Jane Smiley's Books
Sep.11.2012
Abby Lovitt doesn't realize how unprepared she is when she takes her beloved horse, True Blue, to a clinic led by the most famous equestrian anyone knows. The biggest surprise, though, is that Sophia, the girl who never makes a mistake, suddenly makes so many that she stops riding. Who will ride her horse? Abby's dad seems to think it will be Abby. Pie in the Sky is the most...
Sep.27.2011
True Blue is a beauty, a dappled gray, and when Abby gets to take him to her family's ranch, she can hardly believe her luck. The horse needs a home: his owner—a woman brand new to the riding stable--was tragically killed in a car crash and no one has claimed him. Daddy is wary, as always. But Abby is smitten. True Blue is a sweetheart, and whenever Abby calls out, "Blue, Blue...
Oct.26.2010
This sequel to The Georges and the Jewels (2009) is Smiley at her finest--detailed, nuanced, absorbing. Abby Lovitt's eighth-grade year starts out feeling less tumultuous than the year before: Her school life is more settled, her parents more at peace and Ornery George, a horse she struggled with, has been sold. Though she continues to ride several horses a day, two in...
Oct.19.2010
From one of our most acclaimed novelists, a David-and-Goliath biography for the digital age.One night in the late 1930s, in a bar on the Illinois-Iowa border, John Vincent Atanasoff, a professor of physics at Iowa State University, after a frustrating day performing tedious mathematical calculations in his lab, hit on the idea that the binary number system and electronic...
May.04.2010
In her latest novel, after Ten Days in the Hills (2007), the Pulitzer Prize-winning author offers a cold-eyed view of the compromises required by marriage while also providing an intimate portrait of life in the Midwest and West during the years 1883-1942. By the time she reaches the age of 27, Margaret Mayfield has known a lot of tragedy in her life. She has lost two brothers...
Sep.08.2009
A Pulitzer Prize winner makes her debut for young readers.
Abby Lovitt has been riding horses for as long as she can remember, but Daddy hasn't let her name a single one. He calls all their geldings George and their mares Jewel and warns her not to get attached. The horses are there on the ranch to be sold, plain and simple.
But with all the stress at school (the Big Four-...
Feb.13.2007
A glorious new novel from the Pulitzer Prize winner: a big, smart, bawdy tale of love and war, sex and politics, friendship and betrayal—and the allure of the movies. With Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron as her model, Jane Smiley takes us through ten transformative, unforgettable days in the Hollywood hills. It is the morning after the 2003 Academy Awards. Max—an Oscar-winning...
Oct.03.2005
The best new American voices are heard here first. Writers like Julie Orringer, Adam Johnson, William Gay, David Benioff, Rattawut Lapcharoensap, Maile Meloy, Amanda Davis, Jennifer Vanderbes, and John Murray are just some of the acclaimed authors whose early work has appeared in this series since its launch in 2000.
The new volume features a new crop of promising stories selected...
Sep.13.2005
Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling novelist Jane Smiley celebrates the novel—and takes us on an exhilarating tour through one hundred of them—in this seductive and immensely rewarding literary tribute.
In her inimitable style—exuberant, candid, opinionated—Smiley explores the power of the novel, looking at its history and variety, its cultural impact, and just how it works its...
Nov.09.2004
They were six friends from the Midwest who moved to New York City with high hopes of making it big in the music industry. Although the dream had faded, they had all remained friends—or so it seemed. One brilliant day, two of the group were shot in an apartment for which they all had duplicate keys.
A riveting suspense story about the emotional aftermath of murder—the jealousy and...
Apr.13.2004
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres gallops into territory she first explored in her acclaimed best-selling novel Horse Heaven (“Deeply satisfying . . . a smart, warmhearted, winning book” –New York Times Book Review) with this irresistible account of her lifelong love affair with horses.
Smiley draws upon her firsthand knowledge of horses, as well as the wisdom...
Dec.02.2003
Aging Larry Cook announces his intention to turn over his one-thousand-acre farm—one of the largest in Zebulon County, Iowa—to his three daughters, Caroline, Ginny and Rose. A man of harsh sensibilities, he carves Caroline out of the deal because she has the nerve to be less than enthusiastic about her father’s generosity. While Larry Cook deteriorates into a pathetic drunk, his...
Apr.22.2003
The introduction, discussion questions, suggested reading list, and author biography that follow are designed to enhance your group’s reading of Jane Smiley’s Good Faith. In this new novel she brings her extraordinary gifts to the seductive, wishful, wistful world of real estate, in which the sport of choice is a mind game.
May.09.2002
With the delectable wit, unforgettable characters, and challenging themes that have won her a Pulitzer Prize and national bestseller status, Jane Smiley naturally finds a kindred spirit in the author of such classics as Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol. Because “his novels shaped his life as much as his life shaped his novels,” Smiley’s Charles Dickens is at once a...
Apr.04.2000
This novel about horses and their breeders, owners, trainers, grooms, jockeys, traders, bettors, and other turf-obsessed humans is a winner. Smiley knows a prodigious amount about Thoroughbreds, and she is as good at describing the stages of their lives, their temperaments, and personalities as she is in chronicling the ambitions, financial windfalls and ruins, love affairs,...
About Jane
Jane Smiley was born in Los Angeles, California, moved to the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri as an infant, and lived there through grammar school and high school (The John Burroughs School).
After getting her Bachelor of Art at Vassar College in 1971, she...