books in order

Lois Battle Books In Order

Novels

  1. Season of Change (1980)
  2. War Brides (1982)
  3. Yesterday’s Music (1984)
  4. Southern Women (1984)
  5. A Habit of the Blood (1987)
  6. The Past Is Another Country (1990)
  7. Storyville (1993)
  8. Bed & Breakfast (1996)
  9. The Florabama Ladies’ Auxiliary & Sewing Circle (2001)

Novels Book Covers

Lois Battle Books Overview

War Brides

World War II is over, but for three Australian women on their way to new lives and new husbands in America, things are just beginning. Young, idealistic, and eager to live the American dream, Sheila, Dawn, and Gaynor travel by ocean liner to join the soldiers they swore to love when peacetime seemed like a lifetime away. But the world that awaits them on the other shore will challenge their illusions and their love, and force them to summon courage and strength they never knew they had. Lois Battle’s ear for dialogue and eye for detail bring characters and places to life as few authors can. Rich with the vibrant language and heady atmosphere of postwar America, War Brides captures the look and feel of one of this country’s most memorable eras. But in her portrayal of three women coming face to face with the sometimes harsh and often joyful realities of marriage in a new land, Battle herself the daughter of an Australian war bride offers a timeless, universal story that will satisfy and entertain readers of every age.

Southern Women

Modern Southern Women confront the issues of love, sex, and career and try to balance them against the Southern society image of ladies and family. By the author of Storyville. Reissue.

A Habit of the Blood

Born to one of Jamaica’s oldest and most powerful families, Ceci Baron has been rootless since childhood. Two desertions first by her father and then by Paul Strangman, the idealistic but ambitious political reformer and the only man she ever loved have driven Ceci from continent to continent, bed to bed, and to a life of self protection and controlled intimacy. Against her better judgment, she returns to Jamaica and is drawn into a family crisis involving her dominating half brother, her dangerously eccentric aunt, and her estranged father. But it is Paul who finally exposes Ceci’s vulnerability, passion, and strength of character as she becomes entangled in political and emotional intrigue among the seafront villas and shanties of a Jamaica that tourists never see.

The Past Is Another Country

Decades after their days as chums at St. Brigid’s convent school, three women Hollywood director Megan, married Aussie Greta, and Sister Joan, a nun reunite and struggle to rediscover themselves. By the author of War Brides. NYT.

Storyville

The story of two very strong yet opposite women surrounded by sin, seduction, and sex is set in Storyville, a New Orleans hotbed for temptation, where prostitution was recently legalized.Lit Guild Main. Doubleday.

Bed & Breakfast

Penguin is pleased to reintroduce readers to ‘born storyteller’ The Washington Post and New York Times bestselling author Lois Battle and her delightful holiday tale of Josie Taternall and her South Carolina bed and breakfast. After her best friend’s narrow brush with death, Josie decides that life is too short to let old grievances stand in the way of family togetherness. This year, she resolves, her three grown daughters the girls she raised so carefully yet with such mixed results will come home for Christmas. With her uncanny ear for Southern sensibility and her sharp eyed wit, Battle gives us the perfect upstairs/downstairs comedy and a portrait of a family in all its tender, touching, and flawed glory that readers young and old will cherish.

The Florabama Ladies’ Auxiliary & Sewing Circle

Welcome to Florabama, Alabama a place where you can stop to sip a co’cola or iced tea and think about money and love. If you had ’em, you were free to think about other things. If you didn’t, you couldn’t think about anything else. ‘We’ve been screwed blue and tattooed,’ quips Hilly Pruitt, upon hearing the news of the closing of Cherished Lady, the local lingerie factory where she’s worked a lifetime. The same day the plant closes, Bonnie Duke Cullman, former deb turned Atlanta society wife, has herself been downsized right out of her marriage and picture perfect life. In an unlikely alliance, Bonnie, Hilly, and the rest of the ex bra seamstresses join forces in the ‘Displaced Homemakers Program’ at a podunk community college. Together they endure a midlife survival course where the events of a single year forever alter the way they see the world and their places in it. Hailed as ‘a fearless novelist’ Pat Conroy and ‘a peerless limner of strong, complex women’ Anne Rivers Siddons, Lois Battle creates a rich tapestry of female friendships in this funny, heartfelt, and poignant story about the surprising power of a group of small town women. ‘The book is so full of good stuff it’s hard to know where to start. It has a feel of Places in the Heart, a little of Norma Rae, and maybe a touch of Fried Green Tomatoes. But it stands on its own as an intelligent, poignant, funny, wistful novel of expectations, love and rebirth.’ Richmond Times Dispatch ‘This is just the kind of book you’d like to take onto the porch of a clapboard house, to read curled up in a wicker chair with a glass of iced tea at your side.’ Houston Chronicle

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