Washoe County Library System

"An examination of how the romantic narrative from Pride and Prejudice was born out of Gothic horror, how it influenced pop culture since its publishing, and how it has reinforced harmful cultural concepts of real-life romance"-- "What if we've been reading Jane Austen and romantic classics all wrong? A literary scholar offers a funny, brainy, eye-opening take on how our contemporary love stories are actually terrifying. Covering cultural touchstones...

"A playful, highly visual exploration of novelistic structure and how novels are created, How to Draw a Novel is a meditation on literary craft that muses on how and why novels communicate with readers. In this witty and finely wrought collection of essays, Martain Solares opens the hood of how fiction operates, exploring the conventions of form, the novel as a house that one must build brick by brick, and the objects and characters that build out...

"As deeply rewarding as her fiction, a selection of Ann Beattie's essays, chosen and introduced by the author. From appreciations of writers, photographers, and other artists, to notes on the craft of writing itself, this is a wide-ranging, and always penetrating collection of writing never before published in book form. Ann Beattie, a master storyteller, has been delighting readers since the publication of her short stories in the 1970s and her first...

Consists of essays, some previously published in various journals and periodicals on art, literature, and politics. Titles include Black body, Poetry of the disregarded, A conversation with Aleksandar Hemon, A true picture of black skin, Google's Macchia, Home strange home, Bad laws, The White savior industrial complex, and Blind spot.

An intimate exploration of the life, craft, and legacy of one of the most revered and influential writers, an artist who continues to inspire fans and creatives to cultivate practices of deep attention, rigorous interrogation and beautiful style. Joan Didion was a writer's writer; not only a groundbreaking journalist, essayist, novelist and screenwriter, but a keen observer who honed her sights on life's telling details. Her insights continue to influence...

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee presents reflections on her inner life from the unique perspectives of the cafés and cultural haunts she has visited and worked in around the world.

What could be a more tempting holiday gift than a compendium of David Sedaris's best stories, selected by the author himself? From a spectacular career spanning almost three decades, these stories have become modern classics and are now for the first time collected in one volume. The collection will also feature an introduction by the author; a never-before-collected story, 'Unbuttoned'; and a new interview with David Sedaris.

American novelist Joan Didion's first volume of nonfiction essays, first published in 1968, consisting of twenty works that reflect the atmosphere in America during the 1960s, especially in the center of its counterculture, California.

The best-selling author and Emmy Award-winning writer and producer hilariously destroys the cultural myths and impossible expectations of modern-day motherhood and explores the humiliations, poignancies, and possibilities of midlife.

Correspondence between Helene Hanff, a freelance writer living in New York, and a used-book dealer in London