English Storytelling

Humans are storytelling animals. Stories are what make our societies possible. Countless books celebrate their virtues. But Jonathan Gottschall, an expert on the science of stories, argues that there is a dark side to storytelling we can no longer ignore. Storytelling, the very tradition that built human civilization, may be the thing that destroys it.

At the beginning of Virginia Woolf's fantastical and satirical 1928 novel, Orlando is a young nobleman in Elizabethan, England. At the age of 30, Orlando awakens to have found he's now a woman. Moving through the following centuries, the novel stretches over 300 years, during which time Orlando meets several key figures of English literary history.

Sam Keen, best-selling author of Fire in the Belly, and Anne Valley-Fox combine their talents to help today's men and women rediscover the mythic dimension in their own daily lives.

The old way of selling is to push a message or product. The new way of selling is to pull people in with a compelling story - one that is magnetic to clients. Better Selling Through Storytelling helps people become master storytellers so they can truly love what they do and get off the self-esteem roller coaster of only feeling good if their numbers are up.

Librarians spend their lives weeding - not weeds, but books - books that have reached the end of their shelf life both literally and figuratively. They remove books that patrons no longer check out, and they put back books they treasure. Annie Spence, who has a decade of experience as a Midwestern librarian, does this not only at her Michigan library but also at home, for her neighbors, at cocktail parties - everywhere. In Dear Fahrenheit 451, she addresses those books directly.

Mark Twain's lifetime spans America's era of greatest economic growth. And Twain was an active, even giddy, participant in all the great booms and busts of his time, launching himself into one harebrained get-rich-quick scheme after another. But far from striking it rich, the man who coined the term "Gilded Age" failed with comical regularity to join the ranks of plutocrats who made this period in America notorious for its wealth and excess.

Lots of books tell you that you should be using storytelling in your marketing if you want to connect with your audience. This audiobook tells you how. "In The Business of Stories", bestselling author Susan Payton shares her simple process for crafting compelling stories that will resonate with your ideal clients. Through practical exercises and real-life examples, she shows you how to confidently communicate your why and the value you deliver to the people you love working with (without ever feeling salesy).

"Writing is structure,” William Goldman said, but too often aspiring writers plunge into their work without grasping this fundamental principle. Story structure is one of the most important concepts for a writer to understand - and ironically, one of the least frequently taught. In this book, New York Times best-selling author William Bernhardt explains the elements that make stories work, using examples spanning from Gilgamesh to The Hunger Games.

Crowded in the Middle of Nowhere: Tales of Humor and Healing from Rural America is a collection of humorous and poignant stories from a veterinarian in a small, dusty farming and ranching community in rural West Texas. Dr. Brock gives you an intimate look into his small-town and big-hearted perspective on life, animals, and their owners. His unique perspective and tales of doctoring beloved pets, cantankerous livestock, and occasionally their owners will make you smile, laugh, cry, and evoke every other emotion under the sun.

A master class of 27 lessons, drawn from 27 diverse narratives, for novelists, storytellers, filmmakers, graphic designers, and more. Author Daniel Joshua Rubin unlocks the secrets of what makes a story work, and then shows how to understand and use these principles in your own writing. The result is “an invaluable resource” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), offering priceless advice like escalate risk, with an example from Pulp Fiction.

I’ve been role-playing all my life and I’ve run a lot of well-received campaigns. My players asked me what made my games work and this audiobook is the result. This isn’t a rulebook for any gaming system, but it’s a how-to for my style of creating memorable NPCs, planning games, and engaging with your players.

Much more than a knack for snappy comebacks, wit is the quick, instinctive intelligence that allows us to think, say, or do the right thing at the right time in the right place. In this whimsical book, James Geary explores every facet of wittiness, from its role in innovation to why puns are the highest form of wit. Geary reasons that wit is both visual and verbal, physical and intellectual: there’s the serendipitous wit of scientists, the crafty wit of inventors, the optical wit of artists, and the metaphysical wit of philosophers.

Three complete stories in one collection! Includes The Vanishing Passenger, The Giant Yo-Yo Mystery, and The Creature in Ogopogo Lake!

In "Discover Together: Storytelling for the Whole Family, Volume Two," we embark on an enthralling journey through the landscape of emerging technologies and their profound impact on our lives. This volume delves into the realms of advanced artificial intelligence, the immersive world of virtual reality, the pioneering field of brain-computer interfaces, the speculative science of teleportation, and the visionary concept of a Global Consciousness Network.

In this age, turning hard data into a compelling narrative is no longer a luxury. It has become a necessity. Visual communication is no longer enough. Presenters need to kick things up a notch and find effective ways to turn hard-to-chew insights into compelling and persuasive stories that influence your audiences’ decisions and push them to want change to happen.

In Planet Funny, Ken Jennings explores this brave new comedic world and what it means - or doesn’t - to be funny in it now. Tracing the evolution of humor from the caveman days to the bawdy middle-class antics of Chaucer to Monty Python’s game-changing silliness to the fast-paced meta-humor of The Simpsons, Jennings explains how we built our humor-saturated modern age, where lots of us get our news from comedy shows and a comic figure can even be elected president of the United States purely on showmanship.

Business storytelling is the #1 skill you need to succeed in your professional lives amidst all the noise, competition and massive technological disruption. In this book, Sandeep looks at human evolution, behavioural psychology and the world of movies to identify the golden principles of storytelling.

Bestselling advice columnist Vandy Guru built her career teaching others how to live honestly and courageously, but after the loss of her husband, Vandy’s public veneer can barely conceal her grief. When her beloved daughter Mallika suddenly disappears and her estranged childhood best friend Rani returns, stirring up long-buried secrets, Vandy’s carefully crafted life feels at risk.

The Depths of December is a short and punchy (12,000 word) treatment of one of the most pivotal naval battles in World War II, when the British Far East Fleet found itself pitted against the Mitsubishi Bombers of the 22nd Flotilla Imperial Japanese Air Service off the coast of Singapore and Malaya. It is narrated in an engaging and high-energy style by the author of the book.

Clint Edwards, author of the hit book I'm Sorry...Love Your Husband and the follow-up Silence Is a Scary Sound, is back with a third collection of essays chronicling honest tales of struggling to raise three young kids, making plenty of mistakes along the way and learning to be a better father. After Clint's first collection of stories, which act as an apology to his wife, this natural follow-up will place the author's children at the center of the apology and recount funny and relatable tales of Clint's parenting fails.