In this compilation of newspaper columns of the same title, Kanigel offers his reviews of eighty books, thirty-three of which are fiction, the rest nonfiction.

Creative Writing is a complete writing course that will jump-start your writing and guide you through your first steps towards publication. Suitable for use by students, tutors, writers’ groups or writers working alone, this book offers: a practical and inspiring section on the creative process, showing you how to stimulate your creativity and use your memory and experience in inventive ways in-depth coverage of the most popular forms of writing, in extended sections on fiction, poetry and life writing, including biography and autobiography, giving you practice in all three forms so that you might discover and develop your particular strengths a sensible, up-to-date guide to going public, to help you to edit your work to a professional standard and to identify and approach suitable publishers a distinctive collection of exciting exercises, spread throughout the workbook to spark your imagination and increase your technical flexibility and control a substantial array of illuminating readings, bringing together extracts from contemporary and classic writings in order to demonstrate a range of techniques that you can use or adapt in your own work. Creative Writing: A Workbook with Readings presents a unique opportunity to benefit from the advice and experience of a team of published authors who have also taught successful writing courses at a wide range of institutions, helping large numbers of new writers to develop their talents as well as their abilities to evaluate and polish their work to professional standards. These institutions include Lancaster University and the University of East Anglia, renowned as consistent producers of published writers.

Reading Scripture is a spiritual practice at the very heart of the Christian faith. But how is it possible to encounter God in reading the words of the Bible? Does reading the Christian Bible require a different approach from how one may read other texts or writings? What is required of the spiritual reader to read well? Seeking to answer such questions, Angela Lou Harvey provides a theological exploration of the idea of "spiritual reading" in the context of the Western church today. Drawing upon insights of theologians such as Karl Barth, Henri de Lubac, and Ellen F. Davis, the author suggests that the particulars of Christian belief profoundly shape the distinctive practice of the spiritual reading of the Bible.