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 . . .'

The verdant pastures of the Karlson farm in Illinois have the placid charm of a landscape painting, but the horses that graze there have become the consuming obsession of a woman who sees in them the ultimate fulfilment of her every wish - to win, to be honoured, to be the best. Her vaulting ambition becomes a tragically destructive force; a force that will drive a wedge between her and her family, and have unforeseen and brutal consequences for them all...

From the author of the Pulitzer-winning A Thousand Acres, two novellas which showcase Jane Smiley's unique gift for capturing the nuances of American domestic life. 'I have given my children the two cruellest gifts I had to give... the experience of perfect family happiness and the certain knowledge that it could not last.' So says the narrator of Ordinary Love, the first of two thematically linked novellas, each investigating the dream of the perfect family. Ordinary Love gives voice to a mother, loving but unsure of her love's value. In forfeiting her powerful husband she fears that she has done her children - insecure Joe; restless Michael; cynical Ellen - irrevocable harm. Good Will, by contrast, is the story of a father, a relentlessly self-sufficient man determined to live apart from a coarsely materialistic world. In his singlemindedness, he does not see the damage he is causing until it is too late: his domestic idyll explodes in a frenzy of discontent. Together, the novellas raise a multitude of questions - about being a parent and being a child; about the desire to control other people and the need to compromise.

From Jane Smiley, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres, The Strays of Paris is a captivating story of a group of 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 keep to themselves. As the cold weather of Christmas nears, the unlikeliest of friendships blooms between human and animals.

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, whoever you may be . . .

Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) is, of course, best known as the author of Little Women (1868). But she was also a noted essayist who wrote on a wide range of subjects, including her father’s failed utopian commune, the benefits of an unmarried life, and her experience as a young woman sent to work in service to alleviate her family’s poverty. Her first literary success was a contemporary close-up account of the American Civil War, brilliantly depicted in Hospital Sketches drawn from her own experience of serving as an army nurse near the nation’s capitol. As with her famous novel, Alcott writes these essays with clear observation, unforgettable scenes, and one of the sharpest wits in American literature. Blending gentle satire with reportage and emotive autobiography, Alcott’s exquisite essays are as exceptional as the novels she is known for. Published together for the first time, this delightful selection shows us another side to one of our most celebrated writers.

'Sunshine in book form' – Daily Mail 'A joyfully escapist celebration of friendship and freedom' – Mail on Sunday 'Delightful, heartwarming . . . An especially welcome reminder of the bright spots even in dark times' – NPR 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 keep to themselves. As the cold weather of Christmas nears, the unlikeliest of friendships blooms between human and animals. 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, whoever you may be . . . From Jane Smiley, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres, The Strays of Paris is a captivating story of a group of extraordinary animals – and one little boy – whose lives cross paths in Paris.

'Sunshine in book form' - Daily Mail 'A joyfully escapist celebration of friendship and freedom' - Mail on Sunday 'Delightful, heartwarming . . . An especially welcome reminder of the bright spots even in dark times' - NPR 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, Etienne, 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 keep to themselves. As the cold weather of Christmas nears, the unlikeliest of friendships blooms between human and animals. 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, whoever you may be . . . From Jane Smiley, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres, The Strays of Paris is a captivating story of a group of extraordinary animals - and one little boy - whose lives cross paths in Paris.

'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 . . .'

The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling novel from one of America's greatest contemporary writers. Larry Cook's farm is the largest in Zebulon County, Iowa, and a tribute to his hard work and single-mindedness. Proud and possessive, his sudden decision to retire and hand over the farm to his three daughters, is disarmingly uncharacteristic. Ginny and Rose, the two eldest, are startled yet eager to accept, but Caroline, the youngest daughter, has misgivings. Immediately, her father cuts her out. In A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley transposes the King Lear story to the modern day, and in so doing at once illuminates Shakespeare's original and subtly transforms it. This astonishing novel won both of America's highest literary awards, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics' Circle Award.

'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 . . .'

Brilliantly funny satire set in a contemporary American university. Deep in the wheatfields of the American midwest, Moo University is in a state of disarray... In this witty and biting comedy of manners, Jane Smiley turns her wryly perceptive eye towards a community where men and women, the innocent and the cynical, thinkers and careerists, live and work together - in complete disharmony. 'Satire on a grand scale, a microscopic examination of contemporary American mores conducted with great wit and gracious indulgence for human frailty ...Trying to describe this book's marvellous variety is like trying to describe London to someone who has never been there. The only appropriate exhortation is "Read it."'

In his bedroom upstairs, 77-year-old Ike Robinson is dying. Down in the living room his wife, Anna, defends the citadel of their marriage against an ill-considered, albeit loving, invasion by their three middle-aged daughters and 23-year-old granddaughter. By the author of A Thousand Acres.

A unique body of medieval literature, the Sagas rank with the world's greatest 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 Iceland and of their descendants, who ventured further west--to Greenland and, ultimately, the coast of North America itself.

