Years ago, on one of my first river rafting trips, a school teacher in the group gave me this advice: Always try to keep your oars dry. At the time, that made no sense to me at all, thinking I needed to keep my oars in the river so I could control the raft. With more experience, I began to notice how hard I was working to avoid rocks. I would power from one side of the river to the other, sometimes over adjusting and needing to back up a little. I eventually remembered the advice from the teacher about keeping my oars dry. I learned to look downriver and move to a safer position earlier. This technique allowed me to relax more and use the current to help me get around rocks and obstacles. As I gained experience, I did not have to row nearly as hard to stay with the flow. And guess what? My oars were not in the river near as much, in effect, keeping them dry. Since that time, I have looked for those simple, seemingly innocent comments that can cause us to ponder about what we are doing and why. My hope for this story is to help others unlock the power and rewards of pondering, in order to understand the why's of our life experiences.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the Booker Prize–winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December comes a literary master class on what makes great stories work and what they can tell us about ourselves—and our world today. LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, NPR, Time, San Francisco Chronicle, Esquire, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Town & Country, The Rumpus, Electric Lit, Thrillist, BookPage • “[A] worship song to writers and readers.”—Oprah Daily For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times. In his introduction, Saunders writes, “We’re going to enter seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn’t fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art—namely, to ask the big questions, questions like, How are we supposed to be living down here? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?” He approaches the stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. The process of writing, Saunders reminds us, is a technical craft, but also a way of training oneself to see the world with new openness and curiosity. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while reading, and of how the reading and writing of stories make genuine connection possible.

Lilly Gray Corbett loves living on Troublesome Creek, but she would much rather play with her best friend than watch her little brother and the twins. Her mama, Copper, is often gone helping to birth babies, and Lilly has to stay home. When Aunt Alice sends a note inviting her to visit in the city, Lilly is excited to go, and Copper reluctantly agrees to let her. Later, when they hear the news that the train crashed, Copper and her husband, John, rush to find out if their daughter is injured . . . or even alive.

This is a book about knowing God. It is for those for whom just believing (or not believing) is no longer enough. Through personal experience, anecdote and story, a priest shares an ancient, but neglected aspect of Christian prayer. Contemplation takes us into the depths of the present moment, the only reality there has ever been and so the only place where God can be found. It takes us at different times into mystical oneness with the All, into profound self-knowledge and reveals love in the midst of the world.

A collection of poems that provide a look at some of the animals, insects, and plants that are found in ponds, with accompanying information about each.

This inspirational tale follows the transformative journey of Ping, a frog in search of a new pond. Along the way he meets Owl, who shares his wisdom. Ping represents everyone who has encountered a setback, needs to take a risk, or is struggling with the challenges of change.