Join us for a virtual event with Lee Smith! We can’t bring everyone to the store, but we’re pleased to be part of the Reader Meet Writer Okra Pick series of online events hosted by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance.

The event is free but attendance is limited and registration is required. Please CLICK HERE TO REGISTER.

If you elect to attend, we will email you on the day of the event with the link & password required to attend on Zoom.

Lee Smith brings her masterful storytelling magic to this jewel of a novella that follows Jenny, an adventurous thirteen-year-old, down to Key West for a patched-up family vacation following the discovery of her father’s illicit affair. Available for the first time as a stand-alone novella, this book centers on the Blue Marlin Motel in 1959, where Jenny, her beautiful socialite mother, and chastened father share their sunny days with movie stars who are in town to make the movie Operation Petticoat. Jenny is precocious and a bit of a sleuth, so her innocent “observations” to uncover the secrets of movie stars also end up revealing the secrets of her own family. Jenny confronts the frailty of family life while also vying for the attention of actor Tony Curtis and even a role in his movie. Smith delivers humor and honesty to her flawed characters with genuine Southern dignity.

Born in the small coal-mining town of Grundy, Virginia, Lee Smith began writing stories at the age of nine and selling them for a nickel apiece. Since then, she has written seventeen works of fiction, including Fair and Tender Ladies, Oral History, and, most recently, Guests on Earth. She has received many awards, including the North Carolina Award for Literature and an Academy Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; her novel The Last Girls was a New York Times bestseller as well as winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award. She lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina, with her husband, the writer Hal Crowther.

This event is free. We ask that you purchase the books featured at our events from Malaprop’s. When you do this you are not only supporting the work it takes to run an events program, you are also telling the publishers that they should keep sending authors here. Books can be ordered online 24/7. See malaprops.com for more information about current shipping and delivery options. Blue Marlin will be released on April 21st.