Skip to Main Content

Circulation Guide

National Novel Writing Month Display - November 2018

The Hunger Games

A chilling tale of survival from the New York Times bestselling author. In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the other districts in line by forcing them to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight-to-the-death on live TV. One boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and sixteen are selected by lottery to play. The winner brings riches and favor tohis or her district. But that is nothing compared to what the Capitol wins: one more year of fearful compliance with its rule. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her impoverished district in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before - and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love. Acclaimed writer Suzanne Collins, author of the New York Times bestselling Underland Chronicles, delivers equal parts suspense and philosophy, adventure and romance, in this stunning novel set in a future with unsettling parallels to our present.

What a Novel Idea!

Each of the sixty reproducible classroom-ready activities has general guidelines that describe the purposes for the project, how to use it, evaluation points, and variations that increase student participation and motivation, and a variety of assessment activities. Designed around the new IRA/NCTE Standards, (reading, writing, representing, viewing, speaking, and listening) these stimulating activities applicable to a variety of novels create opportunities for students to develop their skills as readers, writers, and speakers. Three sections center on reading and writing activity projects (e.g., essays, news stories, letters), visual display projects (e.g., charts, posters, bookmarks), and speaking and listening activities.

The Kite Runner

The #1 New York Times bestselling debut novel that introduced Khaled Hosseini to millions of readers the world over.   The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father's servant, caught in the tragic sweep of history, The Kite Runner transports readers to Afghanistan at a tense and crucial moment of change and destruction. A powerful story of friendship, it is also about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons--their love, their sacrifices, their lies.   Since its publication in 2003 Kite Runner has become a beloved, one-of-a-kind classic of contemporary literature, touching millions of readers, and launching the career of one of America's most treasured writers.

All the Light We Cannot See

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the beautiful, stunningly ambitious instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure's reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum's most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure's converge. Doerr's "stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors" (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, a National Book Award finalist, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer "whose sentences never fail to thrill" (Los Angeles Times).

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Harry Potter has never been the star of a Quidditch team, scoring points while riding a broom far above the ground. He knows no spells, has never helped to hatch a dragon, and has never worn a cloak of invisibility. All he knows is a miserable life with the Dursleys, his horrible aunt and uncle, and their abominable son, Dudley - a great big swollen spoiled bully. Harry's room is a tiny closet at the foot of the stairs, and he hasn't had a birthday party in eleven years. But all that is about to change when a mysterious letter arrives by owl messenger: a letter with an invitation to an incredible place that Harry - and anyone who reads about him - will find unforgettable. For it's there that he finds not only friends, aerial sports, and magic in everything from classes to meals, but a great destiny that's been waiting for him... if Harry can survive the encounter.

A Clash of Kings

THE BOOK BEHIND THE SECOND SEASON OF GAME OF THRONES, AN ORIGINAL SERIES NOW ON HBO. In this eagerly awaited sequel to A Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin has created a work of unsurpassed vision, power, and imagination. A Clash of Kings transports us to a world of revelry and revenge, wizardry and warfare unlike any you have ever experienced. A CLASH OF KINGS A comet the color of blood and flame cuts across the sky. And from the ancient citadel of Dragonstone to the forbidding shores of Winterfell, chaos reigns. Six factions struggle for control of a divided land and the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms, preparing to stake their claims through tempest, turmoil, and war. It is a tale in which brother plots against brother and the dead rise to walk in the night. Here a princess masquerades as an orphan boy; a knight of the mind prepares a poison for a treacherous sorceress; and wild men descend from the Mountains of the Moon to ravage the countryside. Against a backdrop of incest and fratricide, alchemy and murder, victory may go to the men and women possessed of the coldest steel...and the coldest hearts. For when kings clash, the whole land trembles.

Writing and Sexual Difference

Essays discuss feminist criticism, attitudes toward sexual difference, female identity, and the works of Eliot and Stein.

Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction

Explains how to use the elements of suspense to create and develop an exciting story.

Writer's Digest Handbook of Novel Writing

From first ideas, plots and subplots to outlining, writing and working with editors after the sale, in this book writers will receive professional guidance from over 30 of the finest authors, editors and teachers in the publishing world.'

Conflict, Action and Suspense

Offers step-by-step instruction on how to use conflict, action, and suspense to generate drama in fiction writing, discussing stage-setting, openings, cliff-hangers, mood and atmosphere, character development, misdirection, pacing, and other techniques.

Other Destinies

This first book-length critical analysis of the full range of novels written between 1854 and today by American Indian authors takes as its theme the search for self-discovery and cultural recovery. In his introduction, Louis Owens places the novels in context by considering their relationships to traditional American Indian oral literature as well as their differences from mainstream Euroamerican literature. In the following chapters he looks at the novels of John Rollin Ridge, Mourning Dove, John Joseph Mathews, D?Arcy McNickle, N. Scott Momaday, James Welch, Leslie Marmon Silko, Louise Erdrich, Michael Dorris, and Gerald Vizenor.

