A woman grows obsessed with a single book from the time she is a young adult to her death in old age, as the book's meaning changes for her over time.

In Michigan, a recently divorced professor reflects on what it means to exist, first alone in his empty apartment and then alongside his student in a mission to find a missing girl.

A writing critic reviews the construction of Charles Chesnutt’s stories and how to write surfiction.

A teacher on the Lower East side meets a friendly man with a presence resembling a dead English poet.

A man recalls his intimate friendship with his former English professor, who resolved to fuel his unsatisfied desire for playwriting during the time they were apart. In their reunion decades later, instead of the brilliant play he promised, the professor shows his former student a disturbing product of his mental instability.

A rambunctious teenager with an inquisitive mind causes much grief for all his New England family and neighbors when he visits them in the summer of 1914, on the eve of World War I.

A writer receiving feedback from a professor on their drafts is sure that the person on the other end is a man. They wrestle with their own hidden identities until the end of their literary relationship comes with an unexpected revelation.

Amongst problems with her ungrateful children and ex-husband, a middle-aged mother deals with a burgeoning mid-life crisis — until she realizes that she has become miraculously pregnant.

A man in a failing marriage embarks on yet another love affair with a married woman, teaching him about his own sexual escapist tendencies.

After being offered a 100,000 pound advance to write a book on the twentieth century, a historian/writer struggling with depression takes to London to begin this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.