning Michigan author Laura Kasischke imagines life inside the House of David, in chapters framed by real newspaper clippings, legal documents, and accounts of former colonists. Told from the perspective of the young women who were closest to Benjamin Purnell, the novella follows a growing scandal within the colony’s walls. A gravedigger has seen something suspicious in a recently buried casket, a loyal assistant to Benjamin is plotting a cover-up, talk is swirling about unmarried girls having babies, and a rebellious girl named Lena is ready to tell the truth. In flashbacks and first-person narrative mixed with historical artifacts, Kasischke leads readers through the unraveling mystery in a lyrical patchwork as enticing and satisfying as the story itself. Eden Springs lets readers inside the enchanting and eerie House of David, with an intimate look at its hedonistic highs and eventual collapse. This novella will appeal to all readers of fiction, as well as those with an interest in Michigan history.
Follows seventeen-year-old Diana as she makes her first uncertain steps into womanhood and embarks on a fragile construction of identity and self, and experiences marriage and motherhood.
They were seventeen with perfect tans and perfect bodies. They planned on a joyride in a convertible on a hot summer day. They planned on skinny-dipping in a beautiful, secluded lake. They planned on making it back to camp before anyone noticed they were gone. What they didn't plan on was being followed by two guys in a beat-up station wagon Their day soon takes a drastic turn—all because Kristy Sweetland smiled at the wrong time, in the wrong place, at the wrong boys. Now the girls feel prying eyes on them all the time—during pep practice, on the path through the woods, outside the window of their cabin. The boys are stalking them, leaving threatening notes on their beds, and watching their every move. Boy Heaven is a provocative, page-turning mystery, and a must-read for anyone who loves an urban legend.
The poems in Fire & Flower are about the images that hold the world together in the mind of a child, a woman, and the mother she becomes. The metaphors used to describe their lives are mysterious and frightening, and they accumulate in this collection as a full expression of the awe that makes us all live.
A “hauntingly original” psychological thriller about innocence, memory, and the effect of a moment of violence (O: The Oprah Magazine). In the girls’ bathroom, Diana and her best friend, Maureen, are stealing a moment from the routine drudgery of high school when a classmate enters holding a gun. Suddenly, Diana sees her life—past, present, and acutely imagined future—dance before her eyes. Through prose infused with the dramatically feminine sensuality of spring, readers will experience sixteen-year-old Diana’s uncertain steps into womanhood—her awkward, heated forays into sex; her fresh, fragile construction of an identity—and, in exhilarating detail, her life-not-lived as a doting mother and wife of forty. Together with the sights and sounds of renewal are the tasks of Diana’s adulthood: protecting her beloved daughter and holding on to her successful husband. This “poetic” novel encompasses both the truth of a teenager’s world and the transformations of midlife (Vanity Fair). Resonant and deeply stirring, The Life Before Her Eyes finds piercing beauty in the midst of a nightmare that echoes like a dirge beneath each new spring, in a story that “takes on deep matters of life and death; conscience and consciousness; family, love and friendship” (Los Angeles Times). “Evokes terror and redemption, shadows and light. Kasischke treads a delicate line with the precision and confidence of a tightrope walker. She reminds us to look hard at life, to notice its beauty and cruelty, even as it flashes before us and disappears.” —The New York Times “Mesmerizing.” —Chicago Tribune
In her stunning twelfth poetry collection, Lightning Falls in Love, Laura Kasischke makes magic with a complex alchemy of nostalgia and fire, birdwing and sorrow. In new poems that search the murky lake for news of the past, she evokes unsayable trauma and gleans possibility. This is poetry that is existential in scope but grounded in the body, surreal yet suburban, reaching for clarity just beyond the fog of the day-to-day. Kasischke has found an entirely new way to spin beauty and pull breath from that which must be dredged up and revived before it can be left behind.
Shhh Shhh the lights are out and the little suspicion sleeps and dreams and whimpers in its crib Its tongue is ugly and blue She climbs She climbs in silence and fury spinning groggy in darkness and wind Look her left hand bears for you sweetly a gift of lightning and lillies to please you Though O Tonight in her right hanf she has invented gravity - from Woman Kills Sweetheart With Bowling Ball This first collection of poems is an extraordinary book by an authentic young poet. Laura Kasischke's work is powerful in its vision, its memorable persona, its haunting music. The imaginative details in these poems throw the reader off-balance with their strange blend of savagery and sweetness, tragedy and joy. Here is a poet who is able to evoke the mysteries of folklore and life both sadly and wisely, and to combine the ancient and the contemporary with an eerie intensity. The result is a brilliant book of poems full of dark and stunning images that cannot be comfortably forgotten.
