Designed to help writers find inspiration anytime, anywhere, The Writer's Book of Matches is both muse and exercise partner for beginning and professional writers. This dynamic title: Is jam-packed with 1,001 creative prompts - more than any other book on the market Provides a spectrum of prompts, including situational, dialogue oriented, and point-of-view changing exercises Shares dozens of sidebars containing humorous and inspiring quotes from famous authors about the writing life, idea creation, and writer's block With appendices that show writers how to adapt the prompts in new and exciting ways, this book of writing matches will ignite writers' creative fires for years to come.
Go ahead. Play with matches. &break;&break;Not the usual advice, is it? But doing so will help you find inspiration, overcome writer's block, and develop a writing habit - forever. Sounds like a big promise for such a tiny little book...but it's true. &break;&break;Inside, you'll discover more than 1,000 writing prompts designed to get your creative first burning. Consider each prompt a "match" of sorts, capable of starting anything from a tiny blaze (a short story) to a raging inferno (a novel). &break;&break;You'll also find guidelines for using these matches to boost your creativity in fun, unexpected ways, along with dozens of inspirational quotes from some of the world's greatest writers. &break;&break;So open the book. Pick a match. Starting a fire has never been so easy.
Emmett has a wife and two children, a cat, and a duck, and he wants to know what life is about. Every day he gets up before dawn, makes a cup of coffee in the dark, lights a fire with one wooden match, and thinks. What Emmett thinks about is the subject of this wise and closely observed novel, which covers vast distances while moving no further than Emmett’s hearth and home. Nicholson Baker’s extraordinary ability to describe and celebrate life in all its rich ordinariness has never been so beautifully achieved.
Navigate between myth and chaos in this “journey filled with peril, self-discovery, and terrifying moments” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Sixteen-year-old Scotch struggles to fit in—at home she’s the perfect daughter, at school she’s provocatively sassy, and thanks to her mixed heritage, she doesn’t feel she belongs with the Caribbeans, whites, or blacks. And even more troubling, lately her skin is becoming covered in a sticky black substance that can’t be removed. While trying to cope with this creepiness, she goes out with her brother—and he disappears. A mysterious bubble of light just swallows him up, and Scotch has no idea how to find him. Soon, the Chaos that has claimed her brother affects the city at large, until it seems like everyone is turning into crazy creatures. Scotch needs to get to the bottom of this supernatural situation ASAP before the Chaos consumes everything she’s ever known—and she knows that the black shadowy entity that’s begun trailing her every move is probably not going to help. A blend of fantasy and Caribbean folklore, at its heart this tale is about identity and self-acceptance—because only by acknowledging her imperfections can Scotch hope to save her brother.
#ReadWithJenna Book Club Pick as Featured on Today Emma Roberts Belletrist Book Club Pick A New York Times Book Review’s Group Text Selection "I loved this book not just from the first chapter or the first page but from the first paragraph... The voice is just so honest and riveting and insightful about creativity and life." —Curtis Sittenfeld An extraordinary new novel of art, love, and ambition from Lily King, the New York Times bestselling author of Euphoria Following the breakout success of her critically acclaimed and award-winning novel Euphoria, Lily King returns with another instant New York Times bestseller: an unforgettable portrait of an artist as a young woman. Blindsided by her mother’s sudden death, and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan. Her mail consists of wedding invitations and final notices from debt collectors. A former child golf prodigy, she now waits tables in Harvard Square and rents a tiny, moldy room at the side of a garage where she works on the novel she’s been writing for six years. At thirty-one, Casey is still clutching onto something nearly all her old friends have let go of: the determination to live a creative life. When she falls for two very different men at the same time, her world fractures even more. Casey’s fight to fulfill her creative ambitions and balance the conflicting demands of art and life is challenged in ways that push her to the brink. Writers & Lovers follows Casey—a smart and achingly vulnerable protagonist—in the last days of a long youth, a time when every element of her life comes to a crisis. Written with King’s trademark humor, heart, and intelligence, Writers & Lovers is a transfixing novel that explores the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another.
