Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lucy the Giant | 2002 | Sherri L. Smith | Buy |
| 2 | Sparrow | 2006 | Sherri L. Smith | Buy |
| 3 | Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet | 2008 | Sherri L. Smith | Buy |
| 4 | Flygirl | 2009 | Sherri L. Smith | Buy |
| 5 | Orleans | 2013 | Sherri L. Smith | Buy |
| 6 | The Toymaker’s Apprentice | 2015 | Sherri L. Smith | Buy |
| 7 | Pasadena | 2016 | Sherri L. Smith | Buy |
| 8 | The Blossom and the Firefly | 2020 | Sherri L. Smith | Buy |
Sherri L. Smith’s standalone novels cover a lot of ground, from contemporary realism to historical fiction to post-apocalyptic survival. Her debut, Lucy the Giant (2002), is about an Alaskan teenager who runs away and joins a crab fishing crew. Sparrow (2006) deals with the aftermath of sexual abuse, while Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet captures the messy comedy of a biracial girl’s eighth-grade graduation dinner.
Her later novels took bigger swings. Flygirl (2009) remains her best-known work, telling the story of Ida Mae Jones, a young Black woman who passes as white to join the Women Airforce Service Pilots. Orleans (2013) is a dystopian novel set in a quarantined, hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast. The Toymaker’s Apprentice (2015) draws on German folklore, Pasadena (2016) is a literary mystery, and The Blossom and the Firefly (2020) is a love story set in wartime Japan.