The Typing Lady and Other Fictions by Ruth Ozeki

Exploring childhood ambition, youthful desire, midlife reinvention and the unsparing clarity of old age, Ozeki brings us eleven richly imagined stories of characters standing at life's thresholds. A college student falls for her professor and learns to transmute longing into language. A disquieted husband watches as the ghost of his wife's ambition roams the woods outside their home. A long-deceased Beat poet hijacks the mind of a young publishing assistant and rails against the state of modern literature. A curious grandmother creates a fake online dating profile to spy on her granddaughter's romantic life - and sets in motion a deception she can't control.