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original essays
My Life in FranceMy Life in France is a delightful memoir of celebrated chef Julia Child's years in Paris, Marseille, and Provence that opens with Paul and Julia — a tall, wide-eyed girl from Pasadena who can't cook and doesn't speak a word of French — disembarking in Le Havre, and ends with the launching of the two "Mastering" cookbooks and Julia winning the heart of America as "The French Chef." Co-writer (and grandnephew of the Childs) Alex Prud'homme discusses how My Life in France came to be written in his original essay for Powells.com.
From "Timekeeper"
A few days ago, an old friend handed me a watch that no longer keeps time. It's plain looking, a timepiece from the 1970s, with a solid silver-plated body and a linked wristband. It has a blue face and white arms stopped at 12:04. The date is becoming Monday the 10th (of which month, and which year?). "It was Paul's," my friend said. "I don't know what to do with it. Maybe it will mean something to you." (read more)

Die with MeDie with Me marks the start of an original detective series in the style of "Prime Suspect" from Elena Forbes, a new talent from the U.K. In its starred review, Booklist declares that Forbes "renders crisp prose, a clever plot, and an unsettling portrait of a charismatic psychopath. She is definitely one to watch."
From "The Darker Side"
As a writer, I am always being asked: 'Where do your ideas come from?' Sadly, there is no simple answer. But when those moments of inspiration strike, as if from nowhere, often when I am in the oddest of places, it is one of the greatest excitements of my day... (read more)

Shooting WarShooting War, written by Anthony Lappe and illustrated by Dan Goldman, is an irreverent and unflinching graphic novel satirizing network news, the Iraq War, and the burgeoning "citizen journalism" movement that Rolling Stone magazine calls "a scary-smart take on what the horrors of the future may hold."
From "No One is Safe"
Shooting War is the story of an indie-media heartthrob named Jimmy Burns. The year is 2011, and the Brooklyn-based videoblogger gets his big break as he happens to be uploading a live rant in front a Starbucks when a suicide bomber blows the coffee joint to kingdom come... (read more)

From "Closing the Invisible Distance"
There was a constant thread of responsibility running through my creation of the visuals for Shooting War, a nagging need to do enough homework to make the war-torn streets of Baghdad in 2011 ring as true as possible... (read more)


The Darkest Evening of the YearDean Koontz fans will find much to salivate over at Powells.com. On the publication of the bestselling master of suspense's latest novel, The Darkest Evening of the Year ("the perfect book for thriller addicts," raves Publishers Weekly), we're pleased to present an exclusive video from the author, an original essay for Powells.com on the passing of Koontz's beloved golden retriever, Trixie, and an INK Q&A in which Koontz explains why it's hard for a writer to deliver an original novel each time, shares his passion for burnt toast, and more.
From "The Darkest Evening of the Year: My Ever-Smiling Muse and Guardian Spirit"
I knew a beautiful girl who endured two elbow surgeries and a spinal surgery without a single complaint or even one whimper, and who in fact smiled throughout her tribulations and was always in the highest of good spirits. She was quiet and extremely feminine, but she once stood up to a ferocious Rottweiler and sheerly by the power of her personality made it back down and submit to her... (read more)

Mating in Captivity"After more than twenty years as a couples therapist in New York City, I found myself asking the same questions over and over," writes Esther Perel. "Why does great sex so often fade for these couples? Why does good intimacy not guarantee good sex? Can we want what we already have?" In Mating in Captivity, Perel explores these issues and more, in a book Publishers Weekly calls "revelatory," offering today's estranged couples "a unique richness of experience."
From "Mating in Captivity"
There is nothing mysterious when two people in a couple cannot stand one another, and are not having sex. But what about the couples I meet in my practice every day? The ones who claim to love each other as much as ever, who describe relationships that are caring and loving, but they are not having sex — at least not with each other? (read more)

Mirage"At a molecular level, I embody the unlikely communion of the Middle East and the West," writes Nina Burleigh. "Psychologically, I grapple with this on levels I haven't even begun to examine." In Mirage, the author of The Stranger and the Statesman reveals the true story of the birth of Egyptology, witnessed through the experiences of Napoleon and his men who undertook the world's first archaeological dig in Egypt.
From "Scholars in the Land of the Prophet"
As I write these words in an office above midtown Manhattan, armed men are disembarking from black SUVs on the street down below. A helicopter beats overhead. It's just a Homeland Security exercise, another nail in the coffin of my long-dead sense of security. Farther downtown, there's a hole where 3,000 people died, murdered by fanatical practitioners of one of the world's three great religions... (read more)

Biting the Wax Tadpole"I know that in language — and in life — there's far more fun to be had in failure," writes Elizabeth Little. "Finally, after all these years, I've learned to stop worrying and love the wrong." Grammar fanatic Little shares all of the irresistible irregular verbs and evolutionary quirks that give languages their character in Biting the Wax Tadpole, a fully illustrated book that also includes funny, informative sidebars about classic cases of mistranslation (the literal translation of "Coca-Cola" into Chinese is "bite the wax tadpole").
From "Confessions of a Language Fanatic"
One of my earliest memories is from preschool. It was lunchtime, and they were serving orange drink. Not orange juice, but that super-saccharine milk-cartoned cafeteria beverage that passed for orange juice in the country's nutritionally deficient school districts. It was my favorite, and I was so eager to get to the beverage coolers and claim a carton of my own that my four-year-old legs started propelling me through the halls as fast as they could go... (read more)

