Born in Los Angeles at the dawn of the 1960s to parents who quickly departed, Kathryn Harrison was received by her maternal grandparents as a late-life child. Harry Jacobs and Margaret Sassoon had emigrated to L.A. after leading whirlwind lives in Shanghai, London, Alaska, Russia and beyond. Harrison grew up in their fading Tudor mansion on Sunset Boulevard, a kingdom inhabited by gleaming memories from their extraordinary past. Their photos, letters and souvenirs sparked endless family stories that spanned cultures, dynasties and continents --- until declining finances forced them to sell the house in 1971, and night fell fast. ON SUNSET seeks to recover a foundational time in Harrison’s life.

In a collection of essays, Harrison captures moments and impulses that shape a family. In “Keeping Virgil,” Harrison reflects on the loss of her father-in-law and how he managed to repair something her own father had broken. In “Holiday Lies,” she describes the uneasy but necessary task of lying to her children about Santa Claus and the Tooth fairy. In “Mini-Me,” she writes about the birth of her youngest daughter. In “True Crime,” she writes for the first time in almost two decades since THE KISS, about her affair with her father, and how she has reckoned with the girl she once was.

In JOAN OF ARC: A LIFE TRANSFIGURED, Kathryn Harrison gives us a Joan for our time --- a shining exemplar of unshakable faith, extraordinary courage and self-confidence during a brutally rigged ecclesiastical inquisition and in the face of her death by burning. Deftly weaving historical fact, myth, folklore, artistic representations, and centuries of scholarly and critical interpretation into a compelling narrative, she restores Joan of Arc to her rightful position as one of the greatest heroines in all of human history.

After Rasputin’s body is pulled from the icy waters of the Neva River, his 18-year-old daughter, Masha, is sent to live at the imperial palace with Tsar Nikolay and his headstrong son Prince Alyosha, and Bolsheviks place the royal family under house arrest. As Russia descends into civil war, Masha and Alyosha find solace in each other’s company.