Lee Smith

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Lee Smith's Latest Book

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  • Bibliography:
    23 Books
  • First Book:
    January 1980
  • Latest Book:
    March 2024
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Book List in Order: 23 titles

  • Black Mountain Breakdown

    Crystal Spangler lives in rural Appalachia. She's the apple of her mother's eye -- not yet beautiful, but she will be. She's the most popular girl at Black Rock High. She makes cheerleader, gets good grades, and is elected beauty queen. Crystal disco...

  • Cakewalk

    First published in 1982, Cakewalk was the first short story collection by iconic Southern writer Lee Smith. Comic and observant, Smith's fourteen tales in Cakewalk introduce readers to a host of memorable Southern characters. Her protagonists include...

  • Oral History

    For generations, the Cantrells have lived in Hoot Owl Holler. When Jennifer, a city cousin, comes to do some taping for an Oral History class, she hears stories of moon shine, superstition, murder, love, and the hundred-year witch's curse that still...

  • Family Linen

    "Brilliant, haunting, dark, joyous, remarkably compelling...immensely difficult to put down...a master storyteller."THE VILLAGE VOICEA childhood memory re-experienced, a funeral that brings about a family reunion, and the excavation of a swimming poo...

  • Fancy Strut

    "Nothing less than masterly." THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

    Speed, Alabama is frantically preparing for the event of a lifetime: Sesquicentennial Week. And all her proud citizens are kicking up their heels in a lively, pompous fancy strut....

  • Fair and Tender Ladies

    "A tour de force."LOS ANGELES TIMESIvy Rowe may not have much education, but her thoughts are classic, and her experiences are fascinating. Born near the turn of the century in the Virginia Mountains, Ivy's story is told completely through letters sh...

  • Me and My Baby View the Eclipse

     A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK “Extremely powerful…Me and My Baby View the Eclipse is about striving and the secret nobility of people who live in a small-town American South. In these stories -- thank heaven -- not everything fits: the...

  • Devil's Dream

    Now back in print from the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Girls. It was in 1833 or '34 that Moses Bailey brought young Kate Malone down to Cold Spring Holler to be his wife. But Moses, wanting to become a preacher like his daddy was,...

  • The Last Day the Dogbushes Bloomed

    "That whole summer is as clear and as still in my head as the corsage under the glass bell in Mrs. Tate's parlor. Even now, summers and summers since, I can remember everything. I remember the day summer started."

    So begins Lee Smith's disarming...



  • Saving Grace

    Surrounded all of her life by zealous religious figures, Florida Grace Shepherd recounts a story that begins with her father's revival meetings and ends at Uncle Slidell's Christian Fun Golf course....

  • The Christmas Letters

    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 o...

  • News of the Spirit

    New York Times bestselling author Lee Smith offers her signature mix of wit and heartbreak, as well as her “unerring ear for the lyrical and the down and dirty,” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution) in this superb collection of stories....

  • The Last Girls

    IT SEEMS A LIFETIME AGO that twelve young coeds from a Blue Ridge women's college set off on a grand adventure down the Mississippi on a raft, Huck Finn-style. In fact, it was 1965, and now four of those women have reunited on the banks of the great ...

  • On Agate Hill

    Molly Petree, orphaned by the Civil War, is by her own definition "a spitfire and a burden. I do not care. My family is a dead family, and this is not my home, for I am a refugee girl." Raised in the ruins of a once prosperous plantation on Agate ...

  • Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger

    A celebrated novelist, Lee Smith is likewise recognized as a master of the short story and has been compared with such luminaries as Katherine Ann Porter, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O'Connor. Now she collects fourteen stories-seven brand-new ones alo...

  • The Ranger

    Arlingston, a town in chaos, the streets are overrun by the gangs and the schools are controlled by the thugs. The law fails as the crime rate rockets and the drug abuse escalates. In a town torn apart by gang wars, where hope is just a word and dang...

  • Guests on Earth

    It’s 1936 when orphaned thirteen-year-old Evalina Toussaint is admitted to Highland Hospital, a mental institution in Asheville, North Carolina, known for its innovative treatments for nervous disorders and addictions. Taken under the wing of the h...

  • Blue Marlin

    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 fo...

  • Where Is This Light? Candice

    Children are very literal, and this sometimes causes confusion when adults assume that little ones understand figurative concepts. Where IS This Light? teaches children that their little light isn't something OUTSIDE of them to physically have and ho...



  • Silver Alert

    "Smith's latest is as delicious as a slice of key lime pie " and gone just as fast." ―People "It's very different and it's very special and it's very good! I loved it."  -- ​Dolly PartonA driving force in literature, Lee Smith returns with...

  • Apologize My Ass

    Apologize My Ass is a captivating and nostalgic coming-of-age novel that transports readers to the sweltering summer of 1972 in Opp, Alabama, also known as the City of Opportunity. Young Oliver Ellison cherishes his summers in this tight-knit town, w...

  • Consequences can be fatal

    Everyone has wanted to kill the office witch. This is the story of someone who actually did it. A murder set amidst the backdrop of a typical office with a disinterested boss, lazy co-workers and a self-centred newcomer as just a few of the possible ...

  • The Job Tree

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Lee Smith has published 23 books.

Lee Smith does not have a new book coming out soon. The latest book, The Job Tree, was published in March 2024.

The first book by Lee Smith, Black Mountain Breakdown, was published in January 1980.

No. Lee Smith does not write books in series.
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