Most Popular Books by Jane Smiley

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.” —People Before Jodie Rattler became a star, she was a girl growing up in St. Louis. One day in 1955, when she was just six years old, her uncle Drew took her to the racetrack, where she got lucky—and that roll of two-dollar bills she won has never since left her side. Jodie thrived in the warmth of her extended family, and then—through a combination of hard work and serendipity—she started a singing career, which catapulted her from St. Louis to New York City, from the English countryside to the tropical beaches of St. Thomas, from Cleveland to Los Angeles, and back again. Jodie comes of age in recording studios, backstage, and on tour, and she tries to hold her own in the wake of Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and Joni Mitchell. Yet it feels like something is missing. Could it be true love? Or is that not actually what Jodie is looking for? Full of atmosphere, shot through with longing and exuberance, romance and rock ''n'' roll, Lucky is a story of chance and grit and the glitter of real talent, a colorful portrait of one woman''s journey in search of herself.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres comes the first volume of an epic trilogy that takes us on a literary adventure through cycles of birth and death, passion and betrayal that will span a century in America. “Intimate.... Miraculous.... Staggering.... A masterpiece in the making.” —USA Today 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 history as the Langdons abide by time-honored values and pass them on to their children. With the country on the cusp of enormous social and economic change through the early 1950s, we watch as the personal and the historical merge seamlessly: one moment electricity is just beginning to power the farm, and the next a son is volunteering to fight the Nazis. Later still, a girl we’d seen growing up now has a little girl of her own.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres comes “an uproariously funny and at the same time hauntingly melancholy portrait of a college community in the Midwest" (The New York Times). In this darkly satirical send-up of academia and the Midwest, we are introduced to Moo University, a distinguished institution devoted to the study of agriculture. Amid cow pastures and waving fields of grain, Moo’s campus churns with devious plots, mischievous intrigue, lusty liaisons, and academic one-upmanship, Chairman X of the Horticulture Department harbors a secret fantasy to kill the dean; Mrs. Walker, the provost''s right hand and campus information queen, knows where all the bodies are buried; Timothy Monahan, associate professor of English, advocates eavesdropping for his creative writing assignments; and Bob Carlson, a sophomore, feeds and maintains his only friend: a hog named Earl Butz. Wonderfully written and masterfully plotted, Moo gives us a wickedly funny slice of life.

The luminous novella and stories in The Age of Grief explore the vicissitudes of love, friendship, and marriage with all the compassion and insight that have come to be expected from Jane Smiley, the Pulitzer Prize—winning author of A Thousand Acres. In “The Pleasure of Her Company,” a lonely, single woman befriends the married couple next door, hoping to learn the secret of their happiness. In “Long Distance,” a man finds himself relieved of the obligation to continue an affair that is no longer compelling to him, only to be waylaid by the guilt he feels at his easy escape. And in the incandescently wise and moving title novella, a dentist, aware that his wife has fallen in love with someone else, must comfort her when she is spurned, while maintaining the secret of his own complicated sorrow. Beautifully written, with a wry intelligence and a lively comic touch, The Age of Grief captures moments of great intimacy with grace, clarity, and indelible emotional power.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres comes a “smashing...fascinating” novel (The New York Times Book Review) that conjures all the American obsessions of the 1980s: sex, greed, envy, real estate, and the American dream. In her subversively funny and genuinely moving new novel, Jane Smiley nails down several American preoccupations with the expertise of a master carpenter. Forthright, likable Joe Stratford is the kind of local businessman everybody trusts, for good reason. But it’s 1982, and even in Joe’s small town, values are in upheaval: not just property values, either. Enter Marcus Burns, a would-be master of the universe whose years with the IRS have taught him which rules are meant to be broken. Before long he and Joe are new best friends—and partners in an investment venture so complex that no one may ever understand it. Add to this Joe’s roller coaster affair with his mentor’s married daughter. The result is as suspenseful and entertaining as any of Jane Smiley’s fiction.

