A middle-aged New York editor becomes entranced by a young female writer whose work he rejects. As they meet more and more frequently for coffee, the editor endlessly analyzes whether or not the young woman shares his interest in becoming more than friends.

A seventh-grade English teacher copes with the recent death of her father and assigns a memoir that her students love reading. However, their parents question her for her pedagogical choices because of the swear words and provocative topics in the book.

An American continues to run into another American on their trips around Europe and the Mediterranean.

A writer struggles to craft a story and begins to lose his own sanity when an idea finally comes to him.

A young woman tutors a rich thirteen-year-old girl, and their sessions together prompt the woman to reflect on her less-privileged teenage years and how she ended up with the job she has.

In 2017, a young boy in suburban Maryland is stuck watching his grandfather, an alcoholic former advertising executive who still sees the ghost of the son he killed.

In Miami, a Yiddish writer meets a multimillionaire who tells him tales of sex and survival during the Holocaust.

An American writer listens as the father of his friend tells the story of a writer he met in Paris many years ago who was tortured and taunted by Parisian aristocrats until he's driven mad.

A twenty-two-year-old male tutor gives various women feedback on their writing in letter form. When he quits his job, he visits one of his former correspondents for lunch at her apartment.

A science fiction fan travels back in time to the 1930s in order to locate Isaac Asimov's famously lost first manuscript.