Karen Mack Knihy

“A thrilling story of seduction, betrayal, and loss, Freud’s Mistress will titillate fans of Memoirs of a Geisha and The Other Boleyn Girl.”—Booklist In fin-de-siècle Vienna, it was not easy for a woman to find fulfillment both intellectually and sexually. But many believe that Minna Bernays was able to find both with one man—her brother-in-law, Sigmund Freud. At once a portrait of two sisters—the rebellious, independent Minna and her inhibited sister, Martha—and of the compelling and controversial doctor who would be revered as one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers, Freud’s Mistress is a novel rich with passion and historical detail and “a portrait of forbidden desire [with] a thought-provoking central question: How far are you willing to go to be happy?”* *Publishers Weekly

Some women shop. Some eat. Dora cures the blues by bingeing on books--reading one after another, from Flaubert to bodice rippers, for hours and days on end. Dora is an indiscriminate book junkie whose life has fallen apart--her career, her marriage, and finally her self-esteem. All she has left is her love of literature, and the book benders she relied on as a child. Ever since her larger-than-life father wandered away, Dora and her sister Virginia have clung to each other, enduring a childhood filled with literary pilgrimages instead of summer vacations. Somewhere along the way Virginia made the leap into the real world, but Dora isn't quite there yet. Along the way she faces some powerful choices--between two irresistible men; between idleness and work; and most of all between the joy of well-chosen words and the untidiness of real people and real life.--From publisher description