Jane Smiley

a novel

A thousand acres

Presents a collection of Viking "sagas" to commemorate the adventures of the people who first settled Iceland, and then explored Greenland and North America.

The Sagas of the Icelanders

"An epic novel that spans thirty years in the lives of a farm family in Iowa, telling a parallel story of the changes taking place in America from 1920 through the early 1950s"--Provided by publisher.

Some Luck

In fourteenth-century Greenland, a small Norse settlement struggles for survival through increasingly harsh winters, famine, witchcraft, and a tragic feud between the family of Asgeir Gunnarsson and one of his neighbors. Reprint.

The Greenlanders

Paras (short for Perestroika) is a spirited racehorse at a racetrack west of Paris. At dusk, one afternoon she pushes open the door of her stall - she's a curious filly - and, after traveling through the night, arrives by chance in the City of Light. But how long can a runaway horse live undiscovered in Paris? And how long can a boy keep her hidden, and all his own?

Perestroika in Paris

A Novel

Dangerous Business

Anna Sewell

A horse in nineteenth-century England recounts his experiences with both good and bad masters.

Black Beauty

Lucy goes to the beach with her parents one breezy day. After lots of digging and rolling down dunes, the day has flown by, and it's time to go home and go to bed. Lucy yawns and as her mom reads a story, she closes her eyes. But then all of a sudden, she wakes up and is all alone and a little bit scared. She has to figure out a way to get back to sleep. With a story that travels from the boisterous beach to the still of a moonlit room, this debut picture book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jane Smiley and imaginative illustrator Lauren Castillo is guaranteed to have kids yawning their way to bed.

Twenty Yawns

Jenny Zhang

Carmen Maria Machado

Kate Bolick

On its 150th anniversary, four acclaimed authors offer personal reflections on their lifelong engagement with Louisa May Alcott's classic novel of girlhood and growing up. For the 150th anniversary of Louisa May Alcott's beloved classic, Kate Bolick, Jenny Zhang, Carmen Maria Machado, and Jane Smiley explore their strong lifelong personal engagement with Little Women--what it has meant to them and why it still matters. Each takes as her subject one of the four March sisters, reflecting on each particular sister's story and what it has to teach us. Bolick writes about how the depiction of Meg as the "ideal woman" reveals Alcott's dim views of marriage and planted seeds in Bolick's own young mind. Zhang, unlike many readers, considered Jo her least favorite sister as a girl, and writes about how Jo eventually won her heart. Machado brings her SF and horror sensibilities to a unique perspective on Beth, "dead & pure girl extraordinaire"; and Smiley, who considers Amy the most captivating sister, writes about Amy's evolution into the responsibilities of adulthood from the perspective of Smiley's own experience of motherhood. These four voices come together to form a deep, funny, far-ranging meditation on the power of great literature to shape our lives.

A Library of America Special Publication

March Sisters: on Life, Death, and Little Women

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.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel

The Hillside

Olivia Manning

Orphaned, friendless and bewildered, young felix Latimer comes to war-time Jerusalem to lodge with Miss Bohun.

School for Love

Follows the Langdon family from the author's best-selling novel Some Luck as they navigate the ups and downs of mid-century America. By the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres.

Early Warning

Wallace Stegner

A novel of the friendships and woes of two couples, which tells the story of their lives in lyrical, evocative prose by one of the finest American writers of the late 20th century.When two young couples meet for the first time during the Great Depression, they quickly find they have much in common: Charity Lang and Sally Morgan are both pregnant, while their husbands Sid and Larry both have jobs in the English department at the University of Wisconsin. Immediately a lifelong friendship is born, which becomes increasingly complex as they share decades of love, loyalty, vulnerability and conflict. Written from the perspective of the aging Larry Morgan,Crossing to Safety is a beautiful and deeply moving exploration of the struggle of four people to come to terms with the trials and tragedies of everyday life.With an introduction by Jane Smiley.Wallace Stegner (1909-1993) was the author of, among other novels, Remembering Laughter, 1937; A Shooting Star, 1961; Angle of Repose (Pulitzer Prize), 1971; The Spectator Bird (National Book award), 1977; Recapitulation, 1979. Three of his short stories have won O.Henry prizes, and in 1980 he received the Robert Kirsch award from the Los Angeles Times for his lifetime literary achievements. His collected stories were published in 1990.Jane Smiley is the author of many novels and works of non-fiction, including, most recently, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel", about the history and anatomy of the novel. Her most recent novel is "Good Faith". She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for "A Thousand Acres", and was shortlisted for The Orange Prize in 2001 for Horse Heaven.

Crossing to Safety

In this collection of five short stories and one novella, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres presents a contemplation of the sometimes mutually exclusive matters of love, friendship, and marriage. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.

The Age of Grief

W. Somerset Maugham

Of Human Bondage (Bantam Classics)

Horse Heaven

Louisa May Alcott

Siobhan Kilfeather

Chronicles the joys and sorrows of the four March sisters as they grow into young ladies in nineteenth-century New England.

Jane Smiley

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