What If? is the first handbook for writers based on the idea that specific exercises are one of the most useful and provocative methods for mastering the art of writing fiction.With more than twenty-five years of experience teaching creative writing between them, Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter offer more than seventy-five exercises for both beginners and more experienced writers. These exercises are designed to develop and refine two basic skills: writing like a writer and, just a...

Becoming a widow is one of the most traumatic life events that a woman can experience. Yet, as this remarkable new collection reveals, each woman responds to that trauma differently. Here, forty-three widows tell their stories, in their own words.Some were widowed young, while others were married for decades. Some cared for their late partners through long terminal illnesses, while others lost their partners suddenly. Some had male partners, while others had female partners. Yet ea...

Novelist Anne Bernays and biographer Justin Kaplan -- both native New Yorkers -- came of age in the 1950s, when the pent-up energies of the Depression years and World War II were at flood tide. Written in two separate voices, Back Then is thecandid, anecdotal account of these two children of privilege -- one from New York's East Side, the other from the West Side -- pursuing careers in publishing and eventually leaving to write their own books.Infused with intelligence and charm, B...

Trophy House is an extraordinary and complex novel, at one level a romantic thriller, at another a deeply satisfying story about the disintegration of a marriage and the consequences for all concerned.It begins with the construction of a totally inappropriate and enormous house—a "trophy house"—which unexpectedly comes to threaten the tranquility of what appears to be one woman's perfect life and marriage.Dannie Faber has lots of r...

Dannie Faber has lots of reasons to feel blessed. A children’s book illustrator, she shares a loving marriage with Tom, a professor, with whom she divides her time between one of Boston’s finest suburbs and a beloved beach house in Truro, on Cape Cod. They have equally fortunate friends and a daughter, Beth, who has found success in Manhattan as a magazine editor. Suddenly Dannie’s fairy tale comes to an end. A rich newcomer to Truro builds a hideous “trophy house” down the beach from the ...

Walter Samson is a successful book editor in post–World War II New York. He has more than enough money, an interesting wife, two smart children, and reason to believe he's leading the good American life—until a chance meeting with Barry Rogers. Barry is blue-collar, handsome, single, and poor.Walter is instantly drawn to Barry and, despite the considerable risks, installs him in the Samson's three-story house on the Upper East Side, where the two men try to keep their amorous relat...

Internationally bestselling novelist and American icon Tom Robbins' legendary memoir—wild tales of his life and times, both at home and around the globe.Tom Robbins' warm, wise, and wonderfully weird novels—including Still Life with Woodpecker, Jitterbug Perfume, and Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates—provide an entryway into the frontier of his singular imagination. Madcap but sincere, pulsating with strong social and philosophical undercurrents, his irreverent...

Rediscover the modern classic that launched the career of the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Mrs. Everything and Big Summer with this beautiful anniversary edition of her “contemporary Cinderella tale told with intelligence, wit, and style” (Susan Isaacs, New York Times bestselling author).For twenty-eight years, things have been tripping along nicely for Cannie Shapiro. Sure, her mother has come charging out of the clos...

The first book in the inspiring New York Times bestselling series about an executive who loses everything he holds dear and embarks on a walk across America that changes his life forever.What would you do if you lost everything—your job, your home, and the love of your life—all at the same time? When it happens to Seattle ad executive Alan Christoffersen, he’s tempted by his darkest thoughts. Instead, he decides to take a walk. But not any ordinary walk. T...

In 1957, when a young Midwestern woman landed a job at The New Yorker, she didn’t expect to stay long at the reception desk. But stay she did, and for twenty-one years she had the best seat in the house. In addition to taking messages, she ran interference for jealous wives checking on adulterous husbands, drank with famous writers at famous watering holes throughout bohemian Greenwich Village, and was seduced, two-timed, and proposed to by a few of the magazine’s eccentric luminaries. Thi...

From scary to heartwarming and hilarious, an assortment of behind-the-scenes, true stories about life as an undertaker.From shoot-outs at funerals to dead men screaming and runaway corpses, undertakers have plenty of unusual stories to tell—and a special way of telling them.In this macabre and moving compilation, funeral directors across the country share their most embarrassing, jaw-dropping, irreverent, and deeply poignant stories about life at death’s do...