Just in case your New Year's resolutions had something to do with reading, too, here's a title for anyone who loves a good, suspenseful yarn involving creepy old houses, mistaken identities, and ghosts from high school past. In NEVER TELL A LIE, Ivy and David Rose seem to have the perfect life--a Victorian fixer-upper, a happy marriage, a first baby on the way--until a woman who claims to know them shows up at their yard sale. She introduces herself as Melinda White, but she looks and acts...

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The Art of Storytelling

One obvious truth often overlooked is that storytelling = story + telling. Those two aspects, story plus telling, encompass the essential work of a storyteller.

While most understand the concept of dreaming up a story, however one may actually come to it—whether by inspiration, muse attack, or simply dreaming—the truth is that a well-trod, even weak story can be rendered exceptional in the hands of a gifted teller. A strong story is good, but effective telling is essential to bring any story to life.

And telling isn’t writing. Effective telling has more in common with how a film or TV drama is shot—the selection of scenes, the camera angle, the created atmosphere— than with the specific form of words.

Stephanie Laurens, author of It Happened One Night

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