What Hath God WroughtIn What Hath God Wrought, historian Daniel Walker Howe illuminates the period of American history from the Battle of New Orleans to the end of the Mexican-American War, an era when the United States expanded to the Pacific and won control over the richest part of the North American continent. In his original essay for Powells.com, Howe explains why he focused on the years between 1815 and 1848, and how the U.S. changed from "a third world country" into a "transcontinental major power."
From "What Hath God Wrought"
On the 24th of May, 1844, Professor Samuel F. B. Morse, seated amidst a hushed gathering of distinguished national leaders in the chambers of the United States Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., tapped out a message on a device of cogs and coiled wires:

W H A T H A T H G O D W R O U G H T

Forty miles away, in Baltimore, Morse's associate received the electric signals and telegraphed the message back... (read more)


Signed, Mata Hari In Murphy's new novel Signed, Mata Hari, the infamous Mata Hari narrates her own story while awaiting the verdict of her trial for espionage. Booklist calls it "a mesmerizing novel that creatively reimagines the life of one of the most notorious, and perhaps overvilified, women of all time."
From "A Good Author"
If you want to be a good author, respond to the request for an essay that you receive in order to promote your book. Sit and ponder at your desk, let the view of the field and the maples changing color distract you. Wonder whether the brown bear your son saw out that same window a few weeks ago will lumber by again, green froth by his jowls, keen on the apples that hang low from the branches... (read more)

On Deep History and the BrainIn his provocative original essay for Powells.com, Smail explores how our modern ideas about the history of humanity have changed — mainly for the better. In his new book, On Deep History and the Brain, Smail dissolves the logic of a beginning based on writing, civilization, or historical consciousness and offers a model for a history of humankind that escapes the continuing grip of the Judeo-Christian time frame.
From "When Does History Begin?"
Back when I was in grade school — I was born in 1961 — it was pretty clear that history began in 1492. We did cover the Native American peoples in our social studies classes, and since I grew up in Wisconsin this meant the Chippewa. But the Chippewa nation didn't exactly have a history. All they had was a collection of timeless customs, encapsulated in the frozen dioramas we went to see in the State Historical Society Museum in Madison... (read more)

The Hearts of Horses"Will it surprise you to learn that our mythic history of Western settlement has a dark side?" asks Molly Gloss. With an elegant sweetness and a pitch-perfect sense of Western life reminiscent of Annie Dillard, Gloss's novel The Hearts of Horses is a remarkable story about the connections between people and animals and how they touch one another in the most unexpected and profound ways ("[A]n acutely observed, often lyrical portrayal," raves Kirkus).
From "Desperado"
I've always been a reader prone to brief but intense passions. For a while, like most girls, I had a thing for horse and dog books. When I was in high school I read every book I could lay my hands on about Abraham Lincoln, and then I became similarly obsessed with Teddy Roosevelt. I went through a swashbuckler phase... (read more)

501 Minutes to ChristPoe Ballantine's second collection of personal essays, 501 Minutes to Christ, follows — and expands on — his acclaimed Things I Like about America. ("The essays are readable and entertaining and contain occasional moments of startling beauty and insight," says Library Journal.) In this original essay for Powells.com, Ballantine explains the difficulty of choosing one's subject matter: "Remember that when you choose a project, if it isn't rife with problems and dangerous propositions, it probably isn't worth the time."
From "501 Minutes to Christ"
I always try to speak about what's interesting to readers: homelessness, insanity, failed love, strange cities, odd jobs, illicit drugs, dreamers, long bus rides, the evasiveness of Beauty and God. I would also say coconut cream pie, but I pride myself on being honest. Once I knew a girl on welfare who was a master at French witchcraft. Her husband wanted to kill me. Wherever I go I am assigned a schizophrenic... (read more)

Bridge of SighsIt took Richard Russo six years to follow his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Empire Falls with his latest, Bridge of Sighs. In this exclusive essay for Powells.com, Russo answers the oft-asked question "What took you so long?" with a redefinition of a writer's "laziness."
From "Redefining Laziness"
Bridge of Sighs, my new novel, was six years in the writing, and one of the things I'm certain to be asked while I'm out promoting it is, "What took you so long?" It's a question I've been asked often over the years and mostly I don't mind, because it suggests that my readers are anxious for a new Richard Russo novel. But trailing that compliment is an unstated implication — that the delay must be the result of laziness... (read more)

Ann Patchett"When writing a novel, choosing the setting is every bit as important as choosing the characters," writes Ann Patchett in this original essay for Powells.com. The bestselling author of Bel Canto returns with Run — a novel about secrets, duty, responsibility, and the lengths we will go to protect our children — which Booklist calls "luminous."
From "Setting the Story"
When writing a novel, choosing the setting is every bit as important as choosing the characters. If I know a city too well, I tend to get hung up on the details. My imagination is crowded out by an intimate understanding of traffic patterns and restaurant locations. If I know a city not at all, it means losing a lot of time doing research when I want to be writing... (read more)

