Starting over
Elizabeth Spencer
A collection of nine short stories explores the emotional fault lines that lie just beneath the surface of happy family life.

by Kim Brooks (2018)
One morning, Kim Brooks made a split-second decision to leave her four-year old son in the car while she ran into a store. What happened would consume the next several years of her life and spur her to investigate the broader role America's culture of fear plays in parenthood. In Small Animals , Brooks asks, of all the emotions inherent in parenting, is there any more universal or profound than fear? Why have our notions of what it means to be a good parent changed so radically? In what ways do these changes impact the lives of parents, children, and the structure of society at large? And what, in the end, does the rise of fearful parenting tell us about ourselves? Fueled by urgency and the emotional intensity of Brooks's own story, Small Animals is a riveting examination of the ways our culture of competitive, anxious, and judgmental parenting has profoundly altered the experiences of parents and children.
Elizabeth Spencer
A collection of nine short stories explores the emotional fault lines that lie just beneath the surface of happy family life.
Pete Dexter
Warren Spooner was born after a prolonged delivery in a makeshift delivery room in a doctor's office in Milledgeville, Georgia, on the first Saturday of December, 1956. His father died shortly afterward, long before Spooner had even a memory of his face, and was replaced eventually by a once-brilliant young naval officer, Calmer Ottosson, recently court-martialed out of service. This is the story of the lifelong tie between the two men, poles apart, of Spooner's troubled childhood, troubled adolescence, violent and troubled adulthood and Calmer Ottosson's inexhaustible patience, undertaking a life-long struggle to salvage his step-son, a man he will never understand.
Jay McInerney
"The crowning achievement from the preeminent writer of his generation: following Brightness Falls and The Good Life, Bright, Precious Things builds on a series increasingly akin to John Updike's Rabbit novels but with a long-standing if weathered couple at its heart. Russell and Corrine Calloway seem to be living the New York dream: book parties one night and high-society charity events the next; jobs they care about (and actually enjoy); twin children, a boy and a girl whose birth was truly miraculous; a loft in Tribeca and summers in the Hamptons. But all of this comes at a high cost. Russell, an independent publisher, has cultural clout but minimal cash; as he navigates an industry that requires, beyond astute literary taste, constant financial improvisation, he encounters an audacious, expensive and potentially ruinous opportunity. Meanwhile, instead of seeking personal profit in this incredibly wealthy city, Corrine is devoted to feeding its hungry poor, and they soon discover they're being priced out of their now fashionable neighborhood. Then Corrine's world is turned upside down when the man with whom she'd had an ill-fated affair in the wake of 9/11 suddenly reappears. As the novel unfolds across a period of stupendous change including Obama's historic election and the global economic collapse he inherited the Calloways will find themselves and their marriage tested more severely than they ever could have anticipated"--
Mary-Beth Hughes
From the outside in, the Devlin family lead almost perfect lives. Dashing father Nick is a successful businessman long married to sweetheart Jean, who upholds the family home and entertains, while daughter Lily attends Catholic school and is disciplined into modesty by the nuns. Under the surface, however, the Devlins are broken by the death of their little boy, Cubbie. When Nick's older brother, Lionel, a man driven by callous and rapacious urges, inducts Nick into the cutthroat world of cosmetics, Nick's sudden rise to the top brings the Devlin family to a fresh start in London, where they join the ranks of the city's social elite. But as the veneer of their glamorous new life abroad starts to wear thin, the Devlin family are further fragmented by betrayals and become victims of the cruelest kind of hurt.