"Bird Cloud" is the name Annie Proulx gave to 640 acres of Wyoming wetlands and prairie and four-hundred-foot cliffs plunging down to the North Platte River. On the day she first visited, a cloud in the shape of a bird hung in the evening sky.  She fell in love with the land, and she knew what she wanted to build on it - a house in harmony with her work, her appetites and her character, a library surrounded by bedrooms and a kitchen.

Proulx's first work of nonfiction in more than twenty years, Bird Cloud is the story of designing and constructing that house. It is also an enthralling natural history and archaeology of the region and a family history.

Proulx, a writer with extraordinary powers of observation and compassion, here turns her lens on herself. We understand how she came to be living in a house surrounded by wilderness, with shelves for thousands of books ... and how she came to be one of the great American writers of her time.

Annie Proulx is the author of eight books, including the novel The Shipping News (Pulizter Prize for Fiction, 1993; Nation Book Award for Fiction, 1994) and the story collection Close Range.  Her story "Brokeback Mountain" was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film. Her most recent book is Fine Just the Way It Is. 

A New York Times bestseller, now available in paperback, Atul Gawande's The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right shows what the simple idea of the checklist reveals about the complexity of our lives and how we can deal with it.

We train longer, specialize more, use ever-advancing technologies, and still we fail. And the reason is simple: the volume and complexity of knowledge today has exceeded our ability as individuals to properly deliver it to people - consistently, correctly, safely.  

Atul Gawande makes a compelling argument that we can do better, using the simplest of methods: the checklist. In riveting stories, he reveals what checklists can do, what they can't, and how they could bring about striking improvements in a variety of fields. And the insights are making a difference. Already, a simple surgical checklist from the WHO designed by following the ideas described here has been adopted in more than twenty countries as a standard for care and has been heralded as "the biggest clinical invention in thirty years" (The Independent).

June Casagrande's knowledge and wit shine in this paperback guide for both the novice and experienced writer.  She is funny and instructive as she shows us why some sentences command attention ... and others flop as filler.

Sentences are the building blocks of all writing, from term papers to novels, diaries to memoirs (and, yes, e-newsletters!).  Many writers overlook the importance of this most basic structure.

It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences: A Writer's Guide to Crafting Killer Sentences is both informative and entertaining. A guide for writers - and readers - of all types.

June Casagrande is a journalist and editor who writes the weekly syndicated grammar column "A Word, Please." Her previously published books include Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies and Mortal Syntax.