Frances Moore LappéFrances Moore Lappé's Getting a Grip is a little book with a big message, one that distills her world-spanning experience and wisdom in a conversational yet hard-hitting style. "Here I am, 36 years and sixteen books from Diet for a Small Planet," the author writes, "yet the 'ah-ha' moment that triggered that little volume still reverberates in my life: We humans are actively creating the scarcity we claim to fear!"
From "Getting My Grip"
Here I am, 36 years and sixteen books from Diet for a Small Planet, yet the "ah-ha" moment that triggered that little volume still reverberates in my life: we humans are actively creating the scarcity we claim to fear! (read more)

JavatrekkerAs the founder of Dean's Beans Organic Coffee and author of Javatrekker: Dispatches from the World of Fair Trade Coffee, Dean Cycon knows coffee. In this revealing book, Cycon explores the untold origins of coffee through his travels to ten different producing countries. "In the hyper-caffeinated world of coffee marketing, it is very difficult to tell the truth from a load of beans," Cycon writes in this eye-opening essay for Powells.com.
From "Making It Real: Why Fair Trade Matters"
In the hyper-caffeinated world of coffee marketing, it is very difficult to tell the truth from a load of beans. Most marketing materials are prepared with the sole goal of increasing sales, rather than informing or educating consumers as to the real qualities of the product or of the lives of the people who provide it... (read more)

Maynard and Jennica"[B]oldly inventive" (Library Journal), Rudolph Delson's debut novel Maynard and Jennica is an uproarious and deeply moving tour-de-force that is both a portrait of our times and a wildly original New York love story.
From "The Necessary Tonnage of Hilarity and Awe"
I have been to Powell's Books once, in the summer of 2003. That was the summer that I was hunting for books about misanthropes, or anyway books about misanthropy, or anyway books about the virtues of hating other people — "other people" being so easy to hate. For example... (read more)

The Secret History of the War on CancerFilled with compelling personalities and never-before-revealed information, The Secret History of the War on Cancer shows how we began fighting the wrong war, with the wrong weapons, against the wrong enemies — a legacy that persists to this day. National Book Award finalist Devra Davis's book is the gripping story of a major public health effort diverted and distorted for private gain. "[G]rim but fascinating reading," hails Kirkus Reviews.
From "Deadly Secrets"
Young children tell secrets, many of which turn out to be fabulously untrue. But what passes as child's play can turn deadly when adults agree to keep matters of life and death under wraps... (read more)

Beyond the Green ZoneAs the occupation of Iraq unravels, the demand for independent reporting is growing. Since 2003, unembedded journalist Dahr Jamail has filed indispensable reports from Iraq that have made him this generation's chronicler of the unfolding disaster there. Behind the Green Zone collects his dispatches, presenting never-before-published details of the siege of Fallujah and examining the origins of the Iraqi insurgency.
From "I Had No Choice"
In March 2003 when the U.S-led invasion of Iraq was launched I was in the midst of another full mountaineering season in Alaska. However, unlike earlier seasons, I was unable to devote myself wholeheartedly to my time in the mountains, which I consider my sanctuary... (read more)

MatrimonyIn Matrimony, a man and woman meet in college, fall in love, and spend the next fifteen years finding their way through the ups and downs of marriage. This second novel from author Joshua Henkin (Swimming across the Hudson) reflects the maturing talent of a writer who "never artificially amps up his material, instead allowing the quiet accumulation of his characters' shared experiences to create for his readers a world they will recognize and relate to" (Booklist).
From "Handball"
On our first date, when I arrived to pick up Beth, the woman I would eventually marry, the phone rang in her apartment, and when she answered, her face blanched. "Is he all right?" (read more)

Proust and the SquidIn Proust and the Squid, developmental psychologist, neuroscientist, and dyslexia expert Maryanne Wolf probes the question, "How do we learn to read and write?" This ambitious and provocative new book offers an impassioned look at reading, its effect on our lives, and explains why it matters so greatly in a digital era.
From "Reading Worrier"
I have always worried about who can read, who can't, who doesn't, and the great, life-altering consequences hidden within those distinctions. I have spent most of my adult life as a scholar, teacher, and researcher in the cognitive neurosciences pursuing these questions. Now I have a new worry, no less insidious in its potential for affecting the lives of our young... (read more)

An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New EnglandAfter spending ten years in prison for accidentally burning down Emily Dickinson's house, Sam Pulsifer is determined to start a new life. But when the houses of Mark Twain, Robert Frost, and others start going up in smoke, Sam's past comes back to haunt him. Brock Clarke's novel, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England, is earning some of the year's biggest praise ("[A] page-turning pleasure for anyone who loves literature," hails Kirkus Reviews).
From "What Does New England Matter?"
My mother was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, as were her parents before her. My father was born some 100 miles east of there, in Milton, Massachusetts; his father and mother were born in Massachusetts and Connecticut, respectively. In other words, they were all New Englanders, which is to say, they were born and lived in one of the six states that constitute New England... (read more)

Faith in the Halls of PowerEvangelicals, once at the periphery of American life, now wield power from the White House to Wall Street. Drawing on personal interviews with an astonishing array of prominent Americans, D. Michael Lindsay's Faith in the Halls of Power shows first-hand how Evangelicals are bringing their vision of moral leadership into the public square.
From "Onward Christian Soldiers"
In June of 1954, Colorado Springs beat out 582 other sites as the location for the new Air Force Academy. In recent decades, Colorado Springs has become this mecca of American evangelicalism. Today, over 100 evangelical groups are headquartered in the town of just 360,000... (read more)

