Lee Smith

Lee Smith is a "teller of tales for tale tellers to admire and envy . . . [and] a reader's dream" (Houston Chronicle). A celebrated and bestselling writer with a dozen novels under her name, including Fair and Tender Ladies, Oral History, and The Last Girls, she is just as widely recognized for her exceptional short stories. Here, in Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger, Smith collects seven brand-new stories along with seven of her favorites from...

"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." --

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...

"Herb has a secret: he's not quite the man he once was. And when his children learn of this, they decide it is time to move him and his wife, Susan, who is slipping into early Alzheimer's herself out of their Key West home and into assisted living. But curmudgeonly Herb--annoyed with his kids and unsettled by the ever-changing world--is not going quietly. He has one trusted friend, a young woman named Renee who has been helping to care for Susan....

Preacher's son Moses Bailey believed that the fiddle was the voice of the Devil and denied his wife the pleasure of the music she dearly loved. She fiddled for her three children behind her husband's back. Thus begins a magnificent 150-year saga of a musical Southern family featuring barn dances, medicine shows, the Grand Ole Opry, and the evolution of country music from hymns to rockabilly. Generations of authentic, down-home mountain people spring...

"Who dunnit? is almost beside the point in Family Linen, a rollicking comic novel which also explores the profound mystery of families and how they work, and of our intrinsic aloneness within them. Part murder mystery, part social commentary, part family history, Family Linen introduces the reader to a cast of characters who just won't shut up-until finally it all comes out in the wash, and the wash is hung out for all the world to see-the world of...

Crystal Spangler leaves Appalachia to attend college and follow her dreams, but something lurking in the shadow of Black Mountain is calling her back, something that will change her life forever.

Recounts the last summer of innocence for nine-year-old Susan, who witnesses the disintegration of her parent's marriage, and learns of people's cruelty from the visiting nephew of a neighbor.

Cakewalk is a collection of short stories that bring together a diverse group of people that only Lee could create. Debbi has left her old life behind and has started a life with Bobby who has a job with dolphins at hte Seaquarium. It is just a matter of time before Debbi and Bobby are able to get things on track. Lauren and her friend Georgia Rose and the terible gift Georgia Rose had...the gift of foresight. Florrie, the cake lady who is married...

Investigative journalist Lee Smith 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 not only the president, but also...