What you wouldn’t give to spend one more day.

Your loved one has been gone — what? Weeks? Years? It seems like forever, and missing him doesn’t get much easier. You wish for one of her hugs. What you wouldn’t give to have one more day with her.

And what would you do? In the new novel, “Recognition” by O.H. Bennett (c.2014, Agate, $15, 208 pages), a young mother panics because the man she sees can’t possibly be the man she knew.

Franklin would have gone to Brenda’s house by now.

Every good thing must come to an end.

In some cases, that’s a surprising relief: you can only have just so much fun.

In other cases, though, the end comes quietly, slowly, so that few actually realize it until it’s already crept away. That includes friendships and ways of life, and in “The Last Kind Words Saloon” by Larry McMurtry (c.2014, Liveright, $24.95, 199 pages), it’s almost closin’ time.

Seven hours of your life, gone — just like that.

You’d be annoyed if that happened while in traffic. You’d be angry if it was spent on-hold. And you’re not getting paid for it? Outrageous, but it happens every day of your life: seven hours, give or take, spent sleeping and you can’t account for it. You can’t even be sure you stayed in bed.

But is there a benefit from snoozing? Why do we lose awareness of our surroundings for a third of our lives? Read “The Secret Life of Sleep” by Kat Duff (c.2014, Atria / Beyond Words, $24, 256 pages), and find out.

“I can’t sleep!”

Everybody deserves a second start.

You’d never begrudge a down-on-his-luck fellow a new lease on life. It’s his right to begin over, to get another chance to fix what broke, and to seize new opportunities. Yep, a clean slate does a body good and, as you’ll see in “Glorious” by Jeff Guinn (c.2014, Putnam, $26.95, 407 pages), it keeps him from getting killed.

Cash McLendon always had a knack for people-skills.