Heredity

Smart, blond, and masochistic, Elizabeth Mann thinks that leaving New York for a London travel-writing job will solve all her problems with her father, a well-known American infertility specialist. She couldn't be more wrong: in a museum of medical curiosities at the Royal College of Surgeons, her daydreams over the skeleton of real-life, eighteenth-century criminal Jonathan Wild - who will play an important part in the story that follows- are interrupted by an encounter with Gideon Streetcar, an attractive married man in his late thirties (with asthma and a low sperm count) who's also a former student of Elizabeth's father. Before Elizabeth knows it, she's having sex with Gideon in his office, and she soon takes on the humiliating, exhilarating role of secret mistress. Meanwhile her obsession with Jonathan Wild grows, and she decides that with Gideon's help, she will give birth to the clone of the eighteenth-century thief-taker.

Part detective novel, part twisted historical romance, mixed with learned information about the history of medicine, and explicit sex, Heredity is a bawdy, funny novel.