His Temporary Assistant Aw Scott

What Love Means to You People

A powerful debut about a young man whose denial of his past nearly destroys the new life he seeks Shaking off his hellish adolescence in a nowhere Nebraska town (and leaving a beloved younger sister to fend for herself in the same hostile environment), Seth McKenna escapes to make a new reality for himself as a struggling artist in Manhattan. When he falls hard for Jim Glaser, an alluring older man who is astonished to find in Seth the second love of his life, it seems simpler to gloss over his old life in Drinkwater and the history he used to have. Jim, who expected to remain alone forever, is happy to start over, too, and theirs becomes a tender, sexy romance. Although Seth seems to have successfully put his past behind him to become the man he wants to be---the kind of man Jim can cherish---his childhood rushes back unexpectedly and with a vengeance. When Seth's sister, Cassie, arrives in the city with significant secrets and plans of her own, Drinkwater's intractable demands force Seth to revisit his hidden past. What Jim learns about Seth's concealments threatens to destroy their new life together. An engrossing contemporary drama of family ties both imposed and chosen, What Love Means to You People presents an indelible, illuminating look at the survival of the human spirit through willful reinvention and the power of love. Advance Praise for What Love Means to You People "A powerful debut novel--smart, sexy, and highly readable. NancyKay Shapiro's characters are subtly observed and movingly human."--Regina McBride, author of The Marriage Bed "Profound and moving. Shapiro dares to reimagine suffering and takes us on a journey to love and back. Seth McKenna will get under your skin. I am touched."--Abha Dawesar, author of Babyji "NancyKay Shapiro's debut is a powerful and knowing look at what can happen to love when the past bubbles up into the present. Elegantly written, this is a moving and surprising novel that doesn't let you go."--Katharine Weber, author of The Little Women, The Music Lesson, and Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

The Doctor's Daughter

In her first work of fiction in more than a decade, award-winning novelist Hilma Wolitzer brilliantly renders the intimate details of ordinary life and exposes a host of hidden truths. The Doctor’s Daughter is a haunting portrait of a woman coming to terms with her family history and the fallibility of memory. One morning, Alice Brill awakes with a sudden awareness that something is wrong. There’s a hollowness in her chest, and a sensation of dread that she can’t identify or shake. Was it something she’s done, or forgotten to do? As she scours her mind for the source of her unease, she confronts an array of disturbing possibilities. First, there is her marriage, a once vibrant relationship that now languishes stasis. Then there’s her idle, misdirected younger son, who always needs bailing out of some difficulty. Or perhaps Alice’s trepidation is caused by the loss of her career as an editor at a large publishing house, and the new path she’s paved for herself as a freelance book doctor. Or it might be the real doctor in her life: her father. Formerly one of New York’s top surgeons, he now rests in a nursing home, his mind gripped by dementia. And the Eden that was Alice’s childhood–the material benefits and reflected glory of being a successful doctor’s daughter, the romance of her parents’ famously perfect marriage–makes her own domestic life seem fatally flawed. While struggling to find the root of her restlessness, Alice is buoyed by her discovery of a talented new writer, a man who works by day as a machinist in Michigan. Soon their interactions and feelings intensify, and Alice realizes that the mystery she’s been trying to solve lies not in the present, as she had assumed, but in the past–and in the secrets of a marriage that was never as perfect as it appeared. Like the best works of Anne Tyler, Sue Miller, and Gail Godwin, The Doctor’s Daughter is private yet universal, luminous and revelatory–and marks the reemergence of a singular talent in American writing.

A Brief History of the Hannah Research Institute