Archive for the 'Literature and Fiction' Category

Immediate Fiction: A Complete Writing Course

Immediate Fiction: A Complete Writing Course

The Only Writing Book You’ll Ever Need

From the legendary creator of the Writer’s Loft in Chicago, comes a writing course for those who want to see results now. Immediate Fiction covers the entire process of writing including manuscript preparation, time management, finding an idea, getting words on the page, staying unblocked, and submitting to agents and publishers.

The Strange Cases of Rudolph Pearson: Horripilating Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (Call of Cthulhu Fiction)

The Strange Cases of Rudolph Pearson: Horripilating Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (Call of Cthulhu Fiction) Professor Rudolph Pearson moved to New York City after the Great War, hoping to put his past behind him. While teaching Medieval Literature at Columbia University, he helped the police unravel a centuries old mystery. At the same moment, he uncovered a threat so terrifying that he could not turn away. With the bloody scribbling of an Old English script in a dead man s apartment, Rudolph Pearson begins a journey that takes him to the very beginning of human civilization. There he learns of the terror that brings doom to his world. Gathered here are the weird investigations of Rudolph Pearson. This compilation of cosmic horror and Cthulhu Mythos tales brings to life a world full of the grotesque and the malefic, set against a backdrop of an unknowable universe. Progress can be horrifying.
Customer Review: Horripilating indeed! More please, Mr. Jones.
The Strange Cases of Rudolph Pearson by William Jones is a trade paperback published by Chaosium. List price is $14.95; currently is not available directly from Amazon. Cover art is by Steven Gilberts, who gave us the covers of Frontier Cthulhu (my favorite of his works) and Arkham Tales (which I also liked better than this). A vile multi-tentacled thing with weirdly segmented legs is trying to pass through some portal. Mr. Gilberts seems to be the house artist for Chaosium these days. Page count is 240 but the actual text doesn’t start until page 15, and there are scattered blank pages between sections. For the price, for publishers in this genre, I think this is a reasonably generous book. Production values are high and editing was tight; I didn’t notice any typographical errors. Several of the stories have been published before (as noted in the useful acknowledgements, but only in obscure periodicals. I actually previously read Feasters of the Dark when it saw the light of print in Dreaming in R’lyeh (a magazine that tanked rapidly thereafter, lamented only because they welshed on my subscription money). The author William Jones is well known due to his tireless efforts on behalf of Elder Signs Press (one of my favorite publishing concerns!) and horror fiction in general.

The Year of Miss Agnes (Aladdin Historical Fiction)

The Year of Miss Agnes (Aladdin Historical Fiction)

A year they’ll never forget

Ten-year-old Frederika (Fred for short) doesn’t have much faith that the new teacher in town will last very long. After all, they never do. Most teachers who come to their one-room schoolhouse in remote, Alaska leave at the first smell of fish, claiming that life there is just too hard.

But Miss Agnes is different — she doesn’t get frustrated with her students, and she throws away old textbooks and reads Robin Hood instead! For the first time, Fred and her classmates begin to enjoy their lessons and learn to read and write — but will Miss Agnes be like all the rest and leave as quickly as she came?
Customer Review: Excellent!
It was a great book because it explained the days they spent with Miss Agnes, their substitute teacher, and how much fun they had with her. The story took place in 1948 in a school in Alaska. All the teachers before Miss Agnes didn’t understnd the kids in the village, but Miss Agnes did. She taught them all kinds of new things like reading maps, and wrote books for each student to read. In the end, Miss Agnes became not a substitute teacher, but their regular teacher for another year. Sydney, 3rd Grade.
Customer Review: Becoming an elementary teacher?
For those interested in teaching in elementary school, you and your students will enjoy this heart-felt book!

Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing, Compact Edition (5th Edition) (Kennedy/Gioia Literature Series)

Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing, Compact Edition (5th Edition) (Kennedy/Gioia Literature Series)

The concise version of the discipline’s most popular introductory anthology, Kennedy/Gioia’s Literature, Compact Edition continues to inspire students with engaging insights on reading and writing about stories, poems, and plays.