Literary icon Julia Alvarez returns with an inventive and emotional novel about storytelling itself that will be an instant classic.

Alma Cruz, the celebrated writer at the heart of The Cemetery of Untold Stories, doesn't want to end up like her friend, a novelist who fought so long and hard to finish a book that it threatened her sanity. So when Alma inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, her homeland, she has the beautiful idea of turning it into a place to bury her untold stories—literally. She creates a graveyard for the manuscript drafts and revisions, and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her.

Alma wants her characters to rest in peace. But they have other ideas, and the cemetery becomes a mysterious sanctuary for their true narratives. Filomena, a local woman hired as the groundskeeper, becomes a sympathetic listener as Alma's characters unspool their secret tales. Among them are Bienvenida, the abandoned second wife of dictator Rafael Trujillo, consigned to oblivion by history, and Manuel Cruz, a doctor who fought in the Dominican underground and escaped to the United States.

The characters defy their creator; they talk back to her and talk to one another behind her back, rewriting and revising themselves. The Cemetery of Untold Stories poses the question: Whose stories get to be told, and whose are buried? Finally, Alma finds the meaning she and her characters yearn for in the everlasting vitality of stories.

Readers of Isabel Allende's Violeta and Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead will devour Alvarez's extraordinary new novel about beauty and authenticity that reminds us the stories of our lives are never truly finished, even at the end.

An account of the emergence of creative nonfiction, written by the "godfather" of the genre. In the 1970s, Lee Gutkind, a leather-clad hippie motorcyclist and former public relations writer, fought his way into the academy. Then he took on his colleagues. His goal: to make creative nonfiction an accepted academic discipline, one as vital as poetry, drama, and fiction.

In this book, Gutkind tells the true story of how creative nonfiction became a leading genre for both readers and writers. Creative nonfiction--true stories enriched by relevant ideas, insights, and intimacies--offered liberation to writers, allowing them to push their work in freewheeling directions. The genre also opened doors to outsiders--doctors, lawyers, construction workers--who felt they had stories to tell about their lives and experiences.

Gutkind documents the evolution of the genre, discussing the lives and work of such practitioners as Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Rachel Carson, Upton Sinclair, Janet Malcolm, and Vivian Gornick. Gutkind also highlights the ethics of writing creative nonfiction, including how writers handle the distinctions between fact and fiction. Gutkind's book narrates the story not just of a genre but of the person who brought it to the forefront of the literary and journalistic world.

In a world where social media often masks authentic connection, Laura Tremaine's Share Your Stuff. I'll Go First. is a beacon for those seeking genuine relationships. This book isn't just a memoir; it's an invitation to engage in the lost art of personal storytelling.

With 10 thought-provoking questions, Tremaine leads the charge in sharing her own stories first—stories of failure, childhood, and relationships. These questions are more than mere icebreakers; they're a roadmap to deeper friendship and understanding.

As each chapter unfolds, readers are encouraged to ponder their own answers to these questions and to share them with friends. The magic of Share Your Stuff. I'll Go First. lies in its ability to foster connection, empathy, and openness. Reading this book feels like sitting down with a good friend over coffee, sharing laughs, tears, and those personal anecdotes that forge unbreakable bonds.

The summer that Nixon resigns, six teenagers at a summer camp for the arts become inseparable. Decades later the bond remains powerful, but so much else has changed.

In The Interestings, Wolitzer follows these characters from the height of youth through middle age, as their talents, fortunes, and degrees of satisfaction diverge. The kind of creativity that is rewarded at age fifteen is not always enough to propel someone through life at age thirty; not everyone can sustain, in adulthood, what seemed so special in adolescence. Jules Jacobson, an aspiring comic actress, eventually resigns herself to a more practical occupation and lifestyle. Her friend Jonah, a gifted musician, stops playing the guitar and becomes an engineer. But Ethan and Ash, Jules’s now-married best friends, become shockingly successful—true to their initial artistic dreams, with the wealth and access that allow those dreams to keep expanding.

The friendships endure and even prosper, but also underscore the differences in their fates, in what their talents have become and the shapes their lives have taken. Wide in scope, ambitious, and populated by complex characters who come together and apart in a changing New York City, The Interestings explores the meaning of talent; the nature of envy; the roles of class, art, money, and power; and how all of it can shift and tilt precipitously over the course of a friendship and a life.

In 1903, a student at a military academy sent some of his verses to a well-known Austrian poet, requesting an assessment of their value. The older artist, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926), replied to the novice in this series of letters — an amazing archive of remarkable insights into the ideas behind Rilke's greatest poetry. The ten letters reproduced here were written during an important stage in Rilke's artistic development, and they contain many of the themes that later appeared in his best works. The poet himself afterwards stated that his letters contained part of his creative genius, making this volume essential reading for scholars, poetry lovers, and anyone with an interest in Rilke, German poetry, or the creative impulse.

The fables of Aesop have become one of the most enduring traditions of European culture, ever since they were first written down nearly two millennia ago. Aesop was reputedly a tongue-tied slave who miraculously received the power of speech; from his legendary storytelling came the collections of prose and verse fables scattered throughout Greek and Roman literature.

First published in English by Caxton in 1484, the fables and their morals continue to charm modern readers: who does not know the story of the tortoise and the hare, or the boy who cried wolf?