This funny and endearing novel of family, secrets, and aging follows an elderly man who heads off on a joyride with a new young friend—who may have some secrets of her own. A driving force in literature, the one and only Lee Smith returns with a road trip novel, a story full of hope and humor about not going away quietly—at any age. Aging Herb’s charmed life with his dear wife, Susan, in their Key West house is coming undone. Susan now needs constant care, and Herb is in denial about his own ailing health. The one bright spot is the arrival of an endlessly optimistic manicurist calling herself Renee. She sings to Susan during manicures, gets her to paint, and brings her a sense of contentment. But then Herb and Susan’s adult children arrive to stage an intervention on their stubborn, independent father, and as a consequence, Renee’s gig with Susan—and her grand plans for her own life—start to unravel as well. So...

Investigative journalist Lee Smith explores the deep state using his unprecedented access to Congressman Devin Nunes, former head of the House Intelligence Committee. Investigative journalist Lee Smith's The Plot Against the President 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 the rest of the country. The plot officially began July 31, 2016 with the counterintelligence investigation that the FBI opened to probe Russian infiltration of Donald Trump's presidential campaign. But the bureau never followed any Russians. In fact, it was an operation to sabotage Trump, the candidate, then...

From the phony Russia collusion narrative to the coordinated riots laying waste to US cities, it's the same ongoing operation orchestrated by the left and targeting not just President Trump but hundreds of millions of Americans who revere their country and what it stands for. For the first time, crusading investigative journalist Lee Smith reveals who was responsible and the never before known involvement of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and senior military officials who engineered a coup against a sitting president. Beginning in late 2015, political operatives, intelligence officials, and the press pushed a conspiracy theory about Trump-he was a Russian asset and spied on his campaign and his presidency in order to undo an election.Because the ultimate goal of the anti-Trump operation is not simply to topple the president but rather to change the character and constitution of the country, the Deep State's machinations didn't stop even after Trump...

"Lee Smith is a great American patriot who has understood, from the very beginning, that the radical left is the true THREAT TO DEMOCRACY."—Donald Trump, former president of the United StatesFrom Lee Smith, bestselling author of, The Permanent Coup and The Plot Against the President, comes another riveting exposé of the secret war against President Trump and American democracy. Even before a would-be killer tried to murder President Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, a clique of political assassins set about eliminating him from public life entirely. In Disappearing the President, New York Times bestselling author Lee Smith exposes how a shadow network of powerful partisan activists has waged a years-long, scorched-earth war to eradicate President Trump and any vestige of his influence. Resorting to an unprecedented campaign of domestic spying, election rigging, brute-force censorship,...

A celebrated novelist, Lee Smith is likewise recognized as a master of the short story and has been compared with such luminaries as Katherine Ann Porter, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O'Connor. Now she collects fourteen stories—seven brand-new ones along with seven favorites from her three earlier collections. The result? A book of dazzling richness.Famous for unmistakable voices and a craft so strong and sure it seems effortless, Lee Smith's stories strike dead center at the turning points of her characters' lives. Here those characters range from an eight-year-old boy obsessed with vocabulary words to a young bride who has married "way up" to Mrs. Darcy herself, an older woman making it through widowhood her own way. As the New York Times Book Review put it, "In almost every one of [her stories] there is a moment of vision, or love, or unclothed wonder that transforms something plain into something transcendent."With this collection—her first in...