Reading and Writing Cancer

An important addition to theliterature of cancer by an award-winningscholar and memoirist. Elaborating upon her "Living with Cancer" column in the New York Times, Susan Gubar helps patients, caregivers, and the specialists who seek to serve them. In a book both enlightening and practical, she describes how the activities of reading and writing can right some of cancer's wrongs. To stimulate the writing process, she proposes specific exercises, prompts, and models. In discussions of the diary of Fanny Burney, the stories of Leo Tolstoy and Alice Munro, numerous memoirs, novels, paintings, photographs, and blogs, Gubar shows how readers can learn from art that deepens our comprehension of what it means to live or die with the disease. From a writer whose own memoir, Memoir of a Debulked Woman: Enduring Ovarian Cancer, was described by the New York Times Book Review as "moving and instructive...and incredibly brave," this volume opens a path to healing.

The Color Purple - Alice Walker

Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, ""The Color Purple"" is the story of Celie, a poor, black woman who overcomes a life of abuse due to the support of the females in her life. Walker, an advocate for African-American feminism, created a novel with a strong community of black women that has resonated with readers of both genders and all backgrounds. This completely updated edition offers a fresh compilation of important current criticism on the unforgettable characters and powerful themes in Walker's classic work. Alice Walker's ""The Color Purple, New Edition"" also features a chronology of the author's life and notes on the contributors, making it a great choice for libraries looking to enhance their collection of thoughtful and accessible literary criticism.

African Francophone Writing

African Francophone Writing presents a comprehensive overview of African writing in the Francophone literary world. It explores the work of important classic and contemporary African writers from the 1950s to the present who, until recently, have received little critical attention. The contributors view their subjects from a diverse range of critical perspectives -- historical, thematic, psychoanalytic, feminist and post-colonial -- to provide a variety of theoretically sophisticated analyses of Francophone writing. A comprehensive introduction and an extensive chronological table are included. African Francophone literature is rapidly becoming a major discipline in universities in Britain and North America. This book will provide much needed critical material for students at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. [Well-known authors studied in this book include: Chraïbi, Memmi and Boudjedra in the Maghreb; Sembène, Kourouma and Adiaffi in sub-Saharan Africa; Begag and Cherif from the 'Beur' community; and women writers such as Debèche, Fall and Bâ.]

How Fiction Works

In the tradition of E. M. Forster'sAspects of the Novel and Milan Kundera'sThe Art of the Novel,How Fiction Works is a scintillating study of the magic of fiction--an analysis of its main elements and a celebration of its lasting power. Here one of the most prominent and stylish critics of our time looks into the machinery of storytelling to ask some fundamental questions: What do we mean when we say we "know" a fictional character? What constitutes a telling detail? When is a metaphor successful? Is Realism realistic? Why do some literary conventions become dated while others stay fresh? James Wood ranges widely, from Homer toMake Way for Ducklings, from the Bible to John le Carré, and his book is both a study of the techniques of fiction-making and an alternative history of the novel. Playful and profound,How Fiction Works will be enlightening to writers, readers, and anyone else interested in what happens on the page.

Writers on Writing

Now in paperback, today's most celebrated writers explore literature and the literary life in an inspirational collection of original essays. By turns poignant, hilarious, and practical,Writers on Writing brings together more than forty of contemporary literature's finest voices. Pieces range from reflections on the daily craft of writing to the intersection of art's and life's consequential moments. Authors discuss what impels them to write: creating a sense of control in a turbulent universe; bearing witness to events that would otherwise be lost in history or within the writer's soul; recapturing a fragment of time. Others praise mentors and lessons, whether from the classroom, daily circumstances, or the pages of a favorite writer. For anyone interested in the artand rewards of writing,Writers on Writing offers an uncommon and revealing view of a writer's world. Contributors include Russell Banks, Saul Bellow, E. L. Doctorow, Richard Ford, Kent Haruf, Carl Hiaasen, Alice Hoffman, Jamaica Kincaid, Barbara Kingsolver, Sue Miller, Walter Mosley, Joyce Carol Oates, Annie Proulx, Carol Shields, Jane Smiley, Susan Sontag, John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Alice Walker, and Elie Wiesel.

Teaching and Writing Popular Fiction

Genre fiction is finally given its due, with 3 to 5 essays for each genre style, filled with exercises and student samples. This fun loving TW classic was designed to help teachers expand their writing curricula with popular fiction genres. A fascinating guide, Teaching and Writing Popular Fiction provides ways to help students write, using the literature they already know and love.

The Handmaid's Tale

The #1 New York Times bestseller and seminal work of speculative fiction from the Booker Prize-winning author, now a Hulu series starring Elizabeth Moss, Samira Wiley, and Joseph Fiennes. Includes a new introduction by Margaret Atwood. Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the days before, when she lived and made love with her husband Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now.... Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and literary tour de force.