Samedi the DeafnessJesse Ball's Samedi the Deafness is a unique, intriguing debut that will leave you reeling. When a man dies in James Sim's arms, whispering his final word — "Samedi" — the event triggers a spellbinding game of cat and mouse as James is abducted, brought to an asylum, and seduced by a woman in yellow. "A strange modern thriller — Kafka meets Hitchcock," says Keith Donoghue, author of The Stolen Child.
From "Writing Samedi the Deafness"
The first part takes place when I was living in France, in Montpellier, on a street in the old quarter, which is entirely cobbled and bricked. I mention the cobbling only because it made me feel more comfortable the entire time I lived there. We spent the afternoons in cafes, and on long aimless walks; mornings we passed lying in bed in the loft that sat high up under the roof... (read more)

How to Change the WorldWhat business entrepreneurs are to the economy, social entrepreneurs are to social change. They are, writes David Bornstein, the driven, creative individuals who question the status quo, exploit new opportunities, refuse to give up — and remake the world for the better. How to Change the World tells the fascinating stories of these remarkable individuals.
From "A Sea of Social Ingenuity"
A number of years ago I took part in a weekend program designed to help 40 low-income high school students reach college. It was one of those experiences that causes you to see the world with new eyes. The workshop was held on a campus in Colorado. My job was to serve as a "writing coach" and help five students write college admission essays that would reveal themselves as whole people, not just numbers on a transcript... (read more)

Building the Green EconomyBuilding the Green Economy is a collection of essays that tells the stories of eighteen activists and their efforts to bring awareness to environmental causes. The book includes interviews with well-known experts, examples of successful local activism, and lists of useful resources and strategies for green supporters.
From "All the (Good) News That's Fit to Print"
This morning's headlines are as grim as ever. "In swath of devastation, Peru's death toll climbs," the Chronicle reports. "Liberties Advocates Fear Abuse of Satellite Images," the Times writes, and then, on the next page, "One Billion Dollars Later, New Orleans Is a City Still at Risk." The casualty reports from Iraq are especially long today, nine names of young men who died in the desert, not a single one of them old enough to be president... (read more)

The Center Cannot HoldElyn Saks managed to achieve both professional and personal success in spite of being diagnosed as schizophrenic and given a "grave" prognosis. In her memoir, The Center Cannot Hold, she frankly and movingly discusses the disease, and the treatments that helped her to cope and thrive.
From "Freedom of Motion"
I suffer from paranoid schizophrenia, a diagnosis it took me years to accept. I was hospitalized three times for lengthy periods, tied hand and foot to the cold metal of a hospital bed with a net strapped tight across my chest in the psychiatric equivalent of solitary confinement. I was given "very poor" and "grave" prognoses. In other words, I was expected to live in a board-and-care facility and work at a menial job when my symptoms allowed... (read more)

If Today Be SweetIn If Today Be Sweet, an exquisite novel rich with emotion, beauty, and texture, the bestselling author of The Space between Us explores the trials a woman faces after her husband dies. "What might have been just another story about widowhood is, in Umrigar's hands, a canvas on which love, death, family, pain, and personal transformation are subtly painted," praises Library Journal.
From "Written by the Losers"
Well, the rest of you can debate whether the last Congress has achieved anything significant. I already have my answer — it has allowed my new novel, If Today Be Sweet, to remain relevant... (read more)

Matt RuffJane Charlotte claims to be a member of a secret organization — the Bad Monkeys — devoted to ridding the world of especially evil people. As Jane's tale grows increasingly bizarre, a psychiatrist tries to sort truth from lies. Is she lying or crazy, or is her tale unbelievably true? Bad Monkeys is the latest spellbinding novel from cult favorite Matt Ruff (Set This House in Order), "a thriller that is familiar enough to be comforting and new enough to offer genuine surprise" (The Oregonian).
From "Bad Monkeys' Bad Girl "
As in the case of my second novel, Sewer, Gas & Electric, it started with just a title. The third season of the Comedy Central series South Park featured an episode in which the South Park kids traveled to the Costa Rican rainforest. At one point Eric Cartman began hitting a monkey with a stick, screaming "Bad! Bad monkey!" The phrase stuck in my head... (read more)

The Pinball Theory of ApocalypseIn The Pinball Theory of Apocalypse, Jonathan Selwood's "laugh-out-loud madcap debut" (Booklist), involves a painter who suddenly makes it big (even as her sleazy gallery owner has posted nude photos of her on the Internet), her boyfriend who's sleeping with a Latina teenage diva, and her physicist father who has done the math that proves the planets in our solar system will start crashing into one another in 2049.
From "Lessons of a Hollywood Youth"
Unlike every other male fiction writer in the country, I did not grow up in Brooklyn, and have never once played "stickball" with "the boys." Instead, I grew up in the glorious hedonism of the Hollywood Hills — exposed to guilt-free sex, exotic tropical drinks, and a cornucopia of recreational drugs at a very young age... (read more)

