“One of our most interesting and bold writers . . . [offers] a characteristically wild effort that defies genre distinctions, flits from the profound to the mundane with fierce intelligence and searching restlessness, and at its best, delves deep into the recesses of the human heart with courageous abandon . . . An intoxicating blend of humor and pathos.” —Priscilla Gilman, The Boston Globe “Eerie, profound, and daring, this is a book only the inimitable Hunt could write.” —Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire From Samantha Hunt, the award-winning author of The Dark Dark, comes The Unwritten Book, her first work of nonfiction, a genre-bending creation that explores the importance of books, the idea of haunting, and messages from beyond I carry each book I’ve ever read with me, just as I carry my dead—those things that aren’t really there, those things that shape everything I am. A genre-bending work of nonfiction, Samantha Hunt’s The Unwritten Book explores ghosts, ghost stories, and haunting, in the broadest sense of each. What is it to be haunted, to be a ghost, to die, to live, to read? Books are ghosts; reading is communion with the dead. Alcohol is a way of communing, too, as well as a way of dying. Each chapter gathers subjects that haunt: dead people, the forest, the towering library of all those books we’ll never have time to read or write. Hunt, like a mad crossword puzzler, looks for patterns and clues. Through literary criticism, history, family history, and memoir, inspired by W. G. Sebald, James Joyce, Ali Smith, Toni Morrison, William Faulkner, and many others, Hunt explores motherhood, hoarding, legacies of addiction, grief, how we insulate ourselves from the past, how we misinterpret the world. Nestled within her inquiry is a very special ghost book, an incomplete manuscript about people who can fly without wings, written by her father and found in his desk just days after he died. What secret messages might his work reveal? What wisdom might she distill from its unfinished pages? Hunt conveys a vivid and grateful life, one that comes from living closer to the dead and shedding fear for wonder. The Unwritten Book revels in the randomness, connectivity, and magic of everyday existence. And at its heart is the immense weight of love.

In the first book in a brilliant new fantasy series, books that aren't finished by their authors reside in the Library of the Unwritten in Hell, and it is up to the Librarian to track down any restless characters who emerge from those unfinished stories. Many years ago, Claire was named Head Librarian of the Unwritten Wing-- a neutral space in Hell where all the stories unfinished by their authors reside. Her job consists mainly of repairing and organizing books, but also of keeping an eye on restless stories that risk materializing as characters and escaping the library. When a Hero escapes from his book and goes in search of his author, Claire must track and capture him with the help of former muse and current assistant Brevity and nervous demon courier Leto. But what should have been a simple retrieval goes horrifyingly wrong when the terrifyingly angelic Ramiel attacks them, convinced that they hold the Devil's Bible. The text of the Devil's Bible is a powerful weapon in the power struggle between Heaven and Hell, so it falls to the librarians to find a book with the power to reshape the boundaries between Heaven, Hell….and Earth.

A priest changes the lives of an actress running from her past and a man hiding from his future in this heartfelt novel about loss and redemption. When someone wants to be lost, a home tucked among the Ten Thousand Islands off the Florida coast is a good place to live. Take a couple decent boats and a deep knowledge of fishing, and Sunday can get by without ever having to talk to another soul. It's a nice enough existence, until the one person who ties Sunday to the world of the living asks him for help. Father Steady Capri knows quite a bit about helping others. But he is afraid Katie Quinn's problems may be beyond his abilities. Katie is a world-famous actress with an all too familiar story. Fame seems to have driven her to self-destruct. Steady knows the true cause of her desire to end her life is buried too deeply for him to reach. But there is one person who still may be able to save her from herself: Sunday. He will show her an alternate escape, a way to write a new life, but Katie still must confront her past before she can find peace. Ultimately, Sunday will need to leave his secluded home and sacrifice the serenity he's found to help her.

One of the worlds foremost literary critics meditates upon seven books he long had in mind to write but never did. Massively erudite, the essays are also brave, unflinching, and wholly personal.

In this fantasy middle-grade novel, twelve-year-old storybook character Gracie Freeman lives in the real world but longs to discover what happened in the story she came from. When she finally gets her chance, the truth isn't what she was expecting.

»An Unwritten Novel« is a short story by Virginia Woolf, first published in 1920. VIRGINIA WOOLF [1882–1941] was an English author. With novels like Jacob’s Room [1922], Mrs Dalloway [1925], To the Lighthouse [1927], and Orlando [1928], she became a leading figure of modernism and is considered one of the most important English-language authors of the 20th century. As a thinker, with essays like A Room of One’s Own [1929], Woolf has influenced the women’s movement in many countries.