""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...

"In middle age, Ehrenreich came across the journal she had kept during her tumultuous adolescence and set out to reconstruct that quest, which had taken her to the study of science and through a cataclysmic series of uncanny-or as she later learned to call them, "mystical"-experiences. A staunch atheist and rationalist, she is profoundly shaken by the implications of her life-long search. Part memoir, part philosophical and spiritual inquiry, LIVING...

"Mary Laura Philpott thought she'd cracked the code: Always be right, and you'll always be happy. But once she'd completed her life's to-do list (job, spouse, house, babies--check!), she found that instead of feeling content and successful, she felt anxious. Lost. Stuck in a daily grind of overflowing calendars, grueling small talk, and sprawling traffic. She'd done everything "right," but she felt all wrong. What's the worse failure, she wondered:...

Using mostly short entries organized from A to Z, many of which are cross-referenced, Rosenthal captures in wonderful and episodic detail the moments, observations, and emotions that comprise a contemporary life. Start anywhere -- preferably at the beginning -- and see how one young woman's alphabetized existence can open up and define the world in new and unexpected ways.

Sellers has prosopagnosia, a rare neurological condition that prevents her from reliably recognizing people's faces. As she came at last to trust her own perceptions, she learned the gift of perspective: that embracing the past as it is allows us to let it go.

At every stage of her life, journalist and author Kati Marton found beauty and excitement in Paris, and now, after the sudden death of husband Richard Holbrooke, the city offers a chance for a new beginning. With intimate and nuanced portraits of Peter Jennings, with whom she had two children in their fifteen-year marriage, and Holbrooke, with whom she found enduring love, Marton offers a vivid account of an adventuresome life in the stream of history....

"My Withered Legs and Other Essays is a collection of personal essays by Sandra Gail Lambert which reflect upon her experience becoming a writer alongside discussions of disability, queerness, and aging. A seventy-year history of disability is threaded throughout these essays and intertwined with writing that celebrates lesbian love, explores the slapstick moments of life, and shares the obstacles and triumphs of becoming a writer later in life. The...

How is it that an untrained, self-taught observer and writer could see things that professional anthropologists often missed? How is that a pioneering woman, working in male-dominated fields, without sponsors or credentials, could accomplish more than so many more celebrated and professionally educated men could manage? How can we all unlock the wisdom of the world simply by paying close attention? With their intelligence and acute insight into other...

Writer, performer, and radio show host Loh "speaks ... about her life as a mother, a daughter, and an artist. She recounts her journey through a tumultuous time of life, trying to maintain appearances during an epic hormonal--and that means physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual--change. The upbeat conclusion: it does get better"--Dust jacket cover.

"Life is a work-in-progress, full of mystery and unexpected twists. The only certain thing is that whatever story you think you are telling yourself about your life, is that story will change. And then it will change again. One minute Elizabeth Crane and her husband of fifteen years are fixing up their old house in upstate New York, finally settling down roots after stints in Chicago, Texas, and Brooklyn, and the next she finds herself separated and...