Missy: A Novel

Missy Varian has spent her young life as queen of a small household: tending her invalid mother, managing the servants, and holding what she believes is an unshakable place in her stepbrother St. John's heart. She has waited for him, perhaps without admitting it to herself, certain that when he finally married, it would be someone worthy of the family. Then comes his letter announcing his engagement to a woman Missy has never met but already despises. She is common, ambitious, an adventuress. At least, that is what Missy tells herself as she arranges the house for their arrival, her hands busy while her heart curdles with dread. Harris renders a woman's inner life in 1890 with startling candor: the ways love curdles into possessiveness, how we dress up jealousy as righteousness, the terror of becoming irrelevant to the people we thought we owned. This is psychological fiction dressed in domestic drama, sharp enough to draw blood.