“Those who like Joyce Carol Oates will love this” dark novel of psychological suspense by the author of Mind of Winter and The Life Before Her Eyes (Kirkus Reviews). A married motel receptionist in a bleak Michigan town, Leila Murray has slipped into the habit of trading sex with strangers for money. When she meets a drifter who alternately sweet-talks and physically abuses her, it might be the wakeup call that dissuades her from a life of prostitution. Instead, she allows him to become her pimp. In this chilling, “beautifully written page-turner” (Booklist), we follow Leila’s life as she spirals out of control—and learn the darkness in her past that drives her—in “an exploration of the legacy of abuse and violence [and] an amazing first novel” (The Boston Globe). “[An] extremely powerful debut . . . Profoundly disturbing but also resonant with hope and rebirth.” —Los Angeles Times
Shhh Shhh the lights are out and the little suspicion sleeps and dreams and whimpers in its crib Its tongue is ugly and blue She climbs She climbs in silence and fury spinning groggy in darkness and wind Look her left hand bears for you sweetly a gift of lightning and lillies to please you Though O Tonight in her right hanf she has invented gravity - from Woman Kills Sweetheart With Bowling Ball This first collection of poems is an extraordinary book by an authentic young poet. Laura Kasischke's work is powerful in its vision, its memorable persona, its haunting music. The imaginative details in these poems throw the reader off-balance with their strange blend of savagery and sweetness, tragedy and joy. Here is a poet who is able to evoke the mysteries of folklore and life both sadly and wisely, and to combine the ancient and the contemporary with an eerie intensity. The result is a brilliant book of poems full of dark and stunning images that cannot be comfortably forgotten.
In a Perfect World is critically acclaimed writer Laura Kasischke’s new novel of marriage, motherhood, and the choices we make when we have no choices left. Kasischke, the author of The Life Before Her Eyes, tells the story of Jiselle, a young flight attendant who’s just settled into a fairy tale life with her new husband and stepchildren. But as a mysterious new illness spreads rapidly throughout the country, she begins to realize that her marriage, her stepchildren, and their perfect world are all in terrible danger . . .
I am sixteen when my mother steps out of her skin one frozen January afternoon—pure self, atoms twinkling like microscopic diamond chips around her perhaps the chiming of a clock, or a few bright flute notes in the distance—and disappears. No one sees her leave, but she is gone. Laura Kasischke's first novel. Suspicious River. was hailed by the critics as "extremely powerful" (The Los Angeles Times), "amazing" (The Boston Globe), and "a novel of depth, beauty, and insight" (The Seattle Times). Now Kasischke follows up her auspicious debut with a spellbinding and erotic tale of marriage, secrets, and self-deception. When Katrina Connors' mother walks out on her family one frigid January day, Kat is surprised but not shocked; the whole year she has been "becoming sixteen"—falling in love with the boy next door, shedding her baby fat, discovering sex—her mother has slowly been withdrawing. As Kat and her father pick up the pieces of their daily life, she finds herself curiously unaffected by her mother's absence. But in dreams that become too real to ignore, she's haunted by her mother's cries for help. . . .
La primera vez que tuve relaciones sexuales con un hombre por dinero, fue en septiembre. todavía hacía tiempo de verano, pero la calefacción estaba ya encendida en la habitación del motel y parecía llenar mi garganta de polvo. El hombre era muy soso, de ojos pequeños y no más alto que yo. Parecía asustado. Casi no me miraba. Cuando le pregunté qué quería que hiciese, me dijo: Es tu trabajo. Así empieza la fascinante e inolvidable primera novela de la poeta Laura Kasischke. La narradora y protagonista del relato es Leila Murray, una atractiva mujer de 24 años, casada, que trabaja como recepcionista del Swan Motel en Suspicious River, un pequeño y solitario pueblo de Michigan. All, siguiendo un impulso irresistible, se prostituye voluntaria y compulsivamente con los clientes por 60 dólares, el mismo precio que una habitación, en busca de algo que ella misma no sabe identificar, algo vago, blanco y brillante, que sólo será aclarado hacia el final de esta terrible, intensa y poderosa novela. Elocuente, llena de suspense, rica en imágenes... terrible. Kirkus Reviews Una profunda bajada a los infiernos. La mirada fría de Laura Kasischke le atrapó, al igual que la dureza de su universo poético. Jean-Luc Douin - Le Monde Al mismo tiempo aterrador y extremadamente expresivo, el libro es una exploración de carácter metafísico de la separación entre el cuerpo y el alma. New Yorker Realmente genial. Una obra maestra. Laurent Goumarre - Max Una novela cortada con navaja. Cromada, brillante, deslumbrante. Una lenta tortura. Duele, pero es sublime. È Valérie Broquisse - Le Figaro Madame Suspicious River es una novela despiadada. De ah nace toda la fuerza de este libro. Michel Polac - Charlie Hebdo Suspicious River atrapa con imágenes que nos sitúan en el estrecho límite que se abre entre pasión y destrucción. Un trabajo de belleza misteriosa, con imágenes inmediatas y vibrantes que obsesionarán al lector durante años. Seattle Times
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