The author of The Age of Grief and Ordinary Love and Good Will has written a breakthrough novel--winner of the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. When an Iowa patriarch decides to turn over his thriving farm to his three daugters, he sets off a series of tragic events that will eventually rip apart his family. Presents a powerful, mythic story of an American farm family in Iowa.

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.

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...

On the morning after the 2003 Academy Awards, Max--an Oscar-winning writer/director whose fame has waned--and his lover, Elena, are in bed, still groggy from last night's red-carpet festivities. They are talking about movies, talking about love, talking about the just-begun war in Iraq. But a house full of guests demands attention. They share their stories of Hollywood past and present; they watch films in Max's luxe screening room; they gossip by...

"From the beloved 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:...

Seventh-grader Abby Lovitt grows up on her family's California horse ranch in the 1960s, learning to train the horses her father sells and trying to reconcile her strict religious upbringing with her own ideas about life.

Infused with sharp insight, honesty, and emotion, At Paradise Gate is a treat for both the heart and the intellect. In this poignant story, best-selling author Jane Smiley pens a graceful portrait of an ordinary midwestern family confronting the mysteries of death and regeneration. While her 77-year-old husband lies upstairs, dying, Anna Robison spends her depleting energy defending their home. Their three middle-aged daughters and 23-year-old granddaughter...

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 expensive horse Abby has ever ridden. But he is proud and irritable, and...

Jane Smiley's talent for creating emotionally-gripping tales of family relationships was celebrated when she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for A Thousand Acres. In Duplicate Keys, Smiley displays her flair for creating a haunting mystery. Everyone has keys to Susan's New York apartment: all her friends, and friends of friends. So one afternoon, when Alice unlocks Susan's door to water the plants, she isn't surprised to...

In 1953, the Langdon family at a crossroads. Their stalwart patriarch, Walter, who with his wife, Rosanna, sustained their farm for three decades, has suddenly died, leaving their five children, now adults, looking to the future. Only one will remain in Iowa to work the land, while the others scatter to Washington, D.C., California, and everywhere in between. As the country moves out of post-World War II optimism through the darker landscape of the...