It is August of 1945. An American submarine, silent and hidden, moves toward the darkened coast of an island. On board are an odd quartet: Gus, a commander who was once a student of religion; Angelo, a skilled navigator who conceals his secret almost to the end; Havenmeyer, who understands firearms and explosives better than he does the complexities of the soul; and Ikeda, caught be­tween two cultures and uncertain where his loyalty lies.Thus begins a book like no other book: partly an adventure-thriller set in wartime Japan, partly a glimpse into a primitive world in which the Ainu who still live in small settle­ments on Hokkaido are turned into a race of occult artificers, half real and half magic. Interwoven into this is what is surely one of the strangest sexual encounters in modern litera­ture. In spite of the electric air of calmness in which everything hap­pens, the suspense builds page by page. When the climax finally comes, it is a double one, as unexpected as it is...

A merchant seaman is the sole survivor when his ship is sunk in a battle in the South Pacific. Badly burned, he is stripped of every shred of identity and cast into the sea, naked, faceless, nameless. Rescued and lying in a Pearl Harbor hospital, he is mistakenly identified as the missing Lt. Ben Davenant by Davenant's wife. In the moment, the man decides to go along, to take on Davenant's identity, to return with her to California and take on his life. Mortal Leap may remind some readers of the story of Don Draper in the TV series Mad Men. What does it mean to abandon one life completely and step into another in midstream? To step into a marriage, a house, a way of life, all of which are utterly new and unfamiliar? And what do you do when someone from your old life shows up? Decades before Mad Men, MacDonald Harris created a story that we all know but have never heard before. Out of print for decades, Mortal Leap has become a rare and coveted cult...

An ambitious novel by one of America's foremost fiction writers, rediscovered and with an introduction by Michael Chabon.A delightful literary rediscovery by the National Book Award-nominated Macdonald Harris, HERMA is the colorful, fanciful, and moving story of a willful young opera singer at the turn of the century. As a child in Southern California in the late 1900s, Herma exhibits an incredible talent for vocal mimicry. Her gift will eventually take her from the choir of her country church to the Paris Opera, thanks in no small part to the machinations of her daredevil agent, Fred Hite. It is an opulent rags-to-riches tale full of excitement, sexual intrigue, and decadence, and features cameos by Puccini and Proust, among others. Herma and Fred are glamorous and adventuresome guides to turn of the century San Francisco and Paris, but there's a secret at the heart of their intimate relationship. This twinned hero and heroine pair and the profound connection between them...

As in the best of Jules Verne or Albert Sanchez Pinol, The Balloonist is a gripping and surreal yarn, chilling and comic by turn, that brilliantly reinvents the Arctic adventure.It is July 1897, at the northernmost reach of the inhabited world. A Swedish scientist, an American journalist, and a young, French-speaking adventurer climb into a wicker gondola suspended beneath a huge, red-and-white balloon. The ropes are cut, the balloon rises, and the three begin their voyage: an attempt to become the first people to set foot on the North Pole, and return, borne on the wind. Philip Pullman says in his foreword: "Once I open any of MacDonald Harris's novels I find it almost impossible not to turn and read on, so delightful is the sensation of a sharp intelligence at work. In The Balloonist , we see all of his qualities at their best."

A sly, sexy, and profoundly haunting work, The Carp Castle is the story of a disparate group of strangers adrift and confused in the decade after the First World War. These haunted men and broken women find themselves bound together by an ineffable force: the seductive spell cast by a mysterious woman named Moira--one part mystic, one part cult leader, one part prophet. The Carp Castle introduces us to these misfits--to the unemployed American metaphysician, the perpetually ill English nurse, the guilt-ridden German captain, and a handful of others--as they board an airship called The League of Nations, which will, perhaps, deliver them to the promised land. Exuberantly written and rich with historical ironies, The Carp Castle is a remarkable final statement from MacDonald Harris, praised by the Chicago Tribune as "a gifted craftsman, a meticulous writer whose powers as a storyteller are as compelling as the sexual tensions he imagines." Praise for the work of MacDonald Harris: "A delight . . . Harris's sympathy for such a range of characters in their crazinesses, their various kinds of loneliness, their sheer comedy is wonderful. I think [The Carp Castle is] one of his very best." --Philip Pullman "Every so often, one discovers a novel that simply stays with you, that haunts your imagination for days after it's closed and put back on the shelf. The Balloonist is that kind of book." --Michael Dirda, The Washington Post