Romance novelist charged with felony assault after knocking husband out with phone book

A romance novelist charged with felony assault said she accidentally knocked her husband out after hurling a telephone book at his head during an argument.

Emily Hanlon-Tarasov, author of "Petersburg," a best seller in England, said she threw the phone book in a fit of anger, then called 911 after her husband fell to the floor and lay unconscious for several minutes.

"I threw the book, but never in my wildest dreams did I think it would hit him," Hanlon said of the incident, which occurred in their Chapman Road home Monday morning, just two weeks shy of their 40th anniversary.

"A few things began flying at the wall, and one of them was a telephone book," her husband Ned Tarasov said yesterday. "And unfortunately my head moved into the space that the book was flying."

Yorktown police charged the 61-year-old writer with second-degree assault, despite her husband pleading with them to throw the case out.