"A New Yorker writer revisits the seminal book of her youth--Middlemarch-- and fashions a singular, involving story of how a passionate attachment to a great work of literature can shape our lives and help us to read our own histories."--From publisher description.

"On a stormy night two hundred years ago, a young woman named Mary waited for inspiration. Her friend, the poet Lord Byron, had challenged her to write a scary story, but no ideas would come. Mary thought back through her life at the eerie things she had seen in her childhood and the losses she had suffered. But nothing was as scary as her own imagination. As she drifted off to sleep, she pictured something monstrous, a creature that was so frightening,...

"When John Waters delivered his gleefully subversive advice to the graduates of the Rhode Island School of Design in 2015, the speech went viral, in part because it was so brilliantly on point about making a living as a creative person. From an icon of popular culture, here is inspiring advice for artists, graduates, and anyone seeking happiness and success on their own terms. Now we all can enjoy his sly wisdom in a manifesto that reminds us, no...