Inspired by Jami Attenberg's wildly popular literary movement #1000WordsofSummer, this writer's guide features encouraging essays on creativity, productivity, and writing from acclaimed authors including Roxane Gay, Lauren Groff, Celeste Ng, Meg Wolitzer, and Carmen Maria Machado.

In 2018, novelist Jami Attenberg, faced with a looming deadline, needed writing inspiration. Using a bootcamp model, she and a friend set out to write one thousand words daily for two weeks straight. They opened this practice to Attenberg's online community and soon hundreds then thousands of people started using the #1000WordsofSummer hashtag to track their work and support one another. What began as a simple challenge between two friends has become a literary movement—write 1,000 words per day without judgment, or bias, or concerns about writer's block, and see what comes of it.

1000 Words is the book-length extension of this movement. It is about becoming—and staying—motivated, discovering yourself and your creative desires, and approaching your craft from a new direction. It features advice from more than fifty well-known writers, including New York Times bestsellers, Pulitzer Prize winners, and stars of the literary world. Framing these letters are words of wisdom and encouragement, plus specific strategies, from Attenberg on how to carve out a creative path for yourself all year round. Paired with vibrant word art illustrations, 1000 Words is an accessible and motivational craft book that allows you to open any page and get a quick and fulfilling hit of inspiration.

A luxury train speeding towards Moscow and a date with destiny.

A CIA plane downed in the jungles of the Golden Triangle.

A Nazi hoard entombed in the remote mountains of South-West Poland.

A missing treasure, the eighth wonder of the world, lost for seven decades.

One Russian magnate's dream of restoring a nation to greatness has set in motion a chain of events which will take the world to the brink of chaos. Only Frances Coffey, the CIA's most legendary spymaster, can prevent it. But to do so, she needs someone special. Enter Argylle, a troubled agent with a tarnished past who may just have the skills to take on one of the most powerful men in the world. If only he can save himself first...

From the celebrated New York Times bestselling author of Such a Fun Age comes a fresh and provocative story about a residential assistant and her messy entanglement with a professor and three unruly students.

It's 2017 at the University of Arkansas. Millie Cousins, a senior resident assistant, wants to graduate, get a job, and buy a house. So when Agatha Paul, a visiting professor and writer, offers Millie an easy yet unusual opportunity, she jumps at the chance. But Millie's starry-eyed hustle becomes jeopardized by odd new friends, vengeful dorm pranks, and illicit intrigue. A fresh and intimate portrait of desire, consumption, and reckless abandon, Come & Get It is a tension-filled story about money, indiscretion, and bad behavior.

My Friends is a luminous novel that delves into the themes of friendship, family, and the inconceivable realities of exile. Hisham Matar, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Return, presents readers with an evocative exploration of the illusions of time, suggesting that despite our belief in permanence, change is the only constant.

The narrative unfolds with Khaled, a young boy in Benghazi, who is profoundly impacted by a short story he hears on the radio—a tale of a man being devoured by a cat. The story's author, Hosam Zowa, becomes an obsession for Khaled, propelling him on a transformative journey from his home to the intellectual pursuits at the University of Edinburgh.

As Khaled immerses himself in an open society vastly different from his Libyan roots, he begins to evolve. His involvement in a protest against the Qaddafi regime in London ends in catastrophe, leaving him severely injured and stranded in England as an exile. The risks of even communicating with his family back home are insurmountable.

An unexpected meeting with Hosam Zowa ushers Khaled into a profound friendship that sustains him and eventually compels him to face the harrowing choices between revolution and safety, family and exile, as the Arab Spring takes hold. My Friends is a poignant reflection on the nature of relationships and the ways time can strengthen or fray the bonds we hold dear.

Jill McCorkle, author of the New York Times bestseller Life After Life and the widely acclaimed Hieroglyphics, delivers another breathtaking collection of stories that take an intimate look at the moments when a person's life changes forever. Old Crimes: Stories takes readers deep into the lives of characters who hold their secrets and misdeeds close, even as the past continues to reverberate over time and across generations.

And despite the characters' yearnings for connection, they can't seem to tell the whole truth. In "Low Tones," a woman uses her hearing impairment as a way to guard herself from her husband's commentary. In "Lineman," a telephone lineman tries to keep his family close as he feels himself pushed aside in a digital world. The young couple in "Confessional" buys a confessional for fun, only to discover the cost of honesty. Profoundly moving and unforgettable, the stories in Jill McCorkle's new collection reveal why she has long been considered a master of the form.

Each story reads like a compact, brilliantly condensed novel, probing lives full of great intensity, of longing and affection, of deep regret, and of the inability to ever forget an old crime.

