The Book of Mormon prophet Nephi describes the journey to eternal life as going through a gate of ordinances and traveling a “straight and narrow path.” Twenty-three authors took that gospel roadmap passage as a prompt to write “a Mormon story.” They responded with a surprisingly wide range of realistic and fantastic tales. Many are human reactions to unexpected steps on the path: a lifetime of faith in a patriarchal blessing’s unfulfilled promise, a survivor of violence calling a divided ...

Ethics, Literature, and Theory: An Introductory Reader brings together the work of contemporary scholars, teachers, and writers into lively discussion on the moral role of literature and the relationship between aesthetics, art, and ethics. Do the rich descriptions and narrative shapings of literature provide a valuable resource for readers, writers, philosophers, and everyday people to imagine and confront the ultimate questions of life? Do the human activities of storytelling and complex...

Continuing a conversation as old as Mormonism itself, Jack Harrell explores the relationship between Mormonism and the writer. Mormons see the universe in mythic proportions. Their God is a creator, their devil a destroyer. This makes meaningful conflict fundamental to their worldview, and begs the terms for religious redemption, as well as the redemptive power of art. Harrell urges writers to be authentic as they embrace the difficulties inherent in the creative process. His essays blend ...

Discover the delightfully heartwarming and life-affirming bestseller about one man's unlikely journey through love, perfect for fans of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely FineTHE INTERNATIONAL MILLION COPY BESTSELLER'I couldn't put this book down. It's one of the most quirky and endearing romances I've ever read. I laughed the whole way through' SOPHIE KINSELLA'Brilliant, important, good-hearted' GUA...

**#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The “mercilessly entertaining” (Vanity Fair) instant classic “about the nature of identity and the terrible secrets that can survive and thrive in even the most intimate relationships” (Lev Grossman, Time “One of the Best Books of the Decade”)—now featuring never-before-published deleted scenesONE OF TIME'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME, ONE OF CNN'S MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE, AND ONE ...

A beautiful story about Art; a living, breathing boy in all respects - who happens to be made of inflatable plastic. POP ART is an exceptional, must-read of a short story.Joe Hill is the New York Times bestselling author of NOS4A2, Horns, and Heart-Shaped Box, and the prize-winning story collection 20th Century Ghosts. He is also the co-author, with Stephen King, of In the Tall Grass.

Dirt is a story about the places where we start. From a single-wide trailer in the mountains of rural West Virginia to the halls of Yale Law School, Mary Marantz's story is one of remembering our roots while turning our faces to the sky. From growing up in that trailer, where it rained just as hard inside as out and the smell of mildew hung thick in the air, Mary has known what it is to feel broken and disqualified because of the muddy scars leaving smudged fingerprints a...

Good intentions aren’t everything. Sometimes things don’t quite go the way you planned. And sometimes you don’t plan. . . . This collection of sixteen stories (and one lonely poem) chart the many ways trouble can ensue. No actual human beings were harmed in the creation of this book.Stories from Eileen Gunn are always a cause for celebration. Where will she lead us? "Up the Fire Road" to a slightly alternate world. Four stories into steampunk’s heart. Into a very strange family gat...

Short fiction of biblical proportions—and bent—from the science fiction satirist and author of The Godhead Trilogy.James Morrow, "the most provocative satiric voice in science fiction," unabashedly delves into matters both sacred and secular in this collection of short stories buoyed by his deliciously irreverent wit ( The Washington Post). Among the dozen selections is the Nebula Award–winning story, "The Deluge," in which a woman of ill repute is rescued...

Grainy and stripped down, this gritty novel traces the downbeat progress of a tough, queer girl growing up in working-class Boston by "a cult figure to a generation of post-punk females forming their own literary avant-garde” (The New York Times).Why can’t I live right now. Because I am not rich, I am not a saint. But I do know this: not all of us were sent here to work.The first published novel of legendary poet and performer Eileen Myles...

2017 Christianity Today Book Award winner ("CT Women" category)"It happened on a Sunday night, even though I'd been a good girl and gone to church that morning."One brisk November evening during her senior year at a small Midwestern Christian college, two armed intruders broke into the house Ruth Everhart shared with her roommates, held all five girls hostage, and took turns raping them at gunpoint. Reeling with fear, insecurity, and guilt, ...

An arresting, lyrical memoir about the path the author took—sometimes unwittingly—out of her Mormon upbringing and through a thicket of profound difficulties to become a writer.At twenty-two, Judith Freeman was working in the Mormon church–owned department store in the Utah town where she’d grown up. In the process of divorcing the man she had married at seventeen, she was living in her parents’ house with her four-year-old son, who had already endured two heart surgeries. She had ...