Holiday Essay

Just in time for Christmas comes a collection of the very best holiday essays from the bestselling Mother/Daughter writing duo. Whether their shopping for matching reindeer dog sweaters or having second helpings of eggnog, Lisa Scottoline and Francesca Serritella will keep you warm with their...

From one of the most important chroniclers of our time, come two extended excerpts from her never-before-seen notebooks–writings that offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary writer. Joan Didion has always kept notebooks: of overheard dialogue, observations...

Charles Dickens offers a timeless meditation on the season in this tender, uplifting Christmas essay—an invitation to gather the living and the lost around the hearth of memory. With warmth and clarity, he traces our journey from childhood wonder to adult gratitude, forgiveness, and hope...

For fans of Laurie Notaro and Jenny Lawson comes an uproarious and oddly endearing essay collection for anyone trying to survive the holidays in one piece. When it comes to time-honored holiday traditions, Jen Mann pulls no punches In this hilariously irreverent collection of essays, Jen Mann...

Sam Pulsifer, the hapless hero of this incendiary novel, has come to the end of a very long and unusual journey, and for the second time in his life he has the time to think about all the things that have and have not come to pass. The truth is, a lot of remarkable things have happened in...

“We don’t like bad news, but we need it. We need to know about it in case it’s coming our way.” This delicious, contemptuous and poignant micro-story is the first in the acclaimed collection, Moral Disorder, from towering author and #1 New York Times Bestseller, Margaret Atwood. The bad...

From the acclaimed, award-winning author: Why are books so very powerful? What do the books we’ve read over our lives—our own personal libraries—make of us? What does the unraveling of our tradition of public libraries, so hard-won but now in jeopardy, say about us? The stories in Ali...

The writing of Death of a President, William Manchester’s award-winning account of President Kennedy’s assassination, is the topic of the title essay in this collection, as it was a controversy like few others, pitting one of the most prominent historians of the day against Jackie Kennedy...

If Joan Didion was right, and we do tell ourselves stories in order to live, then a travel story is the best story of them all. And I had form for escaping in stories... Kate Wills wasn't expecting to be divorced after less than a year of marriage. She hadn't anticipated restarting a life that...

The essential guide to crafting the winning college admissions essay that only you could write, from America’s favorite writing coach. Most high school students never have received any instruction in how to write a personal essay. Yet at a time when getting admitted to their dream college is...

Established early in the last century as a memorial to O. Henry, this annual collection has consistently offered a remarkable sampling of contemporary short stories. Each year stories are chosen from large and small literary magazines and a panel of distinguished writers is enlisted to award the...

From the New York Times bestselling author of Circle of Friends and The Glass Lake comes This Year It Will Be Different, a stunning new work that brings us the magic and spirit of Christmas in fifteen stories filled with Maeve Binchy's trademark wit, charm, and sheer storytelling genius. Instead...

Big Cats opens with "Charlotte," in which a young girl with a broken pelvis spies on her voluptuous neighbor during a long, hot summer night, setting the tone of irrepressible curiosity and yearning that is evident throughout the collection. In "Get Away from Me, David," a bank manager tries to...

With a sprightly dose of insightful inspiration, a sprinkling of practical advice, and a bounty of exuberant stories by great writers, O's Little Book of Happiness features some of the best work ever to have appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine. Inside you'll find Elizabeth Gilbert's ode to the...

The inspiration for the Peacock series starring Matthew MacFadyen and Elizabeth Banks In the tradition of George Saunders and Aimee Bender, an exuberantly imagined debut that chronicles an ordinary world marked by unusual phenomena. The eighteen stories of Manuel Gonzales’s exhilarating first...

Homer, the world-renowned Blind Wonder Cat, returns this holiday season with an ins-purr-ational tale filled with holiday cheer! Fifteen years earlier, doctors had warned that Homer - a tiny, sightless kitten - was unlikely to survive and probably wouldn't have much of a life even if he did. Miraculously and against all the odds, Homer grew into a feline dynamo who scaled seven-foot bookcases, saved his human mom's life when he chased a late-night burglar from their apartment, and rose to global fame-paving the way for other special-needs animals once considered "unadoptable".

A beautiful essay by Charles Dickens that reflects on the real meaning of Christmas, and the joy, the love, and the remembrances of those gone and those yet to come. Filled with warm understanding and a real appreciation of the meaning of the season, this is a delightful addition to everyone's Christmas queue.