NCW Libraries

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.

Jenny Boully's essays are ripe with romance and sensual pleasures, drawing connections between the digression, reflection, imagination, and experience that characterize falling in love as well as the life of a writer. Literary theory, philosophy, and linguistics rub up against memory, dreamscapes, and fancy-making the practice of writing a metaphor for the illusory nature of experience. Betwixt-and-Between is, in many ways, simply a book about how...

"We all had teachers who scolded us over the use of um, uh-huh, oh, like, and mm-hmm. But as linguist N. J. Enfield reveals in How We Talk, these "bad words" are fundamental to language. Whether we are speaking with the clerk at the store, our boss, or our spouse, language is dependent on things as commonplace as a rising tone of voice, an apparently meaningless word, or a glance-signals so small that we hardly pay them any conscious attention. Nevertheless,...

"A literary agent and freelance editor recommends simple fixes for common mistakes that cause book proposals to be rejected. A wide range of topics are covered, including genre conventions, narrative structure, manuscript formatting, and editing for both fiction and non-fiction books"--

Edward Waverly enjoyed a privileged upbringing, despite his family's drama. Coming of age during a political uprising, Edward's time is split between his father and his uncle, who each have opposing political views, which causes a rift in the family. His uncle is a traditional British subject that wishes to overthrow the government so that Charles Edward Stuart is restored to power, commonly known as a Jacobite. However, Edward's father is a Hanoverian,...

First published in English by Edward Fitzgerald in 1859 from its original Farsi, "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam" is a collection of quatrains attributed to Omar Khayyam, a Persian astronomer and mathematician born in the later part of the 11th century. Omar Khayyam's poetry, which received very little international notoriety in its own day, achieved classic status when it was discovered and rendered into English verse by Edward Fitzgerald over seven...

A tour of the world's twenty most-spoken languages explores the history, geography, linguistics, and cultures that have been shaped by languages and their customs.

"A linguistically informed look at how our digital world is transforming the English language. Language is humanity's most spectacular open-source project, and the internet is making our language change faster and in more interesting ways than ever before. Internet conversations are structured by the shape of our apps and platforms, from the grammar of status updates to the protocols of comments and @replies. Linguistically inventive online communities...

A shipwrecked Viking prince, a band of gold, passed from generation to generation, the hidden history that links Joan of Arc, Daniel Boone, and Abraham Lincoln — this 1921 tapestry of fourteen interconnected stories sweeps the reader on a breathless quest through the ages.

"In her years as a writing coach, Judy Reeves has found twin urges in women. They yearn to reclaim a true nature obscured by traditional roles and to write about, through, and beyond this process. Reeves herself experienced this need, which informed her most popular workshop and now this workshop in a book. Reeves focuses consecutively on the cycles that make up a woman's life, from Wild Child, Mother/Sister/Daughter, and Loves and Lovers to explorations...