OUR EXTRA GOODIES
Have you signed up for a workshop and want to get a jump start on some of the exercises? Or maybe you just need a good book to read on the plane or a special gift? Browse our goodies below.
Rewrite Your Life (Self-help/Nonfiction)
“A step-by-step guide for writers struggling to create fiction from their life . . . delivers on its promise with such honesty, simplicity, and beauty.”—William Kent Krueger, New York Times bestselling author
#1 Bestseller in Self-Help, Creativity
Shortlisted for an Agatha Award for Best Nonfiction!
Tender, raw, and laugh-out-loud funny, Rewrite Your Life offers both a map and a compass for those seeking to harvest their life experiences to heal, lead a more authentic life, and craft a rich, powerful work of fiction.
According to common wisdom, we all have a book inside of us. But how do we select and then write our most significant story—the one that helps us to evolve and invites pure creativity into our lives? In Rewrite Your Life, creative writing professor, sociologist, and popular fiction author Jess Lourey guides you through the redemptive process of writing a healing novel that recycles and transforms your most precious resources—your own emotions and experiences.
Better Than Gin (Activity Book)
Designed to help aspiring, stuck, or visual writers, Better than Gin: A Coloring Book for Writers combines art and narrative to stimulate your creative brain while silencing your self-doubt. The result? You get to finally write that story you're meant to write.
The Catalain Book of Secrets (Book Club Fiction)
A lush, bewitching novel about poisonous secrets, powerful love, and the magic we all carry. "Think Alice Hoffman...spell-binding!" ―Midwest Book Review
"Prolific mystery writer Lourey tells of a matriarchal clan of witches joining forces against age-old evil...The novel is tightly plotted, and Lourey shines when depicting relationships―romantic ones as well as tangled links between Catalains." ―Kirkus Reviews
"Lourey expertly concocts a Gothic fusion of long-held secrets, melancholy, and resolve...Exquisitely written in naturally flowing, expressive language, the book delves into the special relationships between sisters, and mothers and daughters." ―Publishers Weekly
The Quarry Girls (Crime Fiction)
Killers hiding in plain sight. Small-town secrets. A girl who knows too much. From the Amazon Charts bestselling author of Unspeakable Things and Bloodline comes a nerve-twisting novel inspired by a shocking true crime.
Minnesota, 1977. For the teens of one close-knit community, summer means late-night swimming parties at the quarry, the county fair, and venturing into the tunnels beneath the city. But for two best friends, it’s not all fun and games.
Heather and Brenda have a secret. Something they saw in the dark. Something they can’t forget. They’ve decided to never tell a soul. But their vow is tested when their friend disappears—the second girl to vanish in a week. And yet the authorities are reluctant to investigate.
Heather is terrified that the missing girls are connected to what she and Brenda stumbled upon that night. Desperately searching for answers on her own, she learns that no one in her community is who they seem to be. Not the police, not the boys she met at the quarry, not even her parents. But she can’t stop digging because she knows those girls are in danger. She also knows she’s next.
May Day (Romcom Mystery)
⭐ Jess named to Book Riot's "10 Funny Mystery Authors Like Janet Evanovich" list!
A waitress turned librarian just wants a new life. What she ends up with is a killer change of pace in a funny, snappy, and suspenseful mystery by Edgar Award–nominated author Jess Lourey.
With a cheating boyfriend, a thankless career in waitressing, and her BA in English going to waste, Mira James jumps at the chance for a fresh start in rural Battle Lake, Minnesota.
Right away she lands a job as a librarian, snags another as an on-call reporter for the weekly newspaper, and is swept off her feet by Jeff Wilson, a handsome archaeologist unearthing the town’s storied history. Moving here might be the best decision Mira’s ever made. Until she finds Jeff’s body between the library’s reference stacks. It seems Mira didn’t really know her drop-dead gorgeous new lover at all. But someone in Otter Tail County surely did.
Behind this quirky town’s polite exterior are decades-old grudges still unsettled, and murderous secrets best kept hidden. Whatever dangers are buried in Battle Lake’s past, now it’s Mira’s turn to start digging.