Jane Smiley

Author Information
Jane Smiley's Latest Book

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  • Bibliography:
    34 Books (3 Series)
  • First Book:
    January 1980
  • Latest Book:
    June 2024
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Full Series List in Order

An Ellen & Ned Book

1 - Riding Lessons (Mar-2018)
2 - Saddles & Secrets (Mar-2019)

The Horses of Oak Valley Ranch

1 - The Georges and the Jewels (Sep-2009)
2 - A Good Horse (Nov-2010)
3 - True Blue (Oct-2011)
4 - Pie in the Sky (Sep-2012)
5 - Gee Whiz (Oct-2013)

Last Hundred Years

1 - Some Luck (Oct-2014)
2 - Early Warning (May-2015)
3 - Golden Age (Oct-2015)

Book List in Order: 34 titles

  • Barn Blind

    • / General Fiction
    • Buy Buy

    The verdant pastures of a farm in Illinois have the placid charm of a landscape painting. But the horses that graze there have become the obsession of a woman who sees them as the fulfillment of every wish: to win, to be honored, to be the best. Her ...

  • Duplicate Keys

    They were six friends from the Midwest who moved to New York City with the high hopes of making a big-time splash in the music industry. Though the dream faded, the bonds between this tight-knit group did not. Or so it seemed. For one brilliantly sun...

  • Age of Grief

    From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres -- a luminous novella and short stories that explore the vicissitudes of love, friendship, and marriage. • “A glorious achievement….. Infinitely satisfying….. A triumph.” -- The Ne...

  • The Greenlanders

    From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres -- and "a diverse and masterly writer” (The New York Times Book Review) -- comes an enthralling epic tale, written in the tradition of the old Norse sagas, that takes us to fourteenth-centu...

  • Ordinary Love And Good Will

    From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres -- and “one of her generation’s most eloquent chroniclers of ordinary familial love” (The New York Times) -- comes two exquisite twin novellas that chronicle the difficult choices that ...

  • A Thousand Acres

    A thousand acres, a piece of land of almost mythic proportions. Upon this fertile, nourishing earth, Jane Smiley has set her rich, breathtakingly dramatic novel of an American family whose wealth cannot stay the hand of tragedy. It is the intense, co...

  • Moo

    Nestled in the heart of the Midwest, amid cow pastures and waving fields of grain, lies Moo University, a distinguished institution devoted to the art and science of agriculture. Here, among an atmosphere rife with devious plots, mischievous intrigue...

  • The All-True Travels and Adventures of Liddie Newton

    See the difference, read #1 bestselling author Jane Smiley in Large Print* About Large PrintAll Random House Large Print editions are published in a 16-point typefaceSix years after her Pulitzer Prize-winning best-seller, A Thousand Acres, and three ...

  • At Paradise Gate

    In this brilliant novel, Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling author Jane Smiley delves into the domestic drama of the Robison family. While seventy-seven-year-old Ike Robison is dying in his bedroom upstairs, his wife defends the citadel of their ...



  • Horse Heaven

    It's not true," says a character in Jane Smiley's funny, passionate, and brilliant new novel of horse racing, "that anything can happen at the racetrack," but many astonishing and affecting things do -- and in Horse Heaven, we find them woven into a ...

  • Good Faith

    Greed. Envy. Sex. Property. In her subversively funny and genuinely moving new novel, Jane Smiley nails down several American obsessions with the expertise of a master carpenter. Forthright, likable Joe Stratford is the kind of local businessman eve...

  • Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel

    Over an extraordinary twenty-year career, Jane Smiley has written all kinds of novels: mystery, comedy, historical fiction, epic. “Is there anything Jane Smiley cannot do?” raves Time magazine. But in the wake of 9/11, Smiley faltered in her hith...

  • Ten Days in the Hills

    In the aftermath of the Academy Awards, Elena and Max -- he's an Oscar-winning writer/director -- open their Hollywood Hills home to a group of friends and neighbors, industry insiders and hangers-on, eager to escape the outside world and dissect the...

  • The Georges and the Jewels

    The Horses of Oak Valley Ranch - 1

    Jane Smiley makes her debut for young readers in this stirring novel set on a California horse ranch in the 1960s. Seventh-grader Abby Lovitt has always been more at ease with horses than with people. Her father insists they call all the mares "Jewel...

  • Private Life

    Margaret Mayfield is nearly an old maid at twenty-seven in post -- Civil War Missouri when she marries Captain Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early. Hes the most famous man their small town has ever produced: a naval officer and a brilliant astronomera gen...

  • A Good Horse

    The Horses of Oak Valley Ranch - 2

    When eighth grader Abby Lovitt looks out at those pure-gold rolling hills, she knows there's no place she'd rather be than her family's ranch -- even with all the hard work of tending to nine horses. But some chores are no work at all, like grooming ...

  • True Blue

    The Horses of Oak Valley Ranch - 3

    True Blue is a beauty, a dappled gray, and when Abby gets to take him to her family's ranch, she can hardly believe her luck. The horse needs a home: his owner -- a woman brand new to the riding stable -- was tragically killed in a car crash and no o...

  • Mystery Horse

  • Pie in the Sky

    The Horses of Oak Valley Ranch - 4

    Abby Lovitt doesn't realize how unprepared she is when she takes her beloved horse, True Blue, to a clinic led by the most famous equestrian anyone knows. The biggest surprise, though, is that Sophia, the girl who never makes a mistake, suddenly make...



  • Gee Whiz

    The Horses of Oak Valley Ranch - 5

    Gee Whiz is a striking horse, and only part of that is because of his size. He is tall, but also graceful, yet his strides big but precise. At the same time, he keeps his eye on things, not as if he's suspicious, but as if he's curious. When Abby ...

  • Some Luck

    Last Hundred Years - 1

    1920, Denby, Iowa: Rosanna and Walter Langdon have just welcomed their firstborn son, Frank, into their family farm. He will be the oldest of five. Each chapter in this extraordinary novel covers a single year, encompassing the sweep of h...

  • Early Warning

    Last Hundred Years - 2

    The journey of a remarkable family with roots in the Iowa heartland through mid-century America "Early Warning" opens in 1953 with the Langdon family at a crossroads. Their stalwart patriarch, Walter, who with his wife, Rosanna, sustained their f...

  • Golden Age

    Last Hundred Years - 3

    It’s 1987, and the next generation of Langdons is facing economic, social, and political challenges unlike anything their ancestors have encountered. Michael and Richie, twin sons of World War II hero Frank, work in the high-stakes worlds of govern...

  • Lily

    A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection   From the Pulitzer Prize"winning author of the classic A Thousand Acres and winner of the 1985 O. Henry Award, “Lily” -- first published as part of the classic collection of short stories...

  • Twenty Yawns

    As her mom reads a bedtime story, Lucy drifts off. But later, she awakens in a dark, still room, and everything looks mysterious. How will she ever get back to sleep? Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley’s first picture book, illustrated by Caldeco...

  • Riding Lessons

    An Ellen & Ned Book - 1

    Eleven-year-old Ellen is a spunky -- and occasionally misbehaving -- young riding student. Her teacher Abby Lovitt (who readers might recognize from The Georges and the Jewels) is a high school student who introduces her to jumping, dressage techni...

  • Saddles and Secrets

  • Saddles & Secrets

    An Ellen & Ned Book - 2

    A young rider gets to know a new pony, adjusts to a new sibling, and learns a lot about secrets in this charming follow-up to Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley's Riding Lessons. Ellen can't stop thinking about the racehorse Ned--and the secret she...

  • Taking the Reins

    A young rider encounters well-known horses and new friends in the final installment of the Ellen & Ned trilogy by Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley.Ellen's family has moved to a new town...but some things, like her love for horses, remain the sam...



  • Perestroika in Paris

    NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize-winning and best-selling author: a captivating, brilliantly imaginative story of three extraordinary animals -- and a young boy -- whose lives intersect in Paris in this "feel-good escape” (The N...

  • The Strays of Paris

  • A Dangerous Business

    From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, best-selling author of A Thousand Acres: An amazing “mash-up of a Western, a serial-killer mystery and a feminist-inflected tale of life in a bordello” (The Washington Post). In 1850s Gold Rush Cali...

  • Lucky

    From the best-selling, Pulitzer Prize"winning writer, a soaring, soulful novel about a folk musician who rises to fame across our changing times • “A robust, atmospheric coming-of-age story.” -- PeopleBefore Jodie Rattler became a star,...

  • The Questions That Matter Most

    “Clear, vibrant” essays on reading and writing by the Pulitzer Prize"winning, New York Times"bestselling author: “A reader feels smarter just taking it in” (The Boston Globe). From the author of A Dangerous Business, A Thousand Acres, and...

Award-Winning Books by Jane Smiley

The All-True Travels and Adventures of Liddie Newton
1999 Spur Award -- Novel of the West
A Thousand Acres
1991 National Book Critics Circle Award -- National Book Critics Circle Award
1991 Pulitzer Prize -- Fiction
1992 Pulitzer Prize -- Fiction


Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Jane Smiley has published 34 books.

Jane Smiley does not have a new book coming out soon. The latest book, The Questions That Matter Most, was published in June 2024.

The first book by Jane Smiley, Barn Blind, was published in January 1980.

Yes. Jane Smiley has 3 series.
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