Anthologies
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| A Very Southern Christmas: Holiday Stories from the South’s Best Writers | 2003 | Buy |
| The Best American Short Stories 2006 | 2006 | Buy |
| The Virago Book of the Joy of Shopping | 2007 | Buy |
| Fairy Tale Review, The Green Issue | 2007 | Buy |
| The Writer’s Library | 2020 | Buy |
Standalone Novels
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| The Secret History | 1992 | Buy |
| The Little Friend | 2002 | Buy |
| The Goldfinch | 2013 | Buy |
Donna Tartt was born in 1963 in Greenwood, Mississippi, and studied at the University of Mississippi and Bennington College, where she was a classmate of Bret Easton Ellis. She published her debut novel, The Secret History, in 1992, and it became a cultural touchstone for literary fiction readers of that era. The book follows a group of Greek classics students at a small Vermont college and opens with a murder, then works backward through the events that led to it.
Her second novel, The Little Friend, appeared in 2002 and took a different approach, set in rural Mississippi and following a young girl investigating the unexplained death of her older brother. In 2013, The Goldfinch was published and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, though it also drew some critical debate about whether Pulitzer-caliber status was warranted. It is the story of a boy who survives a museum bombing and grows up with a stolen Dutch Golden Age painting.
Tartt has contributed to anthologies and short fiction collections, but her reputation rests on those three novels. Her long gaps between books are a consistent topic of reader discussion, though the quality of her output has generally been regarded as high.