A comic tale of what can go wrong when you try to make things right When 16-year-old Raina Resnick is expelled from her Manhattan private school, she's sent to live with her strict aunt -- but Raina feels like she's persona non grata no matter where she goes. Her sister, Leah, blames her for her broken engagement, and she's a social pariah at her new school. In the tight-knit Jewish community, Raina finds she is good at one thing: matchmaking! As the anonymous "Match-Maven," Raina sets up hopeless singles desperate to find the One. A cross between Jane Austen's Emma, Dear Abby, and Yenta the matchmaker, Raina's double life soon has her barely staying awake in class. Can she find the perfect match for her sister and get back on her good side, or will her tanking grades mean a second expulsion? In her debut novel, Suri Rosen creates a comic and heartwarming story of one girl trying to find happiness for others, and redemption for herself.
Playing with Matches is the ultimate collector's edition by internationally best-selling poet, Michael Faudet. A beautiful hardcover gift book that has been personally curated by the author featuring a compilation of the best work from his five published books and thirty-five new pieces of poetry and prose for readers to discover. A wonderful addition to any bookshelf with a pretty ribbon marker and attractive cloth covered spine. To complement the exquisite and evocative poetry, prose, and short stories, this gorgeous book also gives readers a private glimpse into the author's life. Comprising of black and white photographs taken by Michael Faudet that capture the inspiration behind the writing. Playing with Matches is a must-have for fans of Dirty Pretty Things, Bitter Sweet Love, Smoke & Mirrors, Winter of Summers, and Cult of Two. A poetry lover's delight with an additional 35 new pieces never before published in any Michael Faudet collection. An intricate exploration of love, heartbreak, seduction, self-empowerment, and sex that will spark your imagination and ignite the flames of passion that burn inside all of us.
Award-winning author Due's spine tingling tale of supernatural suspense "weaves a stronger net than ever" (Kirkus Reviews") as a woman searches for the inherited power that can save her hometown from the forces of evil.
Named a Best Book of Summer by Refinery29, Bustle, and PopSugar “The best rom-com of the season…overflowing with charm and heart.” —Bustle “The perfect Summer read—smart, funny, escapist, and bursting with charm.” —PopSugar In the tradition of Good in Bed and The Assistants comes a funny and smart comedy about a young matchmaker balancing her messy personal life and the demands of her eccentric clients. Sasha Goldberg has a lot going for her: a recent journalism degree from NYU, an apartment with her best friend Caroline, and a relationship that would be amazing if her finance-bro boyfriend Jonathan would ever look up from his BlackBerry. But when her dream career falls through, she uses her family’s darkest secret to land a job as a matchmaker for New York City’s elite at the dating service Bliss. Despite her inexperience, Sasha throws herself into her new career, trolling for catches on Tinder, coaching her clients through rejection, and dishing out dating advice to people twice her age. She sets up a TV exec who wanted kids five years ago, a forty-year-old baseball-loving virgin, and a consultant with a rigorous five-page checklist for her ideal match. Sasha hopes to find her clients The One, like she did. But when Jonathan betrays her, she spirals out of control—and right into the arms of a writer with a charming Southern drawl, who she had previously set up with one of her clients. He’s strictly off-limits, but with her relationship on the rocks, all bets are off. Fresh, sweet, and laugh-out-loud funny, Playing with Matches is the addictive story about dating in today’s swipe-heavy society, and a young woman trying to find her own place in the world.
A contemporary American masterpiece about music, race, an unforgettable man, and an unreal America during the Civil War era At the heart of this remarkable novel is Thomas Greene Wiggins, a nineteenth-century slave and improbable musical genius who performed under the name Blind Tom. Song of the Shank opens in 1866 as Tom and his guardian, Eliza Bethune, struggle to adjust to their fashionable apartment in the city in the aftermath of riots that had driven them away a few years before. But soon a stranger arrives from the mysterious island of Edgemere—inhabited solely by African settlers and black refugees from the war and riots—who intends to reunite Tom with his now-liberated mother. As the novel ranges from Tom's boyhood to the heights of his performing career, the inscrutable savant is buffeted by opportunistic teachers and crooked managers, crackpot healers and militant prophets. In his symphonic novel, Jeffery Renard Allen blends history and fantastical invention to bring to life a radical cipher, a man who profoundly changes all who encounter him.
