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23 books added
23 books added
A PEN Open Book Award Nominee, Leesa Cross-Smith has been a finalist for the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction and Iowa Short Fiction Award. She is the author of the short story collection Every Kiss a War and lives in Louisville, KY.
Genres: Literary Fiction
New and upcoming books
Novels
Whiskey & Ribbons (2018)
This Close to Okay (2021)
Half-Blown Rose (2022)
Goodbye Earl (2023)
As You Wish (2025)
This Close to Okay (2021)
Half-Blown Rose (2022)
Goodbye Earl (2023)
As You Wish (2025)
Collections
Leesa Cross-Smith recommends
Strange Folk (2024)
Alli Dyer
"Alli Dyer's Strange Folk is magic in the dark as the story flickers with coziness and tension in equal measure and drips with sweet dandelion jelly. I could smell, taste, feel, and hear Appalachia in these pages and got lost in the warm mist of the love and lore of the land, and this family aching to do the best they can with what they've been given. As the mysteries of Craw Valley rev up and radiate, Dyer's beautiful sentences will make the reader want to slow down, to savor and sip. Strange Folk pulses with curious light, drawing the reader closer and closer until they are fully under the spell that only books this well-written and dreamily atmospheric can cast."
Good Women (2023)
Halle Hill
"In Good Women, Halle Hill gifts us an unflinching peek at women who are trying, women who are aching, women who are running their hands along the walls of their dark hearts, fumbling for the light. Important and beautifully written, this collection is alive with bite and verve tick-tick-ticking on every page."
Those We Thought We Knew (2023)
David Joy
"Those We Thought We Knew is a dark cyclone in search of truth. Spinning the gritty complexities and colors of human nature with beautiful, immersive descriptions of the land, Joy writes both holiness and irreverence with the same weight and care. A writer to be trusted, he is one of our best."
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