Loving FrankFact and fiction are brilliantly blended in Loving Frank, Nancy Horan's compelling debut novel about the relationship between legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Cheney, the wife of a couple whose home Wright built in 1904. "[E]ngrossing, provocative reading," hails Scott Turow, author of Presumed Innocent.
From "Craving Stories"
If someone had told me in high school that one day I'd write an historical novel, I would have rolled my eyes. The novel part would have been enticing, but historical? History was the Treaty of Ghent and the Seven Years War. History class was a forty-minute squirm from which I would emerge unscathed by insight. Down the hall in English Lit, though, there were stories to be had, and it was stories I craved... (read more)

The First Word is a compelling look at the quest for the origins of human language from accomplished linguist Christine Kenneally. Sure to appeal to fans of Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct and Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, Kenneally's book is set to join them as a seminal account of human history.
From "A Path to Language"
At a cheap pine table in a dingy dining room, we drank cask wine and showed off. H. was smart-flighty. It was a bit late in the day to be that into Kate Bush, but she was pretty enough to pull it off. R. was a medical student who gave rather surprising shoulder rubs. It was one of our first nights in a Melbourne University student house and we were getting to know each other with enormous animation.... (read more)

The Not So Big LifeIn her groundbreaking bestseller The Not So Big House, architect Sarah Susanka showed us a new way to inhabit our houses by creating homes that were better — not bigger. Now, in The Not So Big Life, Susanka takes her revolutionary philosophy to another dimension by showing us a new way to inhabit our lives.
From "The Not So Big Life"
When I began writing my latest book, The Not So Big Life: Making Room for What Really Matters, I knew I'd be pushing my existing fans — those who knew me through my Not So Big House series — to grapple with a further dimension of our consumer oriented society. And I knew I'd be surprising more than a few people by the shift from the focus on how we inhabit our houses to how we inhabit our lives... (read more)

God's GoldGod's Gold is the breathtaking true story of an archaeologist's relentless quest to find an ancient treasure coveted by pagan Romans, Byzantine Christians, and modern Israelis. Sean Kingsley has written a brilliant account full of intrigue, mystery, and adventure — and even the most incredible parts are all true! "Kingsley's bracing tale of religious intrigue grips the imagination," raves Publishers Weekly.
From "Codes, Keys, and Solomon's Treasure"
In the spring of 1991 I packed up home in Yorkshire, England, and headed east to Israel with snorkel and wetsuit. The lure of exploring ancient shipwrecks lost beneath King Solomon's port city of Dor awaited me. I was inspired yet naïve. This was a foolish move professionally... (read more)

The Other WomanFrom some of America's top writers comes The Other Woman, a groundbreaking, compulsively readable anthology about that most taboo of subjects — women who steal husbands and boyfriends from other women, and the consequences for those left behind.
From "Going Up Up Up"
Several years ago I was zipping through emails and opened an invitation to attend the first west-coast meeting of a national group of women authors. I was honored to be invited and pleased to meet other writers in my area. A few days before the event, I was contacted by the local host who informed me that she was sorry, but since my first novel, The Bone Weaver, was self-published, I did not meet the membership requirements and was therefore uninvited... (read more)

The Last Chinese ChefThe Last Chinese Chef is the exhilarating tale of how the sensual, romantic elements of haute Chinese cuisine become the perfect ingredients to lift the troubled soul of a grieving American woman.
From "Where Food and Words Meet: A Literary Sub-School of Chinese Cuisine Survives against the Odds"
As China continues its headlong rush to the future, certain areas of life seem to let people also reach back to the past. One such area is food. Cuisine culture has rebounded, with its many traditions. It's enough of a force in life today to have affected diplomacy. In April 2006, when China's President Hu Jintao made a state visit to the U.S., the White House invited him to lunch instead of to a state dinner. In the traditional language of China's cuisine this sent a specific message... (read more)

These are the ways the world ends. Edited by Justin Taylor, The Apocalypse Reader offers 34 new and selected doomsday scenarios: an enthralling collection of work by canonical literary figures, contemporary masters, and a few rising stars (including respectively Joyce Carol Oates, Michael Moorcock, and Neil Gaiman), all of whom have looked into the future and found it missing.
From "Big-League Doom: Stephen King's Apocalypses"
This is what happened. In the fall of 2006, the Avalon Books spring preview catalog came out. The page devoted to The Apocalypse Reader, an anthology I was editing, contained several errors, not least among them the inclusion of Stephen King's name on the list of contributors. Much to my chagrin — and despite my placing several irate phone calls and emails — this misinformation resurfaced again at publication time on the websites of internet booksellers. (Powell's, I'm happy to note, was the first to post the correct information after I sent it to them.)... (read more)

The Teahouse FireIn The Teahouse Fire, Ellis Avery composes sweeping debut novel, drawn from a history shrouded in secrets, that follows two women — one American, one Japanese — whose fates become entwined in the rapidly changing world of late-19th-century Japan.
From "Tea and the Writing of The Teahouse Fire"
If I had known that Japanese tea ceremony was a living art, I would have studied it in college: I grew up with my mother's enthusiasm for Japan and majored in Performance Studies, a cross-cultural mix of anthropology, theater, and religion. And, then as now, I loved tea: my college best friend and I held a tea every Friday afternoon... (read more)

Teenage WaistlandIn her frank, compassionate, witty debut, Teenage Waistland, Abby Ellin, a former fat camper turned journalist, investigates current approaches to and attitudes toward weight loss to illuminate how they do and don't address the logistical, psychological, and emotional realities for overweight teens.
From "One Size Does Not Fit All"
I knew I would write this book, way back when I was 12 years old and my grandmother refused to let me visit her in Florida unless I lost ten pounds. Knew I would write it the second I set foot on the grounds of Camp Colang, the very first Weight Watchers camp I attended in 1984, when I was 16 and wanting to lose 20 pounds... (read more)

