Choice words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs for every situation. Letters, reports, resumes, correspondence.

"In this lively nonfiction book for young readers, bestselling author Gail Carson Levine shares her secrets of great writing"--

The story about eleven-year-old Harriet, who is a spy, plans to be a writer, and keeps a secret notebook filled with thoughts and notes on her schoolmates and people she observes on her after-school "spy route". However, when her classmates find and read her notebook, their anger and retaliation and Harriet's unexpected responses explode in a hilarious and often touching way.

Author Miles Van Meter is on a book tour to promote his sensational bestseller Sleeping Beauty, a true-crime account of a deeply personal subject: the attack by a serial killer that left his twin sister, Casey, in a coma. Tonight the audience waits to hear Miles discuss recent developments in his sister's case -- unaware that pieces of this complex puzzle of violence, unknown even to the author, are about to be revealed. Six years earlier, life was...

Gabby daydreams to tune out her parents' arguments, but when her parents divorce and she begins a new school, daydreaming gets her into trouble. Her mother scolds her for it, her teacher keeps telling her to pay attention, and the other kids tease her...until she finds a friend who also daydreams and her teacher decides to work a daydreaming-writing session into every school day. With a notebook "thick with daydreams," Gabby grows more confident about...

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is publishing a monthly series of e-only essays to correspond with Katherine Paterson's two-year term as the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. The subjects of the essays include: writing and literature for young people, the wonder and imagination found within great books, common questions novice writers ask, and Katherine's own personal experiences throughout her historic career.

"A strikingly original novel in the vein of DAISY JONES AND THE SIX meets Riley Sager, TRUE CRIME STORY twists together transcripts, emails, and documents into an investigation of a missing college girl, also weaving in the mysteries of how the narrator "Joseph Knox" came to be in possession of these files and what fate befell the original author, as well as why Knox might not be telling us everything he knows. Zoe Nolan disappeared from Manchester...

A visiting author teaches five friends about the power of words and writing.

In 1995, Iowa native Bill Bryson took a motoring trip around Britain to explore that green and pleasant land. The uproarious book that resulted, Notes from a Small Island, is one of the most acute portrayals of the United Kingdom ever written. Two decades later, Bryson--now a British citizen--set out again to rediscover his adopted country. In these pages, he follows a straight line through the island--from Bognor Regis to Cape Wrath--and shows us...

Vita Kirk is a travel writer who has never left her hometown. In fact, she rarely leaves her house. Due to deep wounds and bitter losses, Vita has chosen isolation over vulnerability. But when she stumbles across an antique chest in a hole-in-the-wall boutique, she discovers a puzzling link to her past and her physical surroundings mysteriously begin to change. Inscribed in the treasure chest are the words, "Love is the key that unlocks every portal." The...