Offers a profile of Dickens''s life, interpretations of his major works, and a study of his narrative techniques, themes, characters, and style.

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-century Greenland and tells the story of a proud landowner and his unforgettable family. Jane Smiley brings us to a farflung place of glittering fjords, blasting winds, sun-warmed meadows, and high, dark mountains. This is the story of one family: proud landowner Asgeir Gunnarsson; his daughter Margret, whose willful independence leads her into passionate adultery and exile; and his son Gunnar, whose quest for knowledge is at the compelling center of this unforgettable book. Jane Smiley immerses us in this world of farmers, priests, and lawspeakers, of hunts and feasts and long-standing feuds, and by an act of literary magic, makes a remote time, place, and people not only real but dear to us.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In this novel set in Hollywood Hills after the 2003 Academy Awards, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Thousand Acres delivers “a blazing farce, a fiery satire of contemporary celebrity culture and a rich, simmering meditation on the price of war and fame and desire.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review In the aftermath of the 2003 Academy Awards, Max and Elena—he''s an Oscar-winning writer/director—open their Holywood Hills home to a group of friends and neighbors, industy insiders and hangers–on, eager to escape the outside world and dissect the latest news, gossip, and secrets of the business. Over the next ten days, old lovers collide, new relationships form, and sparks fly, all with Smiley''s signature sparkling wit and characterization. With its breathtaking passion and sexy irreverence, Ten Days in the Hills is a glowing addition to the work of one of our most beloved novelists.

''I raced through this murder mystery'' Good Housekeeping, 10 Books to Read Right Now! ''Smiley is a masterful writer'' Sunday Times ''Outstanding. Her sentences are sublime'' Roxane Gay From a brilliant Pulitzer Prize-winning and best-selling author: a rollicking murder mystery set in Gold Rush California, as two young prostitutes follow a trail of missing girls. Monterey, 1851. Ever since her husband was killed in a bar fight, Eliza Ripple has been working in a brothel. It seems like a better life, at least at first. The madam, Mrs. Parks, is kind, the men are (relatively) well behaved, and Eliza has attained what few women have: financial security. But when the dead bodies of young women start appearing outside of town, a darkness descends that she can''t resist confronting. Side by side with her friend Jean, and inspired by her reading, especially by Edgar Allan Poe''s detective Dupin, Eliza pieces together an array of clues to try to catch the killer, all the while juggling clients who begin to seem more and more suspicious. Eliza and Jean are determined not just to survive, but to find their way in a lawless town on the fringes of the Wild West - a bewitching combination of beauty and danger - as what will become the Civil War looms on the horizon. As Mrs. Parks says, ''Everyone knows that this is a dangerous business, but between you and me, being a woman is a dangerous business, and don''t let anyone tell you otherwise . . .''

While seventy-seven-year-old Ike Robison is on his deathbed, three generations of women--his wife, Anna, three middle-aged daughters, and granddaughter--reconcile their personal and family histories and claim their birthrights.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres comes a brilliant literary thriller set in Manhattan that’s “as taut and chilling as anything Hitchcock put on film" (San Francisco Chronicle). “A first-rate cliffhanger.” —The New York Times Book Review Alice Ellis is a Midwestern refugee living in Manhattan. Still recovering from a painful divorce, she depends on the companionship and camaraderie of tightly knit circle of friends. At the center of this circle is a rock band struggling to navigate New York’s erratic music scene, and an apartment/practice space with approximately fifty key-holders. One sunny day, Alice enters the apartment and finds two of the band members shot dead. As the double-murder sends waves of shock through their lives, this group of friends begins to unravel, and dangerous secrets are revealed one by one. When Alice begins to notice things amiss in her own apartment, the tension breaks out as it occurs to her that she is not the only person with a key, and she may not get a chance to change the locks. Jane Smiley applies her distinctive rendering of time, place, and the enigmatic intricacies of personal relationships to the twists and turns of suspense. The result is a thriller that will keep readers guessing up to its final, shocking conclusion.

