Is writing like cartography? Definitely. We’ve said it before, and people who are much smarter than us — like Peter Turchi, author of Maps of the Imagination — have written about the (ahem) overlapping terrain between stories and map-making.

Is writing like a puzzle? Sure, why not. That’s the premise of Tuchi’s latest book, A Muse and a Maze. It’s full of lush illustrations, embedded puzzles, and notes on Harry Houdini, Alison Bechdel, tangrams, labyrinths, and sudoku. Turchi argues that anything with a plot is like a puzzle with a solution: to make one, you have to carefully divulge and withhold information to lead people toward a “state of wonder.”

Start by solving the puzzle in the title.

– Brian Hurley