The Cobra and the Key: A Novel

"The Cobra and the Key is a funny and charming satire of writing advice and the people who give it." -The Paris Review

Sam Shelstad's brilliantly funny, slightly unhinged creative writing guide is How Fiction Works by James Wood meets Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov.

To the untrained eye, Sam Shelstad may look a lot like a Value Village cashier who shares an apartment with his Uncle Herman and has just emerged from a failed relationship with a woman forty years his senior whom he met at his mot...