Now back in print from the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Girls. It was in 1833 or '34 that Moses Bailey brought young Kate Malone down to Cold Spring Holler to be his wife. But Moses, wanting to become a preacher like his daddy was, left Kate time and again to look after the kids while he went out in search of a sign from God. Though he warned them about the evils of playing the fiddle, a kind of music he likened to the devil's own laughter, it passed the time for his bride and children, and soon became not just a way of life for the Baileys, but a curse that would last for generations.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERLEE SMITHAuthor of News of the SpiritTHE LAST GIRLSA Novel“Wise and insightful . . . The Last Girls deserves to be shared, pondered, and treasured.”–The Dallas Morning News“[A] GENIAL, THOUGHTFUL, FUNNY NOVEL, WRITTEN WITH THE WIT AND ASSURANCE OF A BORN STORYTELLER.”–The Hartford Courant“RICH AND DELICIOUS . . . THE STORY OF FOUR WOMEN . . .Years ago, they were girls, not women–the last generation of American females to be called ‘girls’–who traveled down the Mississippi River . . . on a makeshift raft while they were on summer vacation . . . There were twelve of them on that trip; now there are these four, brought together by tragedy. One of their classmates . . . has died in an automobile wreck (was it really an accident?), and her husband has asked the old friends to re-create the river journey and scatter her ashes at the mouth of the Mississippi. . . . It’s a reunion of classmates with all of the in-between revealed in intimate detail, as only a skilled and classy storyteller can do it.”–The Boston Globe“AN HONEST PORTRAIT OF INTELLIGENT, WELL-ROUNDED SOUTHERNERS is always refreshing, and The Last Girls delivers. The book may be influenced by Twain, but Smith proves she has a voice all her own.”–USA Today“BREEZILY WRITTEN AND DISPLAYING SMITH’S TRADEMARK PITCH-PERFECT EAR FOR DIALOGUE, funny but with the dark touches of all good comedy, the novel charts the course by which the ‘girls’ . . . seek love and self-fulfillment during the three decades approaching the end of the century. Call it Huckleberry Fin de Siècle.”–Time Out New York“SMITH’S COMIC GENIUS SPARKLES . . . Under Smith’s deft hand, these woman bloom exceptionally authentic.. . Using the premise that both a reunion and a riverboat provide good lookouts on the past, she details the passing terrain as she details each woman’s emotional history, from child to adult, from dates to love affairs, from silly shenanigans to tragic accidents. And what details! The book is filled with memorable scenes. . . . Smith adds a purely feminine, deeply southern twist to the Mark Twain tradition of humor and precision applied generously to the subject of human weakness.”–Richmond Times-Dispatch“Lee Smith’s genius is in her seamless weaving of the two stories, past and present, so that we realize what the stakes are for these women, and how they have arrived at the reunion as footsore pilgrims–a bit battered and bruised, but sailing on nevertheless. . . . Smith has that talent that all storytellers envy: the ability to dive deeply into the lives of her characters, to bring them to life in their rich fullness, warts and all. Each of these women could energize an entire book. Each brings something unique and captivating to a superb tale that will stay with you long after the reading is done. Together they compel each of us to ask what has brought us to the near shore, and how we set sail from here.”–The Boston GlobeAmazon.com ReviewIn the brisk and readable The Last Girls, acclaimed Southern writer Lee Smith reunites four college suitemates on a boat tour of the mighty Mississippi. Thirty-five years before, inspired by reading Twain's Huckleberry Finn in class (a detail not nearly revisited enough), the women floated down the same river on a manmade raft; now they are gathered at the request of their recently deceased ringleader's husband. The story unfolds through the eyes of each woman as the old friends weave college memories with their own dramas spanning the three decades since graduation. Harriet, Courtney, Catherine, and Anna come through muddily compared to their dead friend Baby. Even in death, Baby, a Sylvia Plath-like creature with voracious appetites for poetry, self-mutilation, and sex, nearly overwhelms her more reticent friends with past behaviors better suited to a mental institution than a dorm room. As the tour boat bobs along in the wake of these women's emotional crises, Smith offers up the contemporary female life experience, fivefold. At its heart, this is a book about how we never quite outgrow the past, even after plenty of chances to do otherwise. --Emily RussinFrom Publishers WeeklyThe Big Chill meets Huckleberry Finn in a moving novel inspired by a real-life episode. Thirty-six years ago, Smith (Oral History) and 15 other college "girls" sailed a raft down the Mississippi River from Kentucky to New Orleans in giddy homage to Huck. Here she reimagines that prefeminist odyssey, and then updates it, as four of the raft's alumnae take a steamboat cruise in 1999 to recreate their river voyage and scatter the ashes of one of their own. What results is an unsentimental journey back to not-quite-halcyon college days of the mid-1960s ("periods cramps boys dates birth babies the works") masterfully intercut with more recent stories of marriages, infidelities, health crises and career moves, all set firmly in the South. At first the characters threaten to be mere stereotypes: innocent, self-sacrificing Harriet; arty, maternal Catherine; brittle Southern belle Courtney; brassy romance novelist Anna. But Smith reveals surprising truths about each character, even as she suggests that the fate of their departed classmate-the wild, promiscuous, possibly suicidal Baby-may never be understood. The steamboat setting provides ample opportunities to skewer cruise ship tackiness and Southern kitsch, a witty counterpoint to the often troubled personal stories of the passengers. Readers who like their plots linear may be challenged by the tangle of tales, but those who agree that "there are no grown-ups," and that there's "no beginning and no end" to the "real story" of people's lives, will find this tender, generous, graceful novel a delight. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In her first work of nonfiction, Lee Smith deploys the wit, wisdom, and graceful prose for which she is beloved to conjure her early days in the small coal town of Grundy, Virginia—and beyond. For the inimitable Lee Smith, place is paramount. For forty-five years, her fiction has lived and breathed with the rhythms and people of the Appalachian South. But never before has she written her own story. Set deep in the rugged Appalachian Mountains, the Grundy of Lee Smith's youth was a place of coal miners, mountain music, and her daddy's dimestore. It was in that dimestore—listening to customers and inventing life histories for the store's dolls—that she began to learn the craft of storytelling. Even though she adored Grundy, Lee Smith was being raised to leave it. Her formal education and travels took her far from Virginia, though her Appalachian upbringing never left her. Dimestore's fifteen essays are crushingly honest, always...

"A TOUR DE FORCE"- *Los Angeles Times"The story of Ivy Rowe, born near the turn of the century in the Virginia Mountain enclave of Sugar Fork, is told completely through letters that Ivy is forever writing family and friends...Lee Smith exhibits her own understanding and affection for the traditions of the Appalachians. She is at home with the down-home speech and ways of her characters. They come vividly to life, and none more so than Ivy, whose voice and heart and humor sustain Fair and Tender Ladies."- Philadelphia Inquirer"Because of Ivy's narrative ability and her zest for living, Fair and Tender Ladies opens for us like a flower with a gloriously unexpected center. There are unforgettable characters...Few readers will be dry-eyed as they watch this extraordinary woman disappear around that last bend in the road."-Chicago Tribune"These beautiful letters...display Ivy's soul up close, the way a just-caught firefly illuminates a jar. So real does she become that it is hard to believe that Ivy did not actually live to write her letters."-USA Today*"This is about a moving a work of literature as has ever been written." ANNIE DILLARD

This is why I have had to come back now, traveling these dusty old back roads one more time. For I mean to tell my story, and I mean to tell the truth. I am a believer in the Word, and I am not going to flinch from telling it, not even the terrible things… Florida Grace Shepherd, eleventh child of the itinerant, snake-handling Reverend Virgil Shepherd, grew up traveling across the Appalachian South. In her heart, she raged against the constant hardships that her parents insisted were part of the Lord?™s plan. As she got older, she learned of her father?™s “backsliding” with other women, and watched as it drove her mother to an early grave. Returning to Scrabble Creek, where her happiest memories took place, Grace recounts the harrowing journey of her life with the Lord, from her travels with her father to the day she finally broke free of him only to marry another preacher much older than she, as well as her own stumbles along the rocky and...