Tin House's Summer Reading brings you all the things you've come to expect from the acclaimed literary journal. Packed with thrilling fiction, introspective essays, and artful poetry, this issue is perfect company for an afternoon in the shade. Summer Reading 2015 features previously untranslated work from 2014 Nobel Prize winner Patrick Modiano on Paris and a timely essay from Lewis Hyde revisiting the 1964 murder of two young black men in Mississippi. In addition to these works by established authors, this issue also presents work from five New Voices in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Featuring fiction from: Jodi Angel, Smith Henderson, Greg Hrbek, Tara Ison, Patrick Modiano, Matthew Socia, and Sarah Elaine Smith Poetry by: Catherine Barnett, Cody Carvel, Diana M. Chien, Rita Gabis, Robert Duncan Gray, Kimiko Hahn, Ed Skoog, and Jenny Xie Nonfiction by: Mary Barnett, David Gessner, and Lewis Hyde Lost & Found: S. Shankar on Agnes Smedley, John Reed on André Gide, Jessica Handler on Berton Roueché, Jonathan Russell Clark on H.D., and Rachel Riederer on Barbara Grizzuti Harrison.

Whether on a picnic blanket or a porch swing, the fiction, nonfiction, and poetry in Tin House will help you while away the hours. Tin House is your literary companion for the dog days of Summer. Whether on a picnic blanket or a porch swing, the fiction, nonfiction, and poetry in Tin House will help you while away the hours. Featuring new work from Miller Oberman, Michael Dickman, and Malerie Willens.

“22 contributors explore a wide range of experiences” in this “illuminating, invaluable” anthology edited by the author of Female Chauvinist Pigs (Publishers Weekly). Writing an essay is like catching a wave, posits guest editor Ariel Levy. To catch a wave, you need skill and nerve, not just moving water. The writers featured in this volume are certainly full of nerve, and have crafted a wide range of pieces awash in a diversity of moods, voices, and stances. Leaving an abusive marriage, parting with a younger self, losing your sanity to Fitbit, and even saying goodbye to a beloved pair of pants are just some of the experience probed by essays that are unified in the daring of their creation. As Levy notes, Writing around an idea you think is worthwhile—an idea you suspect is an insight—requires real audacity.” The Best American Essays 2015 includes entries by Hilton Als, Roger Angell, Justin Cronin, Meghan Daum, Anthony Doerr, Margo Jefferson, David Sedaris, Zadie Smith, Rebecca Solnit and others.

Contains ten short fiction stories in which Greg Hrbek explores what it means to be human and inhuman.

The Writer's Notebook II offers aspiring authors sixteen insightful essays about the craft of writing by Tin House authors and summer workshop faculty members, including Aimee Bender, Steve Almond, Maggie Nelson, Karen Russell, Benjamin Percy, and others. The Writer's Notebook II continues in the tradition of The Writer's Notebook, featuring essays based on craft seminars from the Tin House Summer Writer's Workshop, as well as a variety of craft essays from Tin House magazine contributors and Tin House Books authors. The collection includes essays that not only examine important craft aspects such as humor, suspense, and research but that also explore creating fractured and nonrealist narratives and the role of dream in fiction. An engaging and enlightening read, The Writer's Notebook II is both a toolkit and an inspiration for any writer. The Writer’s Notebook II offers aspiring authors sixteen insightful essays about the craft of writing by Tin House authors and summer workshop faculty members, including Aimee Bender, Steve Almond, Maggie Nelson, Karen Russell, Benjamin Percy, and others.

Reeling Through Life: How I Learned to Live, Love, and Die at the Movies looks at how film shapes identity. Through ten cleverly constructed essays, Ison explores how a lifetime of movie-watching has, for better or worse, taught her how to navigate the world and how to grapple with issues of career, family, faith, illness, sex, and love. Cinema is a universal cultural experience, one that floods our senses with images and sounds, a powerful force that influences our perspective on the world around us. Ison discusses the universal aspects of film as she makes them personal, looking at how certain films across time shaped and molded who she has become. Drawing on a wide ranging catalog of films, both cult and classic, popular and art-house, Reeling Through Life examines how cinema shapes our views on how to make love, how to deal with mental illness, how to be Jewish, how to be a woman, how to be a drunk, and how to die with style. Rather than being a means of escape or object of mere entertainment, Ison posits that cinema is a more engaging form of art, a way to slip into other identities and inhabit other realities. A way to orient oneself into the world. Reeling Though Life is a compelling look at one popular art form and how it has influenced our identities in provocative and important ways.

A richly textured tapestry woven from undying love and deep-rooted guilt, The Hindenburg Crashes Nightly captures the intimacy and intensity of an emotionally and sexually trubulent relationship. In remarkably vivid and lyrical prose, award-winning novelist Greg Hrbek makes an astonishing debut with this story of two lovers bound by secrets from their shared past. It is the summer of 1974 and the solid world of ten-year-old Thomas Markham is crumbling after his mother dies giving birth to another son. Unable to turn to his grief-stricken father for comfort, Tom surrenders himself to the warm embrace of college-bound Lindsey Paris, who is all too familiar with pain, isolation and loneliness. This powerful bond unites them in a time of tragedy and links them through the years that lie ahead. Fifteen years later, Thomas, a promising claymation filmmaker in San Francisco, enters into an adulterous relationship with the now-married Lindsey-an affair that is the fulfillment of the love that Tom has always felt for her. In spite of their fierce pangs of guilt, neither one of them has the strength, or desire, to put an end to their liaison. But during their heated summer of love, Tom finds himself drawn to an exotic-looking and sexually voracious named Nile, Lindsey's former lover, and is encouraged in the new dalliance by Lindsey's unsuspecting husband Phillip. Swept up in a torrent of conflicting feelings, Tom's life comes to a head with the arrival of his runaway younger brother Matthew. As the chaotic teenager desperately attempts to make sense of his broken life, his fragile mental status threatens to unravel the skein of silence and lies surrounding his emotionally reclusive older brother. A literary tour de force, The Hindenburg Crashes Nightly takes the readers into the heart and soul of romantic need--its consequences, punishments and unexpected redemptions. This moving novel dares us to question our assumptions

At long last, Sarah Britton, called the “queen bee of the health blogs” by Bon Appétit, reveals 100 gorgeous, all-new plant-based recipes in her debut cookbook, inspired by her wildly popular blog. Every month, half a million readers—vegetarians, vegans, paleo followers, and gluten-free gourmets alike—flock to Sarah’s adaptable and accessible recipes that make powerfully healthy ingredients simply irresistible. My New Roots is the ultimate guide to revitalizing one’s health and palate, one delicious recipe at a time: no fad diets or gimmicks here. Whether readers are newcomers to natural foods or are already devotees, they will discover how easy it is to eat healthfully and happily when whole foods and plants are at the center of every plate.

The key principles of designing a pleasant, comfortable and healthy eco-home, with a foreword written by HRH The Prince of Wales, now King Charles III. Designing an eco-home is much more about working with your house's location and situation than relying on intrusive technology and hi-tech materials. With the soaring energy bills and the climate crisis, it is now more important than ever to invest in a home that is considerate of keeping heat in. In this handbook, architect Christopher Day draws on his extensive experience to explain the key principles of eco-home design, using common-sense methods. Packed full of practical information, it includes several case studies of eco-homes, reviewing (with hindsight) what worked well and what could have been better. There is also guidance on how to generate energy, upgrading old buildings, and site planning. With beautifully hand-drawn illustrations, Christopher explores how to use local topography, combined with landscaping, to improve your home's microclimate and keep your house dry and warm in the winter, and cool in the summer. There are also handy tips on how to minimise hidden environmental impacts, and ideas on ways to make your home a safe and healthy place, both emotionally and physically. The Eco-Home Design Guide is essential for anyone who wants to create a attractive, environmentally friendly home that is in harmony with its location.