The Last of Her KindAn "engrossing, beautiful novel [that] will enthrall readers" (Booklist), Sigrid Nunez's The Last of Her Kind follows the twisty path of an unlikely friendship that begins on a college campus in 1968 and leads to a 1976 murder conviction.
From "The Way We Looked Then"
There was a time in my girlhood when all I wanted was to be beautiful. Of course, there have always been girls who share this dream, but I believe in my case it was more pronounced. This may have had something to do with having an attractive mother, whose looks were often commented on when I was growing up... (read more)

Sharp ObjectsGillian Flynn's debut novel, Sharp Objects, was hailed as an "admirably nasty piece of work" by Stephen King, while Kirkus Reviews called it "[p]iercingly effective and genuinely terrifying."
From "I Was Not a Nice Little Girl"
I was not a nice little girl. My favorite summertime hobby was stunning ants and feeding them to spiders. My preferred indoor diversion was a game called Mean Aunt Rosie, in which I pretended to be a witchy caregiver and my cousins tried to escape me... (read more)
L.A. Rex"[B]rutal and dynamic" (Philadelphia Inquirer), Will Beall's debut novel, L.A. Rex, is a ferocious, grittily cinematic debut set in South Central Los Angeles that recalls both Richard Price and James Ellroy, written by an LAPD antigang officer who continues to patrol the streets he writes about.
From "The Grand Guignol 'Hood"
I'm walking the drab, cavernous corridors of the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office. Witchy purple light flickers from those Flintrol Insect Electrocutors. I put on booties, plastic gloves, a plastic apron, a filtered 3M mask that is supposed to protect against airborne pathogens... (read more)

Alicia C. ShepardWoodward and Bernstein is an "absorbing" (New York Sun) account of the full, fascinating, and controversial lives of two reporters made world-famous by blowing the lid off the Watergate scandal.
From "The Scoop on Woodward and Bernstein"
This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the movie All the President's Men, starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as investigative reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, respectively. The movie made Woodward and Bernstein forever famous and has become a classic... (read more)

The Divorce Lawyer's Guide to Staying Married In The Divorce Lawyers' Guide to Staying Married, Wendy Jaffe explains why divorce occurs and what can be done to immunize today's marriages from the ever-growing divorce epidemic.
From "Judging a Book by Its Cover"
There are many books that I would not be caught dead reading in public. Taliban Are People, Too, or Seven Good Reasons Why You Should Change Your Underwear Daily are titles that I would likely read at home with the curtains drawn (after ordering them through Powell's online store under an assumed name)... (read more)

Fast Forward "When you write a book about porn, you're going to attract a few freaks," notes Eric Spitznagel, author of Fast Forward: Confessions of a Porn Screenwriter. "In Chicago, a strange fellow asked if I'd ever written a porno about fruit, before taking a banana out of his pants and eating it in front of me."
From "Have You Ever Boinked a Porn Star?: And Other Burning Questions about Fast Forward: Confessions of a Porn Screenwriter"
When I went on a nationwide bookstore tour last May (to promote my memoir, Fast Forward: Confessions of a Porn Screenwriter), it seemed that everybody with even a casual interest in adult films showed up for my readings. Some of them were crazy. Not just a little eccentric, mind you. Clinically insane. In San Francisco, a man handed me a business card with a picture of himself having sex with his girlfriend... (read more)

One Bullet AwayUpon learning his son was going into the Marines after graduating from Dartmouth, Nathaniel Fick's father told him, "The Marines will teach you everything I love you too much to teach you." In this original essay, the author of One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer explains, "Sitting behind a desk at age twenty-two held no appeal for me, and so I found myself in swampy Quantico, Virginia, learning to shoot a rifle and imbibing the legends of Iwo Jima and Khe Sanh."
From "The Making of a Marine Officer"
On August 13, 2001, my forty-four-man infantry platoon sailed from San Diego on what was supposed to be a routine deployment to Asia and the Middle East. The world was mostly at peace, and a big mission for us would have been delivering food in East Timor or maybe evacuating a U.S. embassy somewhere... (read more)

Like a Rolling StoneIn this original essay for Powells.com, legendary rock critic (and author of Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads) Greil Marcus takes an incisive look at Martin Scorsese's recent Bob Dylan documentary, No Direction Home: "[It] never holds still....There is nothing definitive here; within the film there is not a single version of a single song that runs from beginning to end."
From "On 'Like a Rolling Stone' in Martin Scorsese's No Direction Home"
Martin Scorsese's Dylan documentary — a shape-shifting assemblage of 1950s and 1960s film footage, still photos, strange music, and interviews with Dylan and compatriots conducted over the past years by Dylan's manager, Jeff Rosen — never holds still. It allows, say, the Irish folksinger Liam Clancy, telling stories of Dylan in Greenwich Village, to contradict Dylan telling his own stories about the same thing; the film contradicts itself... (read more)

Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life "Woolf's concern with the inner life made her impatient with the biographies of her day," writes Julia Briggs, "and she often made fun of them, or exposed their shortcomings." This posed a peculiar conundrum for Briggs as she wrote her biography, Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life: how to write about her subject in a manner which Woolf herself might approve?
From "An Inner Life"
It is the 7th of February 1922: an artist is standing at a desk, in a high tower, its windows looking out on snow-capped mountains. If we peer over the artist's shoulder, we can watch the words being formed on the page... (read more)

Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits "Poverty has receded from the list of popular themes of the American novel," writes Laila Lalami. "No longer do we have a John Steinbeck, a Richard Wright, a Theodore Dreiser, or a Zora Neale Hurston writing about the working poor." In this provocative essay, the author of Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits (and creator of the popular lit-blog Moorishgirl.com) examines how Hurricane Katrina may open our eyes to the plight of the impoverished in America.
From "Fiction in the Age of Poverty"
Since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, there's been much talk in the literary community about the state of the novel. Some, like Nobel Prize winner V. S. Naipaul, simply declared it dead, incapable of addressing our new concerns in the age of terrorism... (read more)

The Guinness Book of Me The Guinness Book of Me is a wildly imaginative memoir about a Midwestern boy's obsession with the encyclopedia of abnormality — the Guinness Book of World Records. In his idiosyncratic essay for Powells.com, Steven Church asks, "Don't we all feel like freaks when we're going through adolescence? Don't we all need an escape?"
From "Books, Most Devoured"
My favorite comments about a book are the ones where people confess to reading it in a single sitting or in a couple of extended reading-bursts. Some even offer up a time to support their claims. Two hours. Six hours. Two days. Others name places: in the car, on the train, in the rain, at work, in bed after the kids are asleep, with a flashlight... (read more)

The Insomniac Reader In The Insomniac Reader, editor (and Powell's bookseller/small press buyer) Kevin Sampsell has assembled an impressive array of writers — including Jonathan Ames, Rick Moody, Aimee Bender, and Jonathan Lethem — to shine their literary flashlights into the world that begins when most people sleep. In this illuminating essay for Powells.com, Sampsell explains "why some things just take on a whole new life when it gets dark."
From "Bookseller by Day, Editor and Writer by Night"
I may look like your normal bookstore employee — facial stubble, nerd glasses, untucked shirt, jeans, scuffed shoes, the little red sticker that says "INFO" on it — but I do much more than serve customers and shelve books here at Powell's... (read more)

Adverbs "What's love, again?" asks Daniel Handler. You might expect the author of Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events to respond with something macabre and irreverent, but this is the grown-up Daniel Handler, whose new novel, Adverbs, should reclaim his literary name for older readers.
From "What's Love?"
What's love, again? No, seriously: what is it? Why are you quoting song lyrics? Do the lyrics of love songs actually cut to the heart of the matter, or are they simply so vague that it feels like they do? Why does one's own love feel as if it cuts to the heart of things, but other people's loves feel like vague amusements? Why are love songs we don't like so noxious? How can we love a song so dearly for a number of years and then suddenly find it embarrassing? Also, a person? (read more)

The Translation of Dr. ApellesThe Translation of Dr. Apelles is a brilliant mystery of letters in the tradition of Calvino, Borges, and Saramago that Charles Baxter says "may be David Treuer's best book." The Minneapolis Star Tribune concurs: "The satisfied sigh you utter when you read the last sentence is neither silly nor a delusion of sentiment."
From "On Falling in Love (with Novels)"
In his essay "On Falling in Love," Robert Louis Stevenson wrote that, "there is only one event in life which really astonishes a man and startles him out of his prepared opinions. Everything else befalls him much as expected." He was speaking of love but I like to believe he was also speaking about writing novels... (read more)

Help! I Can't Pay My BillsIn this age of skyrocketing personal debt, more and more Americans find themselves facing a financial crisis. Sally Herigstad's Help! I Can't Pay My Bills is a clear, step-by-step guide that will get you started on your way to financial security.
From "Changing the World — One Bill at a Time"
When I went to Portland State University in the '70s, a lot of us were out to change the world. Sociology and education were popular majors with people who wanted to make a difference. Accounting was a bit suspect, perhaps mercenary sounding, as I discovered when one student declined to be my partner on a class project after she found out what my major was. I wanted to change the world, too, but I chose a very practical area to work on. I wanted to help people with their money... (read more)

The White CascadeIn The White Cascade, a "briskly paced and vividly written account" (Publishers Weekly), Gary Krist delivers the never-before-told story of one of the worst rail disasters in U.S. history, in which two trains full of people, trapped high in the Cascade Mountains, are hit by a devastating avalanche in February 1910.
From "A Fresh Chapter of History"
"American history," James Baldwin once remarked, "is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it." That's true, of course, but it doesn't mean we can't keep trying. While no individual writer can ever hope to do justice to the full sweep of this country's history, we can at least contribute a few fresh chapters to the overall narrative... (read more)

The Gang That Wouldn't Write StraightStarting in 1965 and focusing on a group of writers that includes Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, and Joan Didion, Marc Weingarten's The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight is the story of perhaps the last great good time in American journalism, when writers didn't just cover stories but immersed themselves in them, and when journalism didn't just report America but reshaped it.
From "The Gang's All Here"
Writing The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight was the fulfillment of a dream — to actually delve deep into a subject that excited me and get paid for it. The book, which is a history of the New Journalism movement, was met with raised eyebrows by some when I first got started, especially from old line journalists... (read more)

