Writing Brave and Free: Encouraging Words for People Who Want to Start Writing


Ted Kooser - 2006
    Liberating and emboldening the beginning writer are the goals of Ted Kooser and Steve Cox in this spirited book of practical wisdom that brings to bear decades of invaluable experience in writing, teaching, editing, and publishing. Unlike “how to write” books that dwell on the angst and the agony of the trade, Writing Brave and Free is upbeat and accessible. The focus here is the work itself: how to get started and how to keep going, and never is heard a discouraging word such as “no,” “not,” or “never.” Because of the wealth of their experience, the authors can offer the sort of practical publishing advice that novices need and yet rarely find. Organized in brief, user-friendly chapters—on everything from sensory details to a work environment, from creating suspense to revising and taking criticism—the book allows aspiring (and practicing) writers to dip in anywhere and find something of value.

The Truth of the Matter: Art and Craft in Creative Nonfiction


Dinty W. Moore - 2006
    Essays from contemporary nonfiction writers such as Henry Louis Gates, Norma Elia Cant�, Pico Iyer, Joan Didion, and others are integrated directly into the text to illustrate concepts. KEY TOPICS: Individual chapters are devoted to detail and description, characterization and scene, distinctive voice, intimate point-of-view, and the various ways in which writers discover the significance or universality of their work. MARKET: For writers wanting to explore creative nonfiction.

When I Was a Kid, This Was a Free Country


G. Gordon Liddy - 2002
    Gordon Liddy offers his unabashedly politically incorrect view on America.

The Book In A Box Method: The New Way to Quickly and Easily Write Your Book (Even If You're Not a Writer)


Tucker Max - 2015
     Maybe you start, but can’t find the time to continue. Or you’re frustrated with the writing process. And when you seek advice, people tell you, “It’s all about discipline”, or they talk about what writing software to use. But that doesn’t help you actually write your book. So you never finish your book, the world never gets the benefit of your wisdom, and you never get the benefits of being an author. Isn’t there an easier way? Now there is. In The Book In A Box Method, Tucker Max and Zach Obront show you the exact steps you can follow to go from idea to finished manuscript, in an easy, quick way -- even if you’re not a writer. Using the same methods, processes, and templates that they use for their authors at their company, Tucker and Zach show you exactly how to: Crystallize your book idea Create your book outline Create all the content for your book Edit that content into a great manuscript With The Book In A Box Method, you’ll be able to write a better book - in less time - than you ever thought possible.

Books for Living


Will Schwalbe - 2016
    In each chapter he makes clear the ways in which a particular book has helped to shape how he leads his own life and the ways in which it might help to shape ours. He talks about what brought him to each book - or vice versa; the people in his life he associates each book with; how each has led him to other books; how each is part of his understanding of himself in the world. And he relates each book to a question of our daily lives, for example: Melville's Bartleby, the Scrivener speaks to quitting; 1984 to disconnecting from our electronics; James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room to the power of finding ourselves and connecting with one another; Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea to taking time to recharge; Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird to being sensitive to the surrounding world; The Little Prince to making friends; Paula Hawkins's The Girl on the Train to trusting. Here, too, are books by Dickens, Daphne du Maurier, Haruki Murakami, Edna Lewis, E. B. White, and Hanya Yanagihara, among many others. A treasure of a book for everyone who loves books, loves reading, and loves to hear the answer to the question: "What are you reading?"

Buzz Books 2020: Fall/Winter


Ken Follett - 2020
    Our “digital convention” features such major bestselling authors as Ken Follett, Matt Haig, Jonathan Lethem, and Sue Miller. Other sure-to-be popular titles are by Rumaan Alam, J’nell Ciesielski, Vendela Vida, and Bryan Washington. At the end of most excerpts, you will find a link to the full galley on NetGalley!Buzz Books has had a particularly stellar track record with highlighting the most talented, exciting debut authors. Simon Stephenson’s novel about a humanlike bot has already been optioned for film, while Finnish sensation Max Seeck’s thriller is due out as a television series. Robert Jones Jr.’s The Prophets and Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club were both sold at auction.Our nonfiction selections include an inspirational World War II story, Three Ordinary Girls: The Remarkable Story Of Hannie Schaft And The Oversteegen Sisters: Teenaged Saboteurs and Nazi Assassins by Tim Brady, a true crime read; We Keep the Dead Close by Becky Cooper; and the incisive Can't Even: How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation by BuzzFeed columnist Anne Helen Petersen.

The Miss Dennis School of Writing: And Other Lessons from a Woman's Life


Alice Steinbach - 1996
    These pieces thus explore, with quiet grace, the unexpected pleasures that are gleaned from an appreciation of the ordinary - a sleeping cat, a blooming garden, a well-cooked meal. Such familiar - even ostensibly mundane - details of our lives, Steinbach maintains, play a far more important part in shaping our identities and our sense of our relationship to the world than do the exotic encounters or momentous events to which we attach much significance. Alternately poignant and humorous, sedately contemplative and bristling with emotional energy, Steinbach's various musings on the daily rhythms of her own moods and experiences transform everyday life into a rich and meaningful journey.

Sez Who? Sez Me


Mike Royko - 1982
    More than a decade's worth of essays by the Pulitzer Prize winning syndicated columnist capture the essence of big city American life, from neighborhood taverns to backroom politics.

The Secrets of Carriage H (Kindle Single)


Andrew Rosenheim - 2014
    It was the U.K.’s worst rail disaster in years. On the morning of October 5, 1999, two rush-hour commuter trains collided just outside London. Hundreds were feared dead. Though he was traveling in the front-most carriage, the novelist Andrew Rosenheim survived the crash. In “The Secrets of Carriage H,” Rosenheim recalls in heart-pounding detail the events of that day and opens up about the emotional rollercoaster that consumed him for months thereafter. Told with the rich textures of a novel and the bare heart of a memoir, “The Secrets of Carriage H” explores the unspoken consequences of survival and offers brutal, sometimes hilarious insight into the human condition. Andrew Rosenheim was born and raised in Chicago, but has lived in England for the last thirty-five years. He worked in publishing for many years at Oxford University Press and then as the Managing Director of Penguin Press. He is the author of seven novels, most recently Fear Itself and The Little Tokyo Informant. His writing has appeared in The Times, The New York Times, the Times Literary Supplement, and many other publications. Married, he lives with his wife and twin daughters near Oxford and is the editor of Kindle Singles in the U.K.Cover design by Evan Twohy.

How a Foreign Chocolate won Indian Hearts: The Cadbury Story (Rupa Quick Reads)


Anisha Motwani - 2017
    The remarkable story of the brand that was able to pull off the near-impossible challenge of integrating itself into the food habits of a nation strongly habituated to eating indigenous sweets is recounted here. It is a behind-the-scenes look at the Cadbury Dairy Milk journey in India over the last six decades.

Motherhood Martyrdom & Costco Runs


Whitney Dineen - 2017
    • Exhausting—when you realize you’ll most likely never sleep again--like EVER. • Explosive—OMG these kids spew from both ends! And that’s just the beginning. Whitney shares the ridiculous highs and excruciating lows of her catapult into motherhood. Enjoy the ride as this new mom vows to give up profanity while falling in love with… you guessed it, Costco. Be careful, because if you’re anything like Whitney, you may just pee a little. Motherhood Martyrdom & Costco Runs takes the reader on a roller coaster of emotions as Whitney plummets into postpartum depression, desperately tries to get her kids to stop yodeling in public restrooms, and comes to terms with the fact she’ll never quite be queen of her own kingdom. Get ready to laugh, cry, cheer, and pat yourself on the back for the sake of mommies everywhere. And while you’re at it, stop by Costco for a case of toilet paper and a Very Berry Sundae. You won’t regret it!

Cycling's Greatest Misadventures


Erich Schweikher - 2007
    In these pages both everyday riders and pros tell their stories of freak accidents, animal attacks, sabotage, idiotic decisions, eerie or unexplained incidents, and other jaw dropping, adrenalin-pumping calamities. These stories bring to life the strange things possibilities that await, once we step on the pedals of our road, mountain, or commuter bikes. A sampling of misadventures in this collection includes the stories of: the mountain biker who follows a bull and then gets gored by it; the twenty African Americans who pioneered cycle touring by completing a Transamerica ride in 1897, but wait - this story gets strange...; the large rat that leapt on top of a woman's bike and slapped her repeatedly with its tail; an inside-the-head narration by a professional racer as he rides a brutal race, and then gets humiliated in changing room afterwards; the recreational cyclist who accidentally rides deep into a prison yard; the computer programmer who crashes a stationary bike during his first spin class; the bike messenger who can't call it quits even after getting hit by eight cars; and, the man who carefully spreads out tacks on the route of an all female race in an attempt to get a date. These stories will make you wonder, drop you to the floor laughing and leave you shaking your head with disbelief.

Youngblood 2.0


Jorge Aruta - 2000
    Coming off the compelling success of the first Youngblood book, the unstoppable voices of our young gain greater momentum in this second volume. Gathering the best essays from the years 1997 and 1998 of the trendsetting Philippine Daily Inquirer column, this book takes the twentysomethings' struggle to dream and live to the next level.This is Youngblood 2.0.Accept no substitutes.

Animal, Mineral, Radical: Essays on Wildlife, Family, and Food


B.K. Loren - 2013
    It comes from the Latin radix, radicis, meaning radish, a root vegetable.”—BK LorenWinner of the Colorado Book Award, these meditative essays range in subjects from a transcendental encounter with a pack of coyotes ironically juxtaposed with her neighbor’s claim that nature “has gone out of vogue,” to Loren’s mother’s slow yet all-encompassing deterioration from Parkinson’s, and the unexpected way the Loma Prieta earthquake eroded her depression by offering the author a sense of her small place in a wild and worthwhile world.Loren has an empathetic and gentle approach to the world. In detailing the intricacies of human relationships and consciousness—fear of death and time, cooperation born of clashing viewpoints, tradition’s beauty even when destructive, a love of language, a sense of loss amid the fast-paced materialistic world—she peels back the film of popular thinking in order to expose herself to the secrets so few of us ever see.

the little book of SITCOM


John Vorhaus - 2011
    So much of what you need to know is already defined for you. You know that your script needs to be a certain short length, with a certain small number of characters. You know that your choice of scenes is limited to your show’s standing sets and maybe one or two swing sets or outside locations. You know how your characters behave and how they’re funny, either because you invented them or because you’re writing for a show where these things are already well established. Sitcom is easy and sitcom is fun. Sitcom is the gateway drug to longer forms of writing. It’s a pretty good buzz and a pretty good ride, a great way to kill an afternoon, or even six months. And now, thanks to comedy writing guru John Vorhaus (author of THE COMIC TOOLBOX: HOW TO BE FUNNY EVEN IF YOU'RE NOT), writing situation comedy is easier than ever. In THE LITTLE BOOK OF SITCOM, you'll find a whole trove of tools, tricks and problem-solving techniques that you can use -- now, today -- to be the sitcom writer of your wildest dreams. Ready to write? Ready to have fun? THE LITTLE BOOK OF SITCOM is the big little book for you.