The author celebrates the art of fiction as she looks at one hundred very different examples of the novel, ranging from the classics to little-known gems, and discusses the evolution of the novel and the practice of novel-writing.

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 reshape the lives of two very different families. In Ordinary Love, Smiley focuses on a woman’s infidelity and the lasting, indelible effects it leaves on her children long after her departure. Good Will portrays a father who realizes how his son has been affected by his decision to lead a counterculture life and move his family to a farm. As both stories unfold, Smiley gracefully raises the questions that confront all families with the characteristic style and insight that has marked all of her work.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres comes an essential guide for writers and readers alike: an exhilarating tour through one hundred novels that "inspires wicked delight.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review From classics such as the thousand-year-old Tale of Genji to fiction by Zadie Smith, Jane Smiley explores the power of the form, looking at its history and variety, its cultural impact, and just how it works its magic. She invites us behind the scenes of novel-writing, sharing her own habits and spilling the secrets of her craft, and offering priceless advice to aspiring authors. Every page infects us anew with the passion for reading that is the governing spirit of this gift to book lovers everywhere.

As her husband''s obsessions with science take a darker turn on the eve of World War II, Margaret Mayfield is forced to consider the life she has so carefully constructed. By the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley, The Strays of Paris is a captivating story of three extraordinary animals – and one little boy – whose lives cross paths in Paris. Paras is a spirited young racehorse living in a stable in the French countryside. That is until one afternoon, when she pushes open the gate of her stall and, travelling through the night, arrives quite by chance in the dazzling streets of Paris. She soon meets a German shorthaired pointer named Frida, two irrepressible ducks and an opinionated crow, and life amongst the animals in the city’s lush green spaces is enjoyable for a time. But everything changes when Paras meets a human boy, Étienne, and discovers a new, otherworldly part of Paris: the secluded, ivy-walled house where the boy and his nearly-one-hundred-year-old great grandmother live quietly and unto themselves. As the cold weather of Christmas nears, the unlikeliest of friendships bloom among humans and animals alike. But how long can a runaway horse live undiscovered in Paris? And how long can one boy keep her all to himself? Charming and beguiling in equal measure, Jane Smiley’s novel celebrates the intrinsic need for friendship, love, and freedom, whomever you may be . . .

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 New York Times). Paras, short for "Perestroika," is a spirited racehorse at a racetrack west of Paris. One afternoon at dusk, she finds the door of her stall open and—she''s a curious filly—wanders all the way to the City of Light. She''s dazzled and often mystified by the sights, sounds, and smells around her, but she isn''t afraid. Soon she meets an elegant dog, a German shorthaired pointer named Frida, who knows how to get by without attracting the attention of suspicious Parisians. Paras and Frida coexist for a time in the city''s lush green spaces, nourished by Frida''s strategic trips to the vegetable market. They keep company with two irrepressible ducks and an opinionated raven. But then Paras meets a human boy, Etienne, and discovers a new, otherworldly part of Paris: the ivy-walled house where the boy and his nearly-one-hundred-year-old great-grandmother live in seclusion. As the cold weather nears, the unlikeliest of friendships bloom. But how long can a runaway horse stay undiscovered in Paris? How long can a boy keep her hidden and all to himself? Jane Smiley''s beguiling new novel is itself an adventure that celebrates curiosity, ingenuity, and the desire of all creatures for true love and freedom.