The 10 Sagas and seven shorter tales in this volume include the celebrated "Vinland Sagas," which recount Leif Eiriksson's pioneering voyage to the New World and contain the oldest descriptions of the North American continent.

A candid exploration of the abiding bond between humans and horses from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jane Smiley draws upon her first-hand knowledge to examine the horse on all levels - practical, theoretical and emotional. Drawing on the wisdom of trainers, vets, jockeys and a real-life horse whisperer, Smiley adds an element of drama and suspense as two of her own horses begin their careers at the racetrack. As the horses get closer to the winner's circle, we are enchanted, enthralled and informed about what it's really like to own, train and root for a racehorse. Superbly reviewed in hardback This gorgeous new paperback package will appeal to a broad memoir market as well as to fans of horse racing A crossover book in the manner of Seabiscuit, A Year at the Races is perfect for paperback promotions across the board

A thousand acres, a piece of land of almost mythic proportions. Upon this fertile, nourishing earth, Jane Smiley has set her rich, breathtakingly dramatic novel of an American family whose wealth cannot stay the hand of tragedy. It is the intense, compelling story of a father and his daughters, of sisters, of wives and husbands, and of the human cost of a lifetime spent trying to subdue the land and the passions it stirs. The most critically acclaimed novel of the literary season, a classic story of contemporary American life, A THOUSAND ACRES is destined to be read for years to come.
"It has been a long time since a novel so surprised me with its power to haunt . . . . Its genius grows from its ruthless acceptance of the divided nature of every character . . . . This gives A THOUSAND ACRES the prismatic quality of the greatest art." -- Chicago Tribune
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award

A Pulitzer Prize-winning author's revelatory celebration of the novel - at once an anatomy of the art of fiction, a guide for readers and writers and a memoir of literary life. Over her 20 year career, Jane Smiley has written many kinds of novels - mystery, comedy, historical fiction, epic. But when her impulse to write faltered after 9/11, she decided to approach novels from a different angle: she read 100 of them, from the 1000-year-old Tale of Genji to the recent bestseller White Teeth by Zadie Smith, from classics to little-known gems. With these books and her experience of reading them as her reference, Smiley discusses the pleasure of reading; why a novel succeeds - or doesn't; and how the form has changed over time. She delves into the character of the novelist and reveals how (and which) novels have affected her own life. Smiley takes us deep into the process of novel-writing, sharing the secrets of her own habits and theories of creativity. She offers priceless practical advice to aspiring writers, and even walks us through the publication of her most recent novel, Good Faith. And in an appendix - one of the most compelling and intelligent reading lists ever compiled - Smiley considers individually the 100 novels she read, giving us a brief but cogent description of each, along with her own opinions and interpretations. Engaging, wise, decidedly unacademic - and bound to be one of Smiley's most widely read and beloved books.

An American classic from the bestselling author of the Pulitzer-winning A Thousand Acres. Lidie Newton is an extraordinary female protagonist, a genuine Great American Character, like Huck Finn or Isabel Archer. Lidie and her abolitionist husband join the pioneering westward migration into America's heartland in the middle of the last century. Together with their family and friends, they find themselves caught amidst two great American forces.Vicious arguments about freeing slaves, political shenanigans and peacocking encounters over claims to land are about to erupt into the bloodiest war the world has yet see-the American Civil War. Against this chaotic background,The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton soars across the vista of the birth of the modern United States of America.This classic American novel shows, through the eyes of one remarkable woman, how shattering, tragic and resilient the history of that land is.

This novel tells the story of a group of six friends whose close and longstanding relationship begins to fall apart when two of them are brutally murdered. Suspicion falls on all of them as their infidelities and lies begin to come to the surface.

Greed. Envy. Sex. Property. In her subversively funny and genuinely moving new novel, Jane Smiley nails down several American obsessions 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.
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The second novel in the dazzling Last Hundred Years trilogy, Early Warning follows the Langdon family from the 50s, through to the 1980s, in this stunning family saga from the winner of the Pulitzer Prize 1953. When a funeral brings the Langdon family together once more, they little realize how much, over the coming years, each of their worlds will shift and change. For now Walter and Rosanna's sons and daughters are grown up and have children of their own. Frank, the eldest - restless, unhappy - ignores his troubled wife and instead finds himself distracted by a face from the past. Lillian must watch as her brilliant, eccentric husband Arthur is destroyed by the guilt arising from his secretive government work. Claire, too, finds that marriage is not quite what she expected it to be. In Iowa where the Langdons began, Joe sees that some aspects of life on the farm never change, while others are unrecognizable. And though a few members of the family remain mired in the past, others will attempt to move beyond the lives they have always known; and some will push forward as never before. The dark shadow of the Vietnam War hangs over every one . . . In sickness and health, through their best and darkest times, the Langdon family will live and love and suffer against the broad, merciless sweep of American history. Moving from the 1950s to the 1980s, Early Warning by Jane Smiley is epic storytelling at its most wise and compelling from a writer at the height of her powers.