Lee Smith
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
Four women, part of a group of classmates from Blue Ridge women's college who traveled down the Mississippi on a homemade raft in 1965, reunite thirty-five years later to share their memories, examine how their lives have turned out, and sprinkle the ashes of a fifth friend in the waters off New Orleans.
Author
Language
English
Description
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...
Author
Language
English
Description
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, left Kate time and again to look after the kids while he went out in search of a sign from God. Though he warned them about the evils of playing the fiddle, a kind of music he...
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, left Kate time and again to look after the kids while he went out in search of a sign from God. Though he warned them about the evils of playing the fiddle, a kind of music he...
Author
Publisher
Algonquin Books
Language
English
Formats
Description
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....
Author
Publisher
Algonquin Books Of Chapel Hill
Pub. Date
2013.
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Reading Lee Smith ranks among the great pleasures of American fiction . . . Gives evidence again of the grace and insight that distinguish her work." -Robert Stone, author of Death of the Black-Haired Girl
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...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
“A memoir that shines with a bright spirit, a generous heart and an entertaining knack for celebrating absurdity.”—The New York Times Book Review
“This is Smith at her finest.”—Library Journal, starred review
Set deep in the mountains of Virginia, the Grundy of Lee Smith’s youth was a place of coal miners, tent revivals, mountain music, drive-in theaters,...
“This is Smith at her finest.”—Library Journal, starred review
Set deep in the mountains of Virginia, the Grundy of Lee Smith’s youth was a place of coal miners, tent revivals, mountain music, drive-in theaters,...
7) Oral history
Author
Language
English
Description
"A curse laid on the inhabitants of Hoot Owl Holler follows each succeeding generation for a century, in a tale of love, murder, obsession, and betrayal set in Appalachia."--NoveList.
Author
Language
English
Description
Everywhere about her, from the traffic on Highway 460 to the river that's gone black with coal dust, Crystal Spangler sees a current flowing from the mountain town of Black Rock into the wider world. As a teenager, she is elected beauty queen, gets good grades, and--despite her many enviable qualities--manages also to be well-loved. Everyone knows that she is destined to leave town and do great things. And she does. But no one expects her return;...
9) Saving grace
Author
Language
English
Description
The confession of a preacher's daughter. Turned off religion early in life, Florida Grace Shepherd marries at the first opportunity, only to "backslide" into adultery. By the time she is 33, she feels like an old bag. But one day Grace discovers she has her father's gift for giving meaning to people's lives and she returns to religion, picking up where her father left off. By the author of The Devil's Dream.
Author
Language
English
Description
Author of many novels and short stories, best-selling writer Lee Smith has received numerous awards for her works, including two O Henry Awards. Fair and Tender Ladies is an epistolary novel that traces the life of Ivy Rowe, born in the isolated Virginia mountain community of Sugar Fork. Through births and deaths, marriages and funerals, the decades of Ivy's life are captured in a rich dialect that carries the sounds and sights of the Appalachians...
Author
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Formats
Description
Herb's charmed life with his dear wife, Susan, in their Key West house is coming undone. Susan, in her seventies, now needs constant care, and Herb is in denial about his own ailing health. The one bright spot is the arrival of an endlessly optimistic manicurist calling herself Renee. She sings to Susan during manicures, gets her to paint, and brings her a much-needed sense of contentment. But then Herb and Susan's adult children arrive to stage an...
12) Blue Marlin
Author
Publisher
Blair
Pub. Date
[2020]
Language
English
Description
Available for the first time as a stand-alone novella, this book centers on the Blue Marlin Motel in 1959, where Jenny, her beautiful socialite mother, and chastened father share their sunny days with movie stars who are in town to make the movie Operation Petticoat. Jenny is precocious and a bit of a sleuth, so her innocent "observations" to uncover the secrets of movie stars also end up revealing the secrets of her own family. Jenny confronts the...
14) Family linen
Author
Publisher
Berkley Books
Pub. Date
2014.
Language
English
Description
When Sybill Hess drives over to the hypnotist's office, she hopes he can cure her of the headaches interrupting her sleep the way her friend Betty once saw a woman on TV cure a woman's stammer. But what Dr. Diamond uncovers from Sybill's subconscious goes much deeper than her nervousness over a new tenant who seems to want a date. A shocking memory from Sybill's past threatens to upend everything she thinks she knows about herself and her family....
Author
Publisher
Center Street
Pub. Date
2019.
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Investigative journalist Lee Smith's The Plot Against the President tells the story of how Congressman Devin Nunes uncovered the operation to bring down the commander-in-chief. While popular opinion holds that Russia subverted democratic processes during the 2016 elections, the real damage was done not by Moscow or any other foreign actor. Rather, this was a slow-moving coup engineered by a coterie of the American elite, the "deep state," targeting...
17) Dimestore
Author
Publisher
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Pub. Date
2016.
Language
English
Description
Evenly divided between a book about Smith's process and her life, first as a Southern mountain child and, later, as the parent of a schizophrenic child, this book is interesting and compelling. Despite being surrounded by loving family and being blessed with an active imagination, Lee copes with a mentally ill mother. Later, her son's mental illness and early death brings her to the breaking point but she is saved by her writing.
Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Pub. Date
c2019
Language
English
Description
"In this anthology of creative nonfiction, twenty-eight writers set out to discover what they know, and don't know, about the person they call 'Mother.' ... Writers Lee Smith and Samia Serageldin have curated a diverse and insightful collection that challenges stereotypes about mothers and expands our notions of motherhood in the South. The mothers in these essays were shaped, for good and bad, by the economic and political crosswinds of their time....