[A] story of men and women forced to make their living by writing. Their daily lives and broken dreams, made and marred by the rigors of urban life and the demands of the fledgling mass communications industry, are presented with vivid realism and unsentimental sympathy.

Pittsburgh professor and author Grady Tripp is working on an unwieldy 2,611 page manuscript that is meant to be the follow-up to his successful, award-winning novel The Land Downstairs, that was published seven years earlier. On the eve of a college-sponsored writers and publishers weekend called WordFest, two monumental things happen to Tripp: his wife walks out on him, and he learns that his mistress, who is also the chancellor of the college, Sara...

Bedridden after a freak accident, a novelist begins to question his own sanity as he moves through dreamlike memories of his own fictional characters. Injured in a freak accident, novelist Gerry Andersen lies in a hospital bed in his glamorous but sterile apartment, isolated from the busy world he can see through his windows. He is utterly dependent on two women he barely knows: his young assistant and a night nurse whose competency he questions....

Alex has all but given up on becoming a published author when she receives a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: an exclusive, month-long writing retreat at the estate of horror writer Roza Vallo. When the attendees arrive, they must complete an entire novel from scratch during the next month, and the author of the best one will receive a seven-figure publishing deal. Determind to win this seemingly impossible contest, Alex tries to ignore the strange...

A young, black woman working in publishing makes a surprise connection with an author who has failed to deliver his highly anticipated manuscript.

Without her husband's knowledge, Christine, whose memory is damaged by a long-ago accident, is treated by a neurologist who helps her to remember her former self through journal entries until inconsistencies begin to emerge, raising disturbing questions.

"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...

Writer Bill Gray enters the world of political violence leaving his two friends stranded as hostages.

"Florence Day is a ghostwriter for one of the most prolific romance authors in the industry, and she has a problem-after a terrible break-up, she no longer believes in love. It's as good as dead. When her new editor, a too-handsome mountain of a man, won't give her an extension on her book deadline, Florence prepares to kiss her career goodbye. But then she gets a phone call she never wanted to receive, and she must return home for the first time...

After posting a one-star review for a poorly written--but gruesome--horror novel, Emma Carpenter is dragged into an online argument with the author himself, but when disturbing incidents start happening at night, Emma digs into his life and work, discovering a sadistic man who is capable of anything. After posting a negative book review, a woman living in a remote location begins to wonder if the author is a little touchy -- or very, very dangerous...