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK "A WISE, SPIRITED NOVEL . . . [IN WHICH] SMILEY PLUMBS THE WONDROUSLY STRANGE WORLD OF HORSE RACING." --People "ONE OF THE PREMIER NOVELISTS OF HER GENERATION, possessed of a mastery of craft and an uncompromising vision that grow more powerful with each book . . . Racing''s eclectic mix of classes and personalities provides Smiley with fertile soil . . . Expertly juggling storylines, she investigates the sexual, social, psychological, and spiritual problems of wealthy owners, working-class bettors, trainers on the edge of financial ruin, and, in a typically bold move, horses." --The Washington Post "A NOVEL OF PASSION IN EVERY SENSE . . . [SHE DOES] IT ALL WITH APLOMB . . . WITH A DEMON NARRATIVE INTELLIGENCE." --The Boston Sunday Globe "WITTY, ENERGETIC . . . It''s deeply satisfying to read a work of fiction so informed about its subject and so alive to every nuance and detail . . . [Smiley''s] final chapters have a wonderful restorative quality." --The New York Times Book Review "RICHLY DETAILED, INGENIOUSLY CONSTRUCTED . . . YOU WILL REVEL IN JANE SMILEY''S HORSE HEAVEN." --San Diego Union-Tribune Chosen by the Los Angeles Times as One of the Best Books of the Year

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 ambition is the galvanizing force in Jane Smiley''s first novel, a force that will drive a wedge between her and her family, and bring them all to tragedy. Written with the grace and quiet beauty of her Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel, A Thousand Acres, Barn Blind is a spellbinding story on the classic American themes of work, love, and duty, and the excesses we commit to achieve success. "Chilling . . . Jane Smiley handles with skill and understanding the mercurial molasses of adolescence, and the inchoate, cumbersome love that family members feel for one another." -- The New York Times

“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 Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel, this volume “gathers essays (and two stories) composed with wit, enthusiasm, expertise, and candor” (Booklist). Long acclaimed as a preeminent American novelist, Jane Smiley is also an unparalleled observer of the craft of writing. In this book, she offers penetrating essays on some of the aesthetic and cultural issues that mark any serious engagement with reading and writing. After a personal introduction tracing Smiley’s migration from Iowa to California, she reflects on her findings in the literature of the Golden State, whose writers have for decades litigated the West’s contested legacies of racism, class conflict, and sexual politics through their work. With meticulous attention, she also dives beneath surface-level interpretations of authors like Marguerite de Navarre, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, Willa Cather, Franz Kafka, Halldór Laxness, and Jessica Mitford. Throughout, Smiley seeks to think harder, and with more clarity and nuance, about the questions that matter most. “Valuable . . . Smiley gives educators, readers, and writers much to discuss.” —Library Journal (starred review) “Her literary criticism . . . brims with the same keen observations, inquisitiveness, and humor as her novels. . . . Fleet-footed and smart, this delights.” —Publishers Weekly

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres comes the “wondrous…mesmerizing” second installment (The Washington Post), following Some Luck, of her widely acclaimed, bestselling American trilogy, which brings the journey of a remarkable family with roots in the Iowa heartland into mid-century America. It’s 1953, and the Langdons are at a crossroads. Walter, their stalwart patriarch, has died unexpectedly, and his wife must try to keep their farm going. But of their five children, only one will remain to work the land. The others scatter to Washington, DC, California, and everywhere in between. As the country moves into the Cold War, through the social revolutions of the ‘60s and ‘70s, and into the unprecedented wealth—for some—of the early ‘80s, the Langdon children have children of their own: twin boys who are best friends and vicious rivals; a girl whose rebellious spirit takes her to the notorious Peoples Temple in San Francisco; and a golden boy who drops out of college to fight in Vietnam—leaving behind a secret legacy. Capturing a transformative period through characters we come to know and love, this second volume in Jane Smiley''s epic trilogy brings to life the challenges—and rewards—of family and home, even in the most turbulent of times.