A wondrous, tender novel about a young girl grappling with her role in a tragic loss—and attempting to reshape the narrative of her life—from PEN/Faulkner Award nominee Claire Oshetsky.

Margaret Murphy is a weaver of fantastic tales, growing up in a world where the truth is too much for one little girl to endure. Her first memory is of the day her friend Agnes died.

No one blames Margaret. Not in so many words. Her mother insists to everyone who will listen that her daughter never even left the house that day. Left alone to make sense of tragedy, Margaret wills herself to forget these unbearable memories, replacing them with imagined stories full of faith and magic—that always end happily.

Enter Poor Deer: a strange and formidable creature who winds her way uninvited into Margaret’s made-up tales. Poor Deer will not rest until Margaret faces the truth about her past and atones for her role in Agnes’s death.

Heartrending, hopeful, and boldly imagined, Poor Deer explores the journey toward understanding the children we once were and the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of life’s most difficult moments.

The Atlas Complex marks the much-anticipated, heart-shattering conclusion in Olivie Blake's trilogy that began with the New York Times bestselling phenomenon, The Atlas Six. Only the extraordinary are chosen. Only the cunning survive.

An explosive return to the library leaves the six Alexandrians vulnerable to the lethal terms of their recruitment. Old alliances quickly fracture as the initiates take opposing strategies as to how to deal with the deadly bargain they have so far failed to uphold. Those who remain with the archives wrestle with the ethics of their astronomical abilities, while elsewhere, an unlikely pair from the Society cohort partner to influence politics on a global stage.

And still the outside world mobilizes to destroy them, while the Caretaker himself, Atlas Blakely, may yet succeed with a plan foreseen to have world-ending stakes. It’s a race to survive as the six Society recruits are faced with the question of what they're willing to betray for limitless power—and who will be destroyed along the way.

Renowned journalist and author Elizabeth Flock delves into a topic that many shy away from, challenging our notions about the role and necessity of female-led violence in opposing systems that are fundamentally against women. The Furies: Women, Vengeance, And Justice is a profound inquiry into the lives of three women who, facing failure from the very institutions designed to safeguard them—government, police, courts—resorted to violence to reclaim power, safety, and freedom.

The book presents immersive narratives of Brittany Smith, a young woman from Stevenson, Alabama, who, after claiming to have killed a man in self-defense against rape, was denied protection by the Stand-Your-Ground law; Angoori Dahariya, who leads a gang in Uttar Pradesh, India, avenging victims of domestic abuse; and Cicek Mustafa Zibo, a member of an all-female militia that confronted ISIS in Syria.

Through Flock's compelling prose and extensive on-the-ground research, this work explores the nuances of whether women's safety can ever be fully ensured without the use of force. It asks hard-hitting questions about the effectiveness of vengeance, the potential for creating lasting change within misogynistic and paternalistic systems, and the vision of societies where women wield real power.

The Furies ignites a conversation about gender equality, power dynamics, and the celebrated yet complex legacy of women who fight back.

When Ruby McTavish Callahan Woodward Miller Kenmore dies, she's not only North Carolina's richest woman, she's also its most notorious. The victim of a famous kidnapping as a child and a widow four times over, Ruby ruled the tiny town of Tavistock from Ashby House, her family's estate high in the Blue Ridge mountains.

In the aftermath of her death, that estate—along with a nine-figure fortune and the complicated legacy of being a McTavish—pass to her adopted son, Camden.

But to everyone's surprise, Cam wants little to do with the house or the money—and even less to do with the surviving McTavishes. Instead, he rejects his inheritance, settling into a normal life as an English teacher in Colorado and marrying Jules, a woman just as eager to escape her own messy past.

Ten years later, Camden is a McTavish in name only, but a summons in the wake of his uncle's death brings him and Jules back into the family fold at Ashby House. Its views are just as stunning as ever, its rooms just as elegant, but coming home reminds Cam why he was so quick to leave in the first place.

Jules, however, has other ideas, and the more she learns about Cam's estranged family—and the twisted secrets they keep—the more determined she is for her husband to claim everything Ruby once intended for him to have.

But Ruby's plans were always more complicated than they appeared. As Ashby House tightens its grip on Jules and Camden, questions about the infamous heiress come to light. Was there any truth to the persistent rumors following her disappearance as a girl? What really happened to those four husbands, who all died under mysterious circumstances? And why did she adopt Cam in the first place? Soon, Jules and Cam realize that an inheritance can entail far more than what's written in a will—and that the bonds of family stretch far beyond the grave.

A master of rural noir returns with a fierce, mesmerizing novel about exceptional women and the soul of a small town.

On an island in the Great Massasauga Swamp—an area known as “The Waters” to the residents of nearby Whiteheart, Michigan—herbalist Hermine “Herself” Zook has healed the local women of their ailments for generations. As stubborn as her tonics are powerful, Herself inspires reverence and fear in the people of Whiteheart, and even in her own three daughters. The youngest, beautiful and inscrutable Rose Thorn, has left her own daughter, eleven-year-old Dorothy “Donkey” Zook, to grow up wild.

Donkey spends her days searching for truths in the lush landscape and in her math books, waiting for her wayward mother and longing for a father, unaware that family secrets, passionate love, and violent men will flood through the swamp and upend her idyllic childhood.

With a “ruthless and precise eye for the details of the physical world” (New York Times Book Review), Bonnie Jo Campbell presents an elegant antidote to the dark side of masculinity, celebrating the resilience of nature and the brutality and sweetness of rural life.

Evie Porter has everything a nice, Southern girl could want: a perfect, doting boyfriend, a house with a white picket fence and a garden, a fancy group of friends. The only catch: Evie Porter doesn’t exist.

The identity comes to Evie Porter. Once she’s given a name and location by her mysterious boss Mr. Smith, she learns everything there is to know about the town and the people in it. Then the target: Ryan Sumner. The last piece of the puzzle is the job.

Evie isn’t privy to Mr. Smith’s real identity, but she knows this job will be different. Ryan has gotten under her skin, and she’s starting to envision a different sort of life for herself. But Evie can’t make any mistakes--especially after what happened last time.

Because the one thing she’s worked her entire life to keep clean, the one identity she could always go back to—her real identity—just walked right into this town. Evie Porter must stay one step ahead of her past while making sure there’s still a future in front of her. The stakes couldn't be higher--but then, Evie has always liked a challenge...

A New York City fairy tale about two sisters that fall under the spell of an underworld cabaret troupe that might be a dangerous cult—but one that makes the materialist world left in its wake feel like a sinister cult itself.

Rose has come a long way. Raised—and often neglected—by a wayward mother in New York City’s chaotic bohemia, Rose has finally built the life she’s always wanted: a good job at a self-help startup, a clean apartment, an engagement to a stable if self-satisfied tech CEO who shares her faith in human potential, hard work, and the sacrifice of childish dreams.

Rose’s sister Cecilia, on the other hand, never grew up. Irresponsible and impetuous, prone to jetting off to a European monastery one month and a falcon rescue the next, Cecilia has spent her life in pursuit of fairy-tale narratives of transcendence and true love—grand ideas Rose knows never work out in the real world. When Cecilia declares she’s come home to New York for good, following the ending of a whirlwind marriage, Rose hopes Cecilia might finally be ready to face adulthood: compromises and all.

But then Cecilia gets involved with the Avalon: a cultish-sounding cabaret troupe—one that appears only at night, on a mysterious red boat that travels New York’s waterways—and soon vanishes: one of a growing number of suspicious disappearances among the city’s lost and loneliest souls. The only way Rose can find Cecilia is by tracking down the Avalon herself.

But as Rose gets closer to solving the mystery of what happened to her sister, the Avalon works its magic on her, too. And the deeper she goes into the Avalon’s underworld, the more she begins to question everything she knows about her own life, and whether she’s willing to leave the real world behind.

It's 1990 and seventeen-year-old Marley West is blazing into the river valley town of Mercury, Pennsylvania. A perpetual loner, she seeks a place at someone's table and a family of her own. The first thing she sees when she arrives in town is three men standing on a rooftop. Their silhouettes blot out the sun.

The Joseph brothers become Marley's whole world before she can blink. Soon, she is young wife to one, The One Who Got Away to another, and adopted mother to them all. As their own mother fades away and their roofing business crumbles under the weight of their unwieldy father’s inflated ego, Marley steps in to shepherd these unruly men.

Years later, an eerie discovery in the church attic causes old wounds to resurface and suddenly the family's survival hangs in the balance. With Marley as their light, the Joseph brothers must decide whether they can save the family they've always known—or whether together they can build something stronger in its place.

This is definitely not a ghost story.

But for a while after you’re gone, I see you everywhere. Every ragged young person sitting huddled on a pavement, every stretched-out body under cardboard in a shop doorway. Two parents stand by powerlessly as their only child seems intent on destroying herself.

As the mother—a novelist—attempts to understand her daughter, she finds herself revisiting her own uneasy, unresolved relationship with her mother. Weaving between childhoods past and present, laced with temptation and betrayal, Nonfiction is an unflinching account of a mother, daughter, wife, and author reckoning with the world around her. But can a writer ever be trusted with the truth of her own story?

Clear-eyed, lacerating, and fearless, Julie Myerson’s A Novel explores maternal love as an emotional foundation to both crave and fear. A hauntingly beautiful and deeply moving love letter from a mother to a daughter, this is a tale of damage and addiction, recovery and creativity, compassion and love.

A twisty debut exploring the dark side of true crime fandom and the blurry lines of female friendship, perfect for fans of Gillian Flynn, My Favorite Murder, and Fleabag

Conspiracy theories from Reddit seduce a disaster-prone woman into an obsession with solving her older sister's cold-case disappearance

Ten years ago, Theodora "Teddy" Angstrom's older sister, Angie, went missing. Her case remains unsolved. Now Teddy's father, Mark, has killed himself. Unbeknownst to Mark's family, he had been active in a Reddit community fixated on Angie, and Teddy can't help but fall down the same rabbit hole.

Teddy's investigation quickly gets her in hot water with her gun-nut boyfriend, her long-lost half brother, and her colleagues at the prestigious high school where she teaches English. Further complicating matters is Teddy's growing obsession with Mickey, a charming amateur sleuth who is eerily keen on helping her solve the case.

Bewitched by Mickey, Teddy begins to lose her moral compass. As she struggles to reconcile new information with old memories, her erratic behavior reaches a fever pitch, but she won't stop until she finds Angie—or destroys herself in the process.

A biting critique of the internet's voyeurism, Rabbit Hole is an outrageous and heart-wrenching character study of a mind twisted by grief—and a page-turning mystery that's as addictive as a late-night Reddit binge.

In present-day Greece, deep in an ancient forest, lives a family: Irini, a musician, who teaches children to read and play music; her husband, Tasso, who paints pictures of the forest, his greatest muse; and Chara, their young daughter, whose name means joy. On the fateful day that will forever alter the trajectory of their lives, flames chase fleeing birds across the sky. The wildfire that will consume their home, and their lives as they know it, races toward them.

Months later, as the village tries to rebuild, Irini stumbles upon the man who started the fire, a land speculator who had intended only a small, controlled burn to clear forestland to build on but instead ignited a catastrophe. He is dying, although the cause is unclear, and in her anger at all he took from them, Irini makes a split-second decision that will haunt her.

As the local police investigate the suspicious death, Tasso mourns his father, who has not been seen since before the fire. Tasso's hands were burnt in the flames, leaving him unable to paint, and he struggles to cope with the overwhelming loss of his artistic voice and his beloved forest. Only his young daughter, who wants to repair the damage that's been done, gives him hope for the future.

Gorgeously written, sweeping in scope and intimate in tone, The Book of Fire is a masterful work about the search for meaning in the wake of tragedy, as well as the universal ties that bind people together, and to the land that they call home.

A spellbinding, sweeping novel about a Malayan mother who becomes an unlikely spy for the invading Japanese forces during WWII—and the shocking consequences that rain upon her community and family.

Malaya, 1945. Cecily Alcantara's family is in terrible danger: her fifteen-year-old son, Abel, has disappeared, and her youngest daughter, Jasmin, is confined in a basement to prevent being pressed into service at the comfort stations. Her eldest daughter Jujube, who works at a tea house frequented by drunk Japanese soldiers, becomes angrier by the day.

Cecily knows two things: that this is all her fault; and that her family must never learn the truth.

A decade prior, Cecily had been desperate to be more than a housewife to a low-level bureaucrat in British-colonized Malaya. A chance meeting with the charismatic General Fuijwara lured her into a life of espionage, pursuing dreams of an 'Asia for Asians.' Instead, Cecily helped usher in an even more brutal occupation by the Japanese. Ten years later as the war reaches its apex, her actions have caught up with her. Now her family is on the brink of destruction—and she will do anything to save them.

Spanning years of pain and triumph, told from the perspectives of four unforgettable characters, The Storm We Made is a dazzling saga about the horrors of war; the fraught relationships between the colonized and their oppressors, and the ambiguity of right and wrong when survival is at stake.

This Plague of Souls marks the return of Mike McCormack, the Booker-listed author of the literary sensation Solar Bones. In this terse metaphysical thriller, we follow the story of Nealon, a man stepping back into the world after a stint in prison, only to find his home devoid of warmth, light, and the presence of his family. As if existence itself has chosen to ignore or erase him, Nealon is left to grapple with the void.

However, mysterious calls from a stranger claiming to know the fate of his missing loved ones set Nealon on a path of discovery. A meeting is arranged against the backdrop of a looming terrorist attack, where Nealon engages in a conversation riddled with hidden truths and deliberate omissions. This verbal chess match takes him on a journey through his past, his childhood, and into the heart of international crimes committed in the name of revenge against a world deemed beyond redemption.

McCormack weaves a brooding exploration of the ties that bind rural Ireland to the atrocities of the 21st century. This narrative offers a sharp portrayal of a young family's struggle and a relentless probe into our responsibilities towards our kin and the wider world.