The Girls Next Door

Turchi, Peter

Literature & Fiction

Plume

I beg to differ with the Publishers Weekly review. This is a beautifully written book. I found I would have to put it down periodically, to make sure I took the time to appreciate the flow of the story. There is a wonderful tension between the direction you think the story is going to go, and where it takes you in the end.

United States

Dutton Adult

Eleven stories depict ordinary people of all ages trying to make the right decision in difficult, and unexpected circumstances

Magician: Stories

Dutton

The author describes his lifelong fascination with discovering the wreckage of the Whydah, a ship that sank off of Cape Cod in 1717, and his ultimate discovery of the ship's treasure, estimated at $400 million. 40,000 first printing.

The Pirate Prince: Discovering the Priceless Treasures of the Sunken Ship Whydah : An Adventure

History

Clifford, Barry

Americas

Simon&Schuster

Traces: Mapping a Journey in Textiles was published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same title curated by Barbara Lee Smith for the Gregg Museum of Art &amp; Design, January 20 through May 14, 2011.

Traces: Mapping a Journey in Textiles

Arts & Photography

Manley, Roger

Ennis, Lynn Jones

History & Criticism

Gregg Museum of Art and Design, NC State University

Eleven stories depict ordinary people of all ages trying to make the right decision in difficult, and unexpected circumstances

Short Stories & Anthologies

AuthorHouse

Maps of the Imagination takes us on a magic carpet ride over terrain both familiar and exotic. Using the map as a metaphor, fiction writer Peter Turchi considers writing as a combination of exploration and presentation, all the while serving as an erudite and charming guide. He compares the way a writer leads a reader though the imaginary world of a story, novel, or poem to the way a mapmaker charts the physical world. "To ask for a map," says Turchi, "is to say, Tell me a story.’ " With intelligence and wit, the author looks at how mapmakers and writers deal with blank space and the blank page; the conventions they use or consciously disregard; the role of geometry in maps and the parallel role of form in writing; how both maps and writing serve to re-create an individual’s view of the world; and the artist’s delicate balance of intuition with intention. A unique combination of history, critical cartography, personal essay, and practical guide to writing, Maps of the Imagination is a book for writers, for readers, and for anyone interested in creativity. Colorful illustrations and Turchi’s insightful observations make his book both beautiful and a joy to read.

Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer

Literary

Trinity University Press

In Maps of the Imagination, Peter Turchi posits the idea that maps help people understand where they are in the world in the same way that literature, whether realistic or experimental, attempts to explain human realities. The author explores how writers and cartographers use many of the same devices for plotting and executing their work, making crucial decisions about what to include and what to leave out, in order to get from here to there, without excess baggage or a confusing surplus of information. Turchi traces the history of maps, from their initial decorative and religious purposes to their later instructional applications. He describes how maps rely on projections in order to portray a three-dimensional world on the two-dimensional flat surface of paper, which he then relates to what writers do in projecting a literary work from the imagination onto the page.

With his characteristic talent for finding connections between writing and the stuff of our lives, Peter Turchi ventures into new and even more surprising territory. In A Muse and a Maze, Turchi draws out the similarities between writing and puzzle-making and its flip-side, puzzle-solving. As he teases out how mystery lies at the heart of all storytelling, he uncovers the magicthe creation of credible illusionthat writers share with the likes of Houdini and master magicians. In Turchi’s associative narrative, we learn about the history of puzzles, their obsessive quality, and that Benjamin Franklin was a devotee of an ancient precursor of sudoku called Magic Squares. Applying this rich backdrop to the requirements of writing, Turchi reveals as much about the human psyche as he does about the literary imagination and the creative process.

A Muse and a Maze: Writing as Puzzle, Mystery, and Magic

Humor & Entertainment

Puzzles & Games

With his characteristic talent for finding the connections between writing and the stuff of our lives (most notably in his earlier hit Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer), Peter Turchi ventures into new, and even more surprising, territory. In A Muse and a Maze, Turchi draws out the similarities between writing and puzzle-making and its flip side, puzzle-solving. He teases out how mystery lies at the heart of all storytelling. And he uncovers the magicthe creation of credible illusionthat writers share with the likes of Houdini and master magicians. In Turchi’s associative narrative, we learn about the history of puzzles, their obsessive quality, and that Benjamin Franklin was a devotee of an ancient precursor of sudoku called Magic Squares. Applying this rich backdrop to the requirements of writing, Turchi reveals as much about the human psyche as he does about the literary imagination and the creative process. With the goal of giving writers new ways to think about their work and readers new ways to consider the books they encounter, A Muse and a Maze suggests ways in which every piece of writing is a kind of puzzle. The work argues that literary writing is defined, at least in part, by its embrace of mystery; offers tangrams as a model for the presentation of complex characters; compares a writer’s relationship to his or her narrator to magicians and wizards; offers the maze and the labyrinth as alternatives to the more common notion of the narrative line; and concludes with a discussion of how readers and writers, like puzzle solvers, not only tolerate but find pleasure in difficulty. While always balancing erudition with accessibility, Turchi examines the work of writers as various as A. A. Milne, Dashiell Hammett, Truman Capote, Anton Chekhov, Alison Bechdel, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Antonya Nelson, Vladimir Nabokov, Charles D’Ambrosio, Michael Ondaatje, Alice Munro, Thomas Bernhard, and Mark Twain, elaborating and illuminating ways in which their works expand and deliver on the title’s double entendre, A Muse and a Maze. With 100 images that range from movie stills from Citizen Kane and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to examples of sudokus, crosswords, and other puzzles; from Norman Rockwell’s famous triple self-portrait to artwork by Charles Richie; and from historical arcana to today’s latest magic, A Muse and a Maze offers prose exposition, images, text quotations, and every available form of wisdom, leading the reader step-by-step through passages from stories and novels to demonstrate, with remarkable clarity, how writers evolve their eventual creations.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Turchi, Peter. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Turchi, Peter

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Turchi, Peter. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Girls Next Door

The Girls Next Door

Magician: Stories

The Pirate Prince: Discovering the Priceless Treasures of the Sunken Ship Whydah : An Adventure

Traces: Mapping a Journey in Textiles

Magician: Stories

Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer

Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer

A Muse and a Maze: Writing as Puzzle, Mystery, and Magic

A Muse and a Maze: Writing as Puzzle, Mystery, and Magic