Take the format of a spy thriller, shape it around real-life incidents involving international terrorism, leaven it with dark, dry humor, toss in a love rectangle, give everybody a gun, and let everything play out in the outer reaches of upstate New York. Sounds like the summer satire you’ve been waiting for. Enter for aContinue reading
Today is National Iced Tea Day, of course. This being the South, we have plenty of cool, refreshing iced tea — make that, sweet tea — in our office. But on a sunny, sweltering day like today, iced tea is meant to be sipped and savored, gulped and guzzled from a tall glass with aContinue reading
Readers often wonder about the behind-the-scenes aspects of book publishing, and jacket design can seem especially mysterious. Today, Creative Director Anne Winslow explains the creative process behind the jacket for Brock Clarke’s The Happiest People in the World. Deploying the wry wit and nimble prose for which he is known, Clarke has crafted a darklyContinue reading
We’ve matched up the first lines of our Fall 2014 fiction with the titles from which they come. This handy-dandy guide also serves as the answer key for the Fall’s First Lines quiz in our new Inside Algonquin newsletter. (Have you signed up for the Inside Algonquin newsletter? Oh, please do! It’s great fun.) 1.“I’mContinue reading
Pulitzer Prize winning author Richard Russo talks spies, perspective, setting, and striking a balance with Brock Clarke, author of the upcoming novel The Happiest People in the World. “The parallel universe Clarke creates … is both our world and not, and like his baffled, yearning characters, we navigate it with surprise and wonder,” Russo saysContinue reading
This month for our October Lucky Stars, we present men, men like any other men, only moreso, to paraphrase a fictional man like Rick Blaine. Each of these e-books — just $1.99 apiece throughout the month — introduces us to a man figuring out who he is, what his character is in some unusual circumstances.Continue reading