Lee Smith

On a beautiful June day in 1965, a dozen girls-classmates at a picturesque Blue Ridge women's college-launched their homemade raft (inspired by Huck Finn's) on a trip down the Mississippi. It's Girls A-Go-Go Down the Mississippi read the headline in the Paducah, Kentucky, paper. Thirty-five years later, four of those "girls" reunite to cruise the river again. This time it's on the luxury steamboat, The Belle of Natchez, and there's no publicity....

A dusty box discovered in the wreckage of a once prosperous plantation on Agate Hill in North Carolina contains the remnants of an extraordinary life: diaries, letters, poems, songs, newspaper clippings, court records, marbles, rocks, dolls, and bones. It's through these treasured mementos that we meet Molly Petree. Raised in those ruins and orphaned by the Civil War, Molly is a refugee who has no interest in self-pity. When a mysterious benefactor...

In The Christmas Letters, three generations of women reveal their stories of love and marriage in the letters they write to family and friends during the holidays. It's a down-home Christmas story about tradition, family, and the shared experiences of women. Here, in a letter of her own, Lee Smith explains how she was inspired to write this celebrated epistolary novel: Dear Friends, Like me, you probably get Christmas letters every year....

A collection of fourteen short stories by Lee Smith.

In The Consequences of Syria, Lee Smith analyzes the current U.S. administration's stance on Syria, questioning whether it will build the foundations of a new Middle East or usher in an era of instability that will affect the entire world. The author contends that the many apparent shifts in the administration's Syria policy were part of a messaging campaign intended to camouflage President Obama's determination to stay out of the Syrian conflict....

Lee Smith brings her masterful storytelling magic to this jewel of a novella that follows Jenny, an adventurous thirteen-year-old, down to Key West for a patched-up family vacation following the discovery of her father's illicit affair. Available for the first time as a stand-alone novella, this book centers on the Blue Marlin Motel, where Jenny, her beautiful socialite mother, and chastened father share their sunny days with movie stars who are...

Lee Smith, author of the acclaimed The Last Girls, delights with a tale of dry wit. Smith has won many prizes, such as the Southern Book Critics Circle Award and the Academy Award in Literature. Speed, Alabama is celebrating 150 years of proud existence-and its whimsical inhabitants will definitely not let the event pass without a party.

In Family Linen, with a remarkable economy of description and dialogue, Smith sketches eccentric, yet familiar characters moving through a family drama that resonates with both tension and humor. Sybil Hess, a polished, Southern apartment manager has visited a hypnotist in a desperate attempt to discover the source of her blinding headaches. But in one session, a mysterious, Gothic childhood memory plays before her eyes. Now Sybil is racing against...

This disarming first novel from award-winning author Lee Smith vibrantly displays the remarkable talent that led her to become one of America's most popular fiction writers. Like To Kill a Mockingbird, it evokes the hot summer nights of childhood's lost innocence. Nine-year-old Susan has the whole glorious, carefree summer ahead of her. Sometimes she worries that her mother and father aren't happy together, but from her vantage point under the dogbushes,...

Lee Smith, one of today's finest writers in the Southern literary tradition, has been compared to Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor. This collection of nine stories, ranging from poignant ballads to delightfully inventive forms, showcases Smith's celebrated talent. The stories will make you chuckle and leave you with a satisfying sense that no matter how unruly or warped life may seem, equilibrium can be found after all. With each story you will...