Eliza McCracken doesn’t want to marry Peter Cargill, the extravagantly well-mannered and apparently well-connected man her parents have foisted on her. He is too old—38 to her 18—and she’s sweet on ...

St. Louis-born author Jane Smiley has won a Pulitzer and published more than 25 books, but she has never set a book in her hometown — until now. Lucky, which dropped last month, is an alternative ...

After the first dozen pages, the title of Jane Smiley’s incongruously cozy new murder mystery, “A Dangerous Business,” appears to refer to the potential perils of prostitution during the last years of ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Toward the end of Jane Smiley's new novel, "Lucky," its narrator takes a moment to flip through her mother's record collection. It ...

CARMEL VALLEY, Calif. -- CARMEL VALLEY, Calif. When Jane Smiley sat down to write "Ten Days in the Hills," she found herself confronting a technical problem she'd never faced before: Too much sex. "Uh ...

On this episode of “Literary Arts: The Archive Project,” we’re reaching back more than 30 years into the archive to feature the prolific novelist Jane Smiley from a Portland Arts & Lectures event in ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. A copy of Jane Smiley's latest, "Lucky," sat in my lap — the last page read, the book closed. "Well, huh," I thought. "What the ...

It’s all about the work. That’s the secret to Jane Smiley’s sustained success as a writer of literary fiction. As you’ll see in this candid conversation, Smiley was honored to receive a Pulitzer Prize ...

Jane Smiley paints such vivid imagery with her language that it’s easy for her novels to conjure memories of various movies and television. Her latest, “A Dangerous Business” (Knopf, 224 pp., ★★★½ out ...

For Jane Smiley, horses are less an interest than an obsession. Growing up in the suburbs of St. Louis, Mo., she gazed longingly at the steeds on TV (“Roy Rogers,” “The Lone Ranger”) and begged her ...

Eliza was free. Dragged west to Gold Rush California from Michigan by her bully of a husband, liberated by a bullet that turned her into a widow, she considered her future in the windswept port town ...