See the difference, read #1 bestselling author Jane Smiley in Large Print * About Large Print All Random House Large Print editions are published in a 16-point typeface Six years after her Pulitzer Prize-winning best-seller, A Thousand Acres, and three years after her witty, acclaimed, and best-selling novel of academe, Moo, Jane Smiley once again demonstrates her extraordinary range and brilliance. Her new novel, set in the 1850s, speaks to us in a splendidly quirky voice--the strong, wry, no-nonsense voice of Lidie Harkness of Quincy, Illinois, a young woman of courage, good sense, and good heart. It carries us into an America so violently torn apart by the question of slavery that it makes our current political battlegrounds seem a peaceable kingdom. Lidie is hard to scare. She is almost shockingly alive--a tall, plain girl who rides and shoots and speaks her mind, and whose straightforward ways paradoxically amount to a kind of glamour. We see her at twenty, making a good marriage--to Thomas Newton, a steady, sweet-tempered Yankee who passes through her hometown on a dangerous mission. He belongs to a group of rashly brave New England abolitionists who dedicate themselves to settling the Kansas Territory with like-minded folk to ensure its entering the Union as a Free State. Lidie packs up and goes with him. And the novel races alongside them into the Territory, into the maelstrom of "Bloody Kansas," where slaveholding Missourians constantly and viciously clash with Free Staters, where wandering youths kill you as soon as look at you--where Lidie becomes even more fervently abolitionist than her husband as the young couple again and again barely escape entrapment in webs of atrocity on both sides of the great question. And when, suddenly, cold-blooded murder invades her own intimate circle, Lidie doesn''t falter. She cuts off her hair, disguises herself as a boy, and rides into Missouri in search of the killers--a woman in a fiercely male world, an abolitionist spy in slave territory. On the run, her life threatened, her wits sharpened, she takes on yet another identity--and, in the very midst of her masquerade, discovers herself. Lidie grows increasingly important to us as we follow her travels and adventures on the feverish eve of the War Between the States. With its crackling portrayal of a totally individual and wonderfully articulate woman, its storytelling drive, and its powerful recapturing of an almost forgotten part of the American story, this is Jane Smiley at her enthralling and enriching best.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres comes the much-anticipated final volume in the acclaimed The Last Hundred Years Trilogy, following Some Luck and Early Warning. A richly absorbing new novel that is “a monumental portrait of an American family and an American century…. Smiley’s plot is a marvel of intricacy that’s full of surprises.” —Los Angeles Times 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 government and finance—but their fiercest enemies may be closer to home. Charlie, the charmer, struggles to find his way; Guthrie is deployed to Iraq, leaving the Iowa family farm in the hands of his younger sister, Felicity—who, as always, has her own ideas. Determined to help preserve the planet, she worries that her family farm’s land is imperiled, and not only by the extremes of climate change. Moving seamlessly from the power-brokered 1980s and the scandal-ridden ‘90s to our own present moment and beyond, Golden Age combines intimate drama, emotional suspense, and an intricate view of history, bringing to a magnificent conclusion the epic trilogy of one unforgettable family.

When Ellen meets Ned, a beautiful colt who hurt his leg on his way to becoming a racehorse, she becomes determined to behave at school and at home so she can have more time at the ranch.

In Iceland, the age of the Vikings is also known as the Saga Age. A unique body of medieval literature, the Sagas rank with the world’s great literary treasures – as epic as Homer, as deep in tragedy as Sophocles, as engagingly human as Shakespeare. Set around the turn of the last millennium, these stories depict with an astonishingly modern realism the lives and deeds of the Norse men and women who first settled in Iceland and of their descendants, who ventured farther west to Greenland and, ultimately, North America. Sailing as far from the archetypal heroic adventure as the long ships did from home, the Sagas are written with psychological intensity, peopled by characters with depth, and explore perennial human issues like love, hate, fate and freedom.

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 shares with him. There seem to be a lot of secrets in Ellen''s life these days. Secrets between friends. Secrets within families. Secrets that are all her own. And secrets her parents are keeping from her that could change everything about her life. One thing that''s not a secret is how much Ellen wants to jump--to feel herself on a horse as it soars through the air, smooth and fast. The horse she''s riding these days is Hot Potato--a pony she can trust, a pony she can practice jumping with. But he can''t possibly be as interesting as Ned, can he? And will her parents'' secret take her away from the stable forever?

A new introduction by Jane Smiley and a revised bibliography complement this edition of Hardy''s classic novel about the stormy marriage between idealist Clym Yeobright and the discontented Eustacia Vye, who dreams of escaping the provincial English countryside. Reprint.

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?