Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin

The first lines of a dozen noteworthy books, including Hardly Creatures by Rob Macaisa Colgate and Chronicle of Drifting by Yuki Tanaka.
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The first lines of a dozen noteworthy books, including Hardly Creatures by Rob Macaisa Colgate and Chronicle of Drifting by Yuki Tanaka.
In The Book of Records, Madeleine Thien takes on political, historical, and philosophical issues in the wake of catastrophe while offering a portrait of a life that holds hope amid seemingly hopeless circumstances.
In his fifth novel, Run for the Hills, Kevin Wilson returns to a theme that flows through much of his work: the threads that connect us to other people, even if we’ve never met them before.
Writing contests that accept excerpts as short-form prose can help you keep up the momentum during the long journey to book publication. Contest winners and other experts share what it takes to create an attention-grabbing excerpt.
“Editing down is something I dread in the abstract because I know I can lose motivation easily. But this book has ingrained the lesson in me fully.” —Dennis E. Staples, author of Passing Through a Prairie Country
“The magic happens in the writing, on the page. That’s the high.” —Mariam Rahmani, author of Liquid: A Love Story
Karen Russell’s second novel, The Antidote, published by Knopf in March, examines a dark chapter of America’s past, but not without hope for the future.
The first lines of a dozen noteworthy books, including The Figure Going Imaginary by Marianne Boruch and Marginlands: A Journey Into India’s Vanishing Landscapes by Arati Kumar-Rao.
“Nothing makes a clunky sentence more obvious than saying it out loud.” —Margie Sarsfield, author of Beta Vulgaris
“Take your time. And indulge in the messiness, the privacy, the anxieties of the writing process.” —Aria Aber, author of Good Girl