Mysterious Cipher in Herman Melville's Margin Notes May Reveal Hidden Chapter of Moby-Dick

A mysterious trunk discovered in a Buenos Aires estate contains what appears to be a complete, unpublished novel by Jorge Luis Borges, written entirely backward in mirror script. Scholars believe the 400-page manuscript may represent Borges' most ambitious literary experiment.

A recently discovered private journal belonging to Jules Verne contains remarkably accurate descriptions of technology resembling modern internet communications, written nearly 150 years before their invention. The diary was found hidden in a false compartment of an antique desk sold at a Nantes auction.

Historians at Oxford's Bodleian Library have uncovered evidence that Jane Austen was part of a secret literary collective of women writers who shared manuscripts and edited each other's work in early 19th century England.

Place your characters at literal thresholds—doorways, gates, bridges—when they must make irreversible choices. The physical act of crossing creates a visceral moment of commitment that readers feel in their bodies. Before the threshold, your character can still retreat. After, they cannot. This technique works because architecture becomes psychology. In Bram Stoker's 'Dracula,' Jonathan Harker notices that Count Dracula never invites him to cross a threshold—he must choose to enter himself. Each doorway Harker walks through deepens his entrapment. The castle's many doors become symbols of choices he cannot unmake. When writing threshold scenes, slow the pacing dramatically. Describe the door itself, the character's hand on the handle, the sounds from the other side. Let them pause. Let them almost turn back. Then have them step through—and immediately show how the world on the other side is subtly different from what they expected.

Forty-two years ago today, the literary world lost its greatest prankster. Julio Cortázar died in Paris on February 12, 1984, leaving behind a body of work that still makes contemporary novelists look like they're writing grocery lists. If you've never read Hopscotch, congratulations—you've been missing out on the single most revolutionary reading experience of the twentieth century.

The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth?—Because one did survive the wreck. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan. Thus was I drawn from the sea, clinging to that coffin life-buoy which had once been meant for Queequeg, my savage friend whose spirit perhaps guided it to bear me up when all else had gone down into the vortex. For three days I lay in fever upon the Rachel's deck, and in my delirium I saw again the white phantom rising from the deep, saw Ahab's arm beckoning from the hemp entanglements.