A recent e-mail from Amazon.com made my heart start racing. My order had been shipped, it said, and "Living Abroad in Costa Rica" would arrive any day.

The assignment: Craft a novel from the literary equivalent of found objects. Consider the narrative possibilities contained not just in letters and e-mails, but in school report cards, emergency room bills and police reports filed by night managers at Westin Hotels.

Susan Coll works at Politics & Prose Bookstore and would like to emphasize that this essay should be shelved under fiction. Her novel, "The Stager," will be published in July.