""Any story that starts will also end." As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart. At the center of These Precious Days is the title essay, a surprising and moving meditation on an unexpected friendship that explores "what it means to be seen, to find someone...

Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer on the brink of financial ruin when she accepts the job offer of a lifetime. Jeremy Crawford, husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford, has hired Lowen to complete the remaining books in a successful series his injured wife is unable to finish. Lowen arrives at the Crawford home, to sort through years of Verity's notes and outlines, hoping to find enough material to get started. Lowen uncovers an unfinished...

"Brooklynite Eva Mercy is a single mom and bestselling erotica writer, who is feeling pressed from all sides. Shane Hall is a reclusive, enigmatic, award-winning literary author who, to everyone's surprise, shows up in New York. When Shane and Eva meet unexpectedly at a literary event, sparks fly, raising not only their past buried traumas, but the eyebrows of New York's Black literati. What no one knows is that twenty years earlier, teenage Eva and...

Just My Type: Pop culture writer and aspiring novelist Vanessa Sills lands the interview of a lifetime with the illustrious, elusive and reclusive mystery author Martin Clayborne in his quaint rural town only to realize her own aspirations, dreams and romantic life have taken a back seat along the way. When Vanessa returns home to Portland and a mysterious gift arrives from Martin, she then makes a surprise decision, and finally takes her own advice. Harvest...