"In this wacky true tale of American ingenuity, Annie Miller took to raising pigs in the yard after losing all but her mansion, but when the town wanted the pigs out, she removed the whole mansion instead--rolling it away slowly on logs."--

Roy Peter Clark, one of America's most influential writing teachers, offers writing lessons we can draw from 25 great texts. Where do writers learn their best moves? They use a technique that Roy Peter Clark calls X-ray reading, a form of reading that lets you penetrate beyond the surface of a text to see how meaning is actually being made. In "The art of X-ray reading", Clark invites you to don your X-ray reading glasses and join him on a guided...

In The Science of Discworld, the wizards of Unseen University unwittingly created Earth (aka Roundworld) and our universe. At the time, they were so concerned with the rules of this new universe that they overlooked its inhabitants completely. Now, they have finally noticed humanity. And humanity has company: Elves, who want very much to take over human society. In this second installment in the Science of Discworld miniseries, Terry Pratchett and...

"Thirty years ago, a teenage Vincent King was sent to prison. But now, he's served his sentence and is returning to his hometown. The hometown where his childhood best friend, Walk, is now the chief of police. The town where his childhood sweetheart, Star Radley, still lives. The same Star Radley whose sister he killed. Duchess, Star's daughter, is a self-proclaimed outlaw. She needs to be. Who else is going to take care of her and her five-year-old...

"While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better? In [this novel], Nora Seed finds herself faced ... with the possibility of changing her life for a new one: following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist. She must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library...

A haunting coming of age novel told in a series of letters to an unknown correspondent reveals the life of Charlie, a freshman in high school who is a wallflower, shy and introspective, and very intelligent, it's a story of what it's like to grow up in high school, tracing a course through uncharted territory in the world of first dates, family dramas and new friends.

Finalist for the 2021 National Book Award (Fiction)
"A virtuosic portrait." –New York Times Book Review
"A tender, glowing novel." –Anthony Doerr, Guardian, "Best Books of the Year"
"Pages that are polished like jewels." –Scott Simon, NPR, "Books We Love"
"Lit from within." -Mark Athitakis, Los Angeles Times, "Best Fiction Books of the Year"
"A touching, tightly...

Eight ordinary people. One extraordinary choice. It seems like any other day. You wake up, pour a cup of coffee, and head out. But today, when you open your front door, waiting for you is a small wooden box. This box holds your fate inside: the answer to the exact number of years you will live. From suburban doorsteps to desert tents, every person on every continent receives the same box. In an instant, the world is thrust into a collective frenzy....

"No one knows Margo's real name. Her colleagues and patrons at a small-town public library only know her middle-aged normalcy, congeniality, and charm. They have no reason to suspect that she is, in fact, a former nurse with a trail of countless premature deaths in her wake. She has turned a new page, so to speak, and the library is her sanctuary, a place to quell old urges. That is, at least, until Patricia, a recent graduate and failed novelist,...

Receiving an invitation to his ex-boyfriend's wedding, Arthur, a failed novelist on the eve of his fiftieth birthday, embarks on an international journey that finds him falling in love, risking his life, reinventing himself, and making connections with the past.