Stranger in Two Worlds

Harris, convicted in 1981 of murdering her lover Herman Tarnower, the ""Scarsdale diet doctor,'' is now serving a 15-year-to-life prison sentence. In this autobiography, she pleads her innocence, claiming, as she did in her trial, that she only planned to use the gun on herself. Charging that she was a victim of the press, she asserts that witnesses changed their testimony to aid the prosecution, that Tarnower's ``other women'' lied on the stand, that ballistics tests were misinterpreted and that Tarnower's life could have been saved if he had been rushed to the hospital. The first half of her narrative is bathed in warm self-pity as she describes, in often tedious detail, her 19-year marriage to a ``nice'' man, her idyllic romance with Tarnower, years of teaching in private schools and her growing depression. In the last chapters she draws sharp portraits of fellow inmates and bitterly protests the inequities of a penal system that largely punishes the poor and powerless. 100,000 first printing; $75,000 ad/promo; first serial to Good Housekeeping; BOMC alternate. (July 30)