Michael Lee West Books In Order

Crazy Ladies

From the author of She Flew the Coop and American Pie comes this lively multigenerational tale of six charming, unforgettable Southern women a novel of love and laughter, pain and redemption. Though she was born in Tennessee, Miss Gussie is no country fool. A woman who can handle any situation, she has her hands full with two headstrong daughters who happen to be complete opposites dour Dorothy and sweet Clancy Jane. Hoping money will heal childhood wounds, Dorothy marries the owner of a five and dime, while Clancy Jane gets into a mess of trouble, running off with a randy tomcat who pumps gas at the Esso stand. And then there are Gussie’s granddaughters, the smart but plain Violet and fancy talking Bitsy a new generation whose lives will reflect a nation’s tumultuous times. From Tennessee to New Orleans, from psychedelic San Francisco to a remote Southwestern desert ranch, this funny, poignant novel spans more than four decades as it vividly recounts the universal loves, sorrows, and joys of women’s lives.

Mad Girls in Love

Michael Lee West’s indomitable G.R.I.T.S. Girls Raised in the South are back enduring rough times with all the grace and outrageous flair expected of true Southern hero*ines.

Bitsy Wentworth fleeing yet another relationship nightmare in a borrowed red Corvette, with her baby daughter and a recently acquired demon child has an APB out on her for attempted murder she broke her ex husband’s nose with a frozen slab of ribs that she purchased at the Piggly Wiggly. Her mama, Dorothy, is writing letters to First Ladies from inside the Central State Asylum, while Aunt Clancy Jane has completed her inevitable progression from hippie to local Crazy Cat Lady. Three generations of unforgettable Crystal Falls, Tennessee, women and the men they attract, enrage, and confound are courageously plowing through tumultuous lives of compound disaster…
and hoping the chaos the next wrong step leads to won’t be insurmountable.

Gone with a Handsomer Man

Gone with a Handsomer Man is fun, funny, and fabulous! Janet Evanovich Take one out of work pastry chef…
Teeny Templeton believes that her life is finally on track. She’s getting married, she s baking her own wedding cake, and she s leaving her troubled past behind. And then? She finds her fianc playing naked badminton with a couple of gorgeous, ska*nky chicks. Add a whole lot of trouble…
Needless to say, the wedding is off. Adding insult to injury, her fianc slaps a restraining order on her. When he s found dead a few days later, all fingers point to Teeny. And stir like crazy!Her only hope is through an old boyfriend turned lawyer, the guy who broke her heart a decade ago. But dredging up the past brings more than skeletons out of the closet, and Teeny doesn t know who she can trust. With evidence mounting and the heat turning up, Teeny must also figure out where to live, how to support herself, how to clear her name, and how to protect her heart.

She Flew the Coop

The two main occupations in Limoges, Louisiana population: 905, seem to be spreading juicy gossip and consoling the unfortunate with casseroles. And in this early spring of 1952, there is ample opportunity for both& 8212with sixteen year old and pregnant by the Baptist minister Olive Nepper, currently languishing in a coma after drinking pop laced with rose poison. But the plight of Olive and her family is hardly the only story spicing up the rumor mill in this small Southern community of unpredictable eccentrics, wandering husbands, and unsatisfied wives& 8212and few local sins will be put right by home cooking. From Michael Lee West comes a beautifully rendered portrait of small town Southern life, filled with humanity that brilliantly weaves comedy with dark calamity.

American Pie

The lives of the three McBroom sisters of Tallulah, Tennessee, were tangled before the eldest, Eleanor, discovered their mother hanging from the Venetian blinds& 8212and the years have done little to comb out the knots. Now a drunken encounter with the midnight train has left brash, much married Jo Nell near death, compelling agoraphobic Eleanor to summon marine biologist Freddie home from California& 8212where she fled after being expelled from med school following a daring gall bladder heist. At last the McBroom sisters are together again, to face old fears and new catastrophes as they cheerfully deflect every flaming arrow that outrageous fortune fires their way. With wit and loving compassion, Michael Lee West introduces us to an indomitable family of eccentric survivors in an unforgettable novel of cruel fate, bad luck, and unassailable resiliency.

Mermaids in the Baseme*nt

Reeling from the loss of her mother, plagued with a bad case of writer’s block and don’t even talk about those extra twenty pounds, Renata DeChavannes feels as though everything is just plain wrong. And that was before the tabloids caught her sweetheart, filmmaker Ferg Lauderdale, sharing an intimate squeeze with Hollywood’s hottest young tamale.

But the granddaughter of the formidable Honora DeChavannes possesses more hell than belle in her backbone and she’s about to reclaim it. Heading south to Honora’s home on the Gulf Coast, Renata is determined to stop feeling like a wilted gardenia and emerge as the unstoppable kudzu her beloved grandmother proudly proclaimed she would be. But for that to happen Renata’s got to face some not so genteel ghosts from her past, discover the truth about the mother she desperately misses, and make peace with the first man who abandoned her and broke her heart: her handsome and distant father.

Consuming Passions

‘Every Sunday, the whole family gathered at Mama Hughes’s house in Amite County, Mississippi. They were ferocious eaters and talkers, devouring rumors and innuendo with gusto. Food was their common language, and everyone understood the dialects.’ Aunt Tempe, reminiscing about family dinnersFrom Michael Lee West, author of the acclaimed American Pie, She Flew the Coop, and Crazy Ladies, comes a delightfully quirky memoir of an adventurous food obsessed life, laced with delicious secret recipes passed from generation to generation. Wonderfully presented and thoroughly entertaining, this warm and witty work unites West’s evocative voice and humor with the uniquely American form of kitchen tales in the tradition of Laurie Colwin. West lends her distinctive humor and often hilarious insights to stories about her trials and tribulations as a Southern woman who became an ‘accidental gourmet.’ In this irresistible memoir mothers swing from chandeliers, elderly aunts brew love potions, a South American nymphomaniac stirs up trouble at a Louisiana barbecue joint, Margaret Mitchell’s bed is discovered during a routine antique hunt, a cabbage eating ghost haunts relatives, mother and daughter peek under fig leaves on statues, and bees attack all in pursuit of good food. By watching a multitude of relatives cook, squabble, and carry on tradition, Michael Lee West went from a noncooking student to a full on gourmet of food and words. Using her own experience and the witticisms of relatives, or clever inspirations overheard in parking lots on the way to the mayor’s funeral, West fills these pages with insights such as: ‘Potato salad is our friend. It will never let you down. It’s a shame we have to eat it, but that’s life’ and ‘Live and learn. Die and get food. That’s the Southern way.’ Often bawdy and always entertaining, West is wonderfully outrageous, charming, and delightful. ‘Anybody can cook. But it takes a special person to feed the souls of her guests.’ Miss Johnnie, sitting in a rocking chair, musing about hospitality, 1979