Ernest J. Gaines

Author Information
Ernest J. Gaines's Latest Book

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  • Bibliography:
    11 Books
  • First Book