A page-turning, Kafkaesque dark comedy in brilliant retro style, this graphic novel watches one man try to keep it together while everything falls apart. Upon the publication of his latest novel, G. H. Fretwell, a minor English writer, embarks on a book tour to promote it. Nothing is going according to plan, and his trip gradually turns into a nightmare. But now the police want to ask him some questions about a mysterious disappearance, and it seems that Fretwell's troubles are only just beginning... In his first book for adults in many years, acclaimed cartoonist Andi Watson evokes all the anxieties felt by every writer and compresses them into a comedic gem of a book. Witty, surreal, and sharply observant, The Book Tour offers a captivating lesson in letting go.

What does it mean to be a novelist in the 21st century?How do you write a novel? What do you do with it once it's finished? And how do you get a career as a novelist off the ground? Most honest novelists will attribute some combination of talent, hard work and luck in their success, but each of these qualities can be nurtured with a little guidance.In the vein of E.M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel and John Gardner's On Becoming a Novelist, Jon Sealy shares his own story of how fiction works, from writing the first draft to building a multi-book career. Part memoir, part craft analysis, this book breaks apart the elements of fiction and explores one writer's path from student to professional.With clear and honest insight, So You Want to be a Novelist offers aspiring writers a toolkit for understanding fiction-and serves as both guide and warning for the road ahead.

Arranged in chronological order, the novelist's lives are opinionated, informative, frequently funny and often shocking. Professor Sutherland's authors come from all over the world; their writings illustrate every kind of fiction from gothic, penny dreadfuls and pornography to fantasy, romance and high literature. The book shows the changing forms of the genre, and how the aspirations of authors to divert and sometimes to educate their readers, has in some respects radically changed over the centuries, and in others - such as their interest in sex and relationships - remained remarkably constant.

From Steve Israel, the Congressman-turned-novelist who writes “in the full-tilt style of Carl Hiaasen” (The Washington Post), a comic tale of the mighty firearm industry, a small Long Island town, and Washington politics: “Congress should pass a law making Big Guns mandatory reading for themselves” (Nelson DeMille). When Chicago’s Mayor Michael Rodriguez starts a national campaign to ban handguns from America’s cities, towns, and villages, Otis Cogsworth, the wealthy chairman and CEO of a huge arms company in Asabogue, Long Island, is worried. In response, he and lobbyist Sunny McCarthy convince an Arkansas congressman to introduce federal legislation mandating that every American must own a firearm. Events soon escalate. Asabogue’s Mayor Lois Leibowitz passes an ordinance to ban guns in the town—right in Otis Cogsworth’s backyard. Otis retaliates by orchestrating a recall election against Lois and Jack Steele, a rich town resident, runs against her. Even though the election is for the mayor of a small village on Long Island, Steele brings in the big guns of American politics to defeat Lois. Soon, thousands of pro-gun and anti-gun partisans descend on Asabogue, and the bucolic town becomes a tinderbox. Meanwhile, Washington politicians in both parties are caught between a mighty gun lobby and the absurdity of requiring that every American, with waivers for children under age four, carry a gun. What ensues is a discomfiting, hilarious indictment of the state of American politics. “New York congressman-turned-novelist Steve Israel delivers a second brilliant political satire” (Booklist, starred review). “An entertaining satire” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), Big Guns is “a wonderfully irreverent satire about the fractured and fractious American political and lobbying system…a rollicking comedic trip” (Publishers Weekly).

A razor - sharp evisceration of celebrity culture and literary fame, How I Became a Famous Novelist is a satirical novel masquerading as a tell - all memoir. Sick of life as he knows it, Pete Tarslaw sets out to write a bestselling novel, armed with a formula for success cobbled together from previous bestsellers: he abandons truth, relies heavily on lyrical prose, creates a club with a mysterious mission, includes a murder and invokes ''confusing sadness'' at the end. Once the sales rankings for his novel The Tornado Ashes Club start their meteoric rise - thanks to a Christian evangelist, a recovering teen starlet and Law and Order: Criminal Intent - Tarslaw's inevitable decline looms, and his fall from grace will be nothing short of spectacular. How I Became a Famous Novelist is the hilarious tale of how Pete Tarslaw's ''pile of garbage'' became the most talked about, read, admired and reviled novel in America. It will change everything you think you know - about literature, appearance, truth, beauty, and those people out there who still care about books.

Whether you're a regular globe-trotter or an armchair traveller, these 80 works conjure up the spirit of place for locations on every continent.

In Temporary, a young woman’s workplace is the size of the world. She fills increasingly bizarre placements in search of steadiness, connection, and something, at last, to call her own. Whether it’s shining an endless closet of shoes, swabbing the deck of a pirate ship, assisting an assassin, or filling in for the Chairman of the Board, for the mythical Temporary, “there is nothing more personal than doing your job.” This riveting quest, at once hilarious and profound, will resonate with anyone who has ever done their best at work, even when the work is only temporary.

The world’s most beloved mystery writers celebrate their favorite mystery novels in this gorgeously wrought collection, featuring essays by Michael Connelly, Kathy Reichs, Ian Rankin, and more. In the most ambitious anthology of its kind, the world’s leading mystery writers come together to champion the greatest mystery novels ever written. In a series of personal essays that reveal as much about the authors and their own work as they do about the books that they love, over a hundred authors from twenty countries have created a guide that will be indispensable for generations of readers and writers. From Agatha Christie to Lee Child, from Edgar Allan Poe to P. D. James, from Sherlock Holmes to Hannibal Lecter and Philip Marlowe to Lord Peter Wimsey, Books to Die For brings together the best of the mystery world for a feast of reading pleasure, a treasure trove for those new to the genre and for those who believe that there is nothing new left to discover. This is the one essential book for every reader who has ever finished a mystery novel and thought…I want more!

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Spectacular . . . [Téa Obreht] spins a tale of such marvel and magic in a literary voice so enchanting that the mesmerized reader wants her never to stop.”—Entertainment Weekly Look for Téa Obreht’s second novel, Inland, now available. NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times • Entertainment Weekly • The Christian Science Monitor • The Kansas City Star • Library Journal Weaving a brilliant latticework of family legend, loss, and love, Téa Obreht, the youngest of The New Yorker’s twenty best American fiction writers under forty, has spun a timeless novel that will establish her as one of the most vibrant, original authors of her generation. In a Balkan country mending from war, Natalia, a young doctor, is compelled to unravel the mysterious circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather’s recent death. Searching for clues, she turns to his worn copy of The Jungle Book and the stories he told her of his encounters over the years with “the deathless man.” But most extraordinary of all is the story her grandfather never told her—the legend of the tiger’s wife. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Wall Street Journal • O: The Oprah Magazine • The Economist • Vogue • Slate • Chicago Tribune • The Seattle Times • Dayton Daily News • Publishers Weekly • Alan Cheuse, NPR’s All Things Considered “Stunning . . . a richly textured and searing novel.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “[Obreht] has a talent for subtle plotting that eludes most writers twice her age, and her descriptive powers suggest a kind of channeled genius. . . . No novel [this year] has been more satisfying.”—The Wall Street Journal “Filled with astonishing immediacy and presence, fleshed out with detail that seems firsthand, The Tiger’s Wife is all the more remarkable for being the product not of observation but of imagination.”—The New York Times Book Review “That The Tiger’s Wife never slips entirely into magical realism is part of its magic. . . . Its graceful commingling of contemporary realism and village legend seems even more absorbing.”—The Washington Post