Lee Smith Books in Order

Nine-year-old Susan begins summer in a small Southern town with games, fantasies, and a private view of her family as royalty. Then a strange new boy and painful changes at home begin to break apart the safety of childhood.

The citizens of Speed, Alabama, prepare an elaborate sesquicentennial celebration complete with a pageant, parade, and Fancy Strut contest. Behind the civic pride, Lee Smith finds restless marriages, local grudges, and plenty of comic confusion.

Crystal Spengler grows up in Black Rock, a fictional Appalachian coal town, dreaming of a larger life. The novel follows her from popular schoolgirl to troubled adulthood as passivity, longing, and the expectations placed on women close in.

This story collection introduces Southern women trying to manage family expectations, gossip, loneliness, and sudden disappointment. From a cake lady who embarrasses her sister to a housewife writing for television advice, each character gets her own say.

Jennifer returns to Hoot Owl Holler to record the history of her Cantrell relatives for a college project. Their overlapping stories reveal generations of love, violence, superstition, and grief, while the elusive Dory remains at the center of the mystery.

Sybill Hess has spent years wondering whether she witnessed her mother murder her father and hide his body in a backyard well. As relatives offer conflicting versions of the past, a family mystery becomes a deeper story about memory and survival.

Told through letters, this novel follows Ivy Rowe from her mountain childhood through a long, difficult life. Smart, stubborn, and funny, Ivy faces poverty, love, motherhood, and loss without surrendering her hard-won sense of herself.

These stories follow people in the small-town South as they deal with family trouble, first love, religion, and the gap between private hopes and public lives. Smith finds humor and hurt in moments that can change a person without warning.

Beginning with a preacher who calls fiddle music the devil's laughter, this family saga follows the musical Baileys across generations. As country star Katie Cocker heads for Nashville, the family must reckon with faith, ambition, and the pull of home.

Florida Grace Shepherd is the eleventh child of a traveling evangelist who handles snakes and drinks strychnine to prove his faith. Terrified by her father's religion, Grace tries to build a life that belongs to her.

A family story unfolds through Christmas letters written across three generations. Beginning with Birdie Puckett on a North Carolina farm in 1944, the novella follows mothers and daughters through marriage, disappointment, reinvention, and changing times.

In these linked stories and novellas, Southern women use storytelling to survive the confusion of family life, aging, and old grievances. The collection includes estranged twins, young writers, and a nursing-home resident trying to recover her own voice.

Thirty years after a youthful raft trip down the Mississippi, four college friends reunite after tragedy for a steamboat journey to New Orleans. For Harriet Holding, the trip brings old secrets and the unfinished pain of college sharply back into view.

In 1872, orphaned thirteen-year-old Molly Petree begins recording her life at Agate Hill, a battered North Carolina plantation. Her diary, letters, and keepsakes chart a restless journey through love, loss, and a murder charge.

This collection brings together seven new stories and seven earlier favorites. Its characters, including mothers, daughters, brides, widows, and children, meet turning points that expose the tender, funny, and sometimes painful truths of ordinary life.

This edited collection gathers interviews and profiles from across Lee Smith's career. Smith discusses her Appalachian roots, her love of character and voice, and the making of books including Oral History, Fair and Tender Ladies, and The Devil's Dream.

Young pianist Evalina Toussaint becomes a patient at Asheville's Highland Hospital, where she forms a connection with Zelda Fitzgerald. Their lives unfold against the real 1948 hospital fire, as Evalina tries to make sense of art, illness, and survival.

Lee Smith looks back on growing up in Grundy, Virginia, where her father's dime store put a parade of local characters in view. These linked essays trace the people, books, losses, and places that helped make her a writer.

Thirteen-year-old Jenny heads to Key West with her parents after her father's affair throws the family off balance. At the Blue Marlin Motel, sun, movie stars, and a strained vacation give her a close look at the adults around her.

Herb's children want him to accept that his wife needs more care and that he cannot manage alone. Instead, he takes off from Key West with Renee, a young manicurist hiding a past of her own, on an unexpected road trip.