Jesus LandIn her riveting memoir, Jesus Land, Julia Scheeres depicts the story of a 16-year-old girl and her adopted, black, 16-year-old brother in Indiana who are sent to a reform school in the Dominican Republic by their violent father and distant mother more involved with her church's missionaries than her own children.
From "Ghosts of My Brother"
Is it possible to capture a life in a book? That's what I set out to do when I wrote my memoir, Jesus Land. I was weary of mourning my brother David in silence. Even after 20 years, the merciless fact of his death stabbed my heart like a steak knife whenever I thought of him. I felt compelled to record his footprint on this earth... (read more)

The Alexandria LinkFrom Steve Berry, the bestselling author of The Templar Legacy, comes The Alexandria Link, an adrenaline-fueled thriller about the quest for a secret contained in an ancient library that vanished without a trace fifteen hundred years ago.
From "The Alexandria Link Revealed"
Ideas come at the most unlikely times. For me, it happened one evening in Camden, South Carolina. I was there for an appearance at a local bookstore when the husband of our host asked if I'd ever heard of a man named Kamal Salibi. When I said no, he told me about three books Salibi had written, beginning in the late 1980s... (read more)

Dahlia SeasonCombining the spark of Michelle Tea, the comic angst of Augusten Burroughs, and the warmth of Sandra Cisneros, Myriam Gurba has created a territory all her own in her first book, Dahlia Season.
From "Transcendental Ticcing"
Dahlia Season, my collection of short stories and a novella, is full of trannies. They serve as my tales' crushes. Heroes. Bit players. Saviors. They take the landscape of gender and reinvent it. Their bodies are battlegrounds and playgrounds. Just like mine has been... (read more)

Falling Boy In Falling Boy, Alison McGhee's "tender and affecting coming-of-age tale" (Publishers Weekly), a small band of tough kids turn the myth of the super hero inside out as they face down the shadows of childhood, responsibility, and life in a quiet town.
From "Wordless"
When I was twenty years old I got on a plane at the end of December and flew from Vermont, where I was a junior in college, to Taipei. I traveled alone, with no plan in place other than to improve my Mandarin, the language I had been studying for two years... (read more)
Strange Piece of Paradise "Mesmerizing, terrifying, and occasionally downright surreal," writes Powells.com's Tessa, "Strange Piece of Paradise... is almost impossible to put down." Now in paperback, Strange Piece of Paradise is an electrifying account of Terri Jentz's investigation into the mystery of her near murder.
From "The Axeman"
Last summer I was invited to speak on a panel of mystery writers at the Swedish consulate in Los Angeles. They seated me — the woman who had investigated her own attempted axe murder that took place in Central Oregon's Cline Falls State Park in 1977 — next to acclaimed Swedish mystery writer Hakan Nesser, whose latest book, Borkmann's Point, tells the story of a serial axe-murderer who terrorizes a small Swedish town... (read more)

Maxed OutAt a time when the financial industry posts ever-higher profits even as its clients drown in the flood of easy credit, James Scurlock's Maxed Out takes readers on a wickedly smart and entertaining tour of what one interviewee calls "the last taboo," exposing very real credit and lending policies that are consuming millions of Americans.
From "The Power of Denial"
I can't remember who said Never underestimate the power of denial, but denial was very much on Suze Orman's mind when she gave an interview to the New York Times Magazine last month — an interview that was mostly noted for her coming out of the closet, but should have been picked up for the number of times she managed to scold the interviewer... (read more)

Deep EconomyIn his powerful and provocative manifesto, Deep Economy, the bestselling author of The End of Nature issues an impassioned call to arms for an economy that creates community and ennobles our lives.
From "What a Real, Living, Durable Economy Looks Like"
I've spent the last twenty years of my adult life writing and thinking about global warming. I can tell you about hydrogen, hybrid cars, solar panels, wind turbines, green building, carbon offsets, carbon sequestration, carbon credits, and on and on and on and on... (read more)

OriginA fingerprint expert's investigation of a series of crib deaths leads her back to the mystery of her own childhood in Origin, the latest novel from Diana Abu-Jaber (Crescent). "[A]n utterly magnetic story," hails Booklist. "Readers seeking gorgeously rendered fiction as well as intelligent and atmospheric mysteries will find Origin extraordinary."
From "Unnamed"
The first time anyone told me to change my name I think it was intended as a compliment. It was in a class on Nabokov, at a college in upstate NY, and my professor had a long, richly-vowelled Armenian name. He'd given us the option of writing something creative for our final papers, so I'd written an alternate ending to Lolita (in which Humbert repents)... (read more)

HickPart coming-of-age story and part raggedy picaresque, Andrea Portes's Hick leads us at a blinding pace down broken roads through a world that seems dangerously uncharted to an extraordinary and indomitable young girl. "A bracing drama," the Los Angeles Times raves, "a study in tenacity against the gnarled teeth of domestic storms."
From "Rancho Malcontento"
It just so happens that when I was finishing up Hick — and by "finishing up Hick," I mean procrastinating furiously — I was living at a place called Rancho Malcontento. Aptly named, as it was a dirty white, wooden house in the Echo Park hills with the words "Rancho Contento" dancing festively above the threshold in playful western font... (read more)