The author of the controversial novel, "The Cay", Taylor is a WWII veteran who worked as a reporter and as a screenwriter for film and television. Taylor carefully describes how "The Cay" was written and how he responded to the accusation that he'd written a racist novel.

The ultimate guide to reading and writing fiction, with useful creative exercises and fascinating analyses of great plots—from Plato and Tolstoy to The Matrix and Toy Story. The bestselling author of The End of Mr. Y shows you how to unlock any narrative and create your own. Filled with creative exercises, structures, and charts, this creative writing manual breaks down the fiction writing process and demonstrates that everyone has material to write about—whether they believe it or not. Have you ever had your heart broken, or broken someone else’s heart? Have you ever won an argument but later realized you were wrong? Have you ever tripped in public or spilled wine on someone else’s carpet? Monkeys with Typewriters is an ode to the secret power of stories, and a guide to cracking those powers open. As a bestselling author, Thomas may appear as a naturally gifted writer. However, for Thomas, fiction unlocked itself only once she recognized the importance of an author’s individual experience and one’s willingness to ask questions, not simply provide solutions. She deems the communication of one’s humanity as the key to making a piece relatable, and Thomas does nothing less in her own work. With startling and original insights into how we construct stories, Monkeys with Typewriters is a creative writing book like no other. It will show you how to not only write, but also to a finer degree, how to read.

“Typewriter expert and collector Anthony Casillo presents a visual homage to the device that revolutionized correspondence” (The Florida Times-Union). From the creation of the QWERTY keyboard to the world’s first portable typing machine, this handsome collection is a visual homage to the golden age of the typewriter. From the world’s first commercially successful typewriter—the Sholes & Glidden Type Writer of 1874—to the iconic electric models of the 1960s, eighty vintage devices are profiled in elegant photographs and fascinating text that highlights the design modifications, intricate details, and peculiar quirks that make each typewriter unique. From functional advances like noiseless machines to luxurious details such as mahogany covers and inlaid mother-of-pearl, a century of design innovation and experimentation is charted in these pages. Packed with visuals and rich with history, Typewriters is the essential story of a writing invention that changed the world. Includes a foreword by Tom Hanks Praise for Typewriters “A Love Letter to Vintage Typewriters.” —Wall Street Journal “This is sure to delight typewriter lovers and those interested in machine or design history.” —Library Journal

The connoisseur's guide to the typewriter, entertaining and practical What do thousands of kids, makers, poets, artists, steampunks, hipsters, activists, and musicians have in common? They love typewriters—the magical, mechanical contraptions that are enjoying a surprising second life in the 21st century, striking a blow for self-reliance, privacy, and coherence against dependency, surveillance, and disintegration. The Typewriter Revolution documents the movement and provides practical advice on how to choose a typewriter, how to care for it, and what to do with it—from National Novel Writing Month to letter-writing socials, from type-ins to typewritten blogs, from custom-painted typewriters to typewriter tattoos. It celebrates the unique quality of everything typewriter, fully-illustrated with vintage photographs, postcards, manuals, and more.

A collection of seventeen wonderful short stories showing that the legendary Tom Hanks is as talented a writer as he is an actor. “Reading Tom Hanks's Uncommon Type is like finding out that Alice Munro is also the greatest actress of our time.” —Ann Patchett, bestselling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Dutch House A gentle Eastern European immigrant arrives in New York City after his family and his life have been torn apart by his country's civil war. A man who loves to bowl rolls a perfect game--and then another and then another and then many more in a row until he winds up ESPN's newest celebrity, and he must decide if the combination of perfection and celebrity has ruined the thing he loves. An eccentric billionaire and his faithful executive assistant venture into America looking for acquisitions and discover a down and out motel, romance, and a bit of real life. These are just some of the tales Tom Hanks tells in this first collection of his short stories. They are surprising, intelligent, heartwarming, and, for the millions and millions of Tom Hanks fans, an absolute must-have!

A collection of confessional, hilarious, heartbreaking notes written anonymously on a public typewriter for fans of PostSecret and Other People's Love Letters. When Michael Gustafson and his wife Hilary opened Literati Bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan, they put out a typewriter for anyone to use. They had no idea what to expect. Would people ask metaphysical questions? Write mean things? Pour their souls onto the page? Yes, no, and did they ever. Every day, people of all ages sit down at the public typewriter. Children perch atop grandparents' knees, both sets of hands hovering above the metal keys: I LOVE YOU. Others walk in alone on Friday nights and confess their hopes: I will find someone someday. And some leave funny asides for the next person who sits down: I dislike people, misanthropes, irony, and ellipses ... and lists too. In Notes From the Public Typewriter Michael and designer Oliver Uberti have combined their favorite notes with essays and photos to create an ode to community and the written word that will surprise, delight, and inspire.

From Susan Wittig Albert, the New York Times bestselling author of A Plain Vanilla Murder, comes a tightly crafted novel that juxtaposes the disappearance of a rare, remarkably illustrated 18th-century herbal with the true and all-too-human story of its gifted creator, Elizabeth Blackwell. ​Herbalist China Bayles’ latest adventure takes her to the mountains of North Carolina, where her friend Dorothea Harper serves as the director and curator of the Hemlock House Library, a priceless collection of rare gardening books housed in a haunted mountainside mansion that once belonged to Sunny Carswell, a reclusive heiress. But the most valuable book—A Curious Herbal, created by Elizabeth Blackwell in the 1730s—is missing and Dorothea is under suspicion. China’s search for the thief takes on a new urgency when she discovers Miss Carswell’s bookseller, the victim of an attempted murder. Is his shooting connected with the theft? And there are other urgent questions: What is the Hemlock Guild? Who owns Socrates.com? Did Sunny Carswell really kill herself, or does her ghost have a different story to tell? And what is the real truth behind the many tantalizing mysteries of A Curious Herbal? Hemlock is a compelling mix of mystery and herb lore, past secrets and present sins, and characters who are as real as your friends and neighbors—in an absorbing novel that only Susan Wittig Albert could create.