"Alice has always wanted to be a writer. Her talent is innate, but her stories remain safe and detached, until a devastating event breaks her heart open, and she creates a stunning debut novel. Her words, in turn, find their way to readers, from a teenager hiding her homelessness, to a free diver pushing himself beyond endurance, an artist furious at the world around her, a bookseller in search of love, a widower rent by grief. Each one is drawn into...

"One day, eavesdropping on a phone call, Harold Raab, a writer with nothing to write, hears his roommate refer intriguingly to a woman Harold has never met. Curiosity leads to obsession and to an affair with the married Charlotte Cobin, all of which Harold faithfully records in the notebook that becomes his deeper obsession. As the relationship with Charlotte complicates and darkens, Harold's poisons emerge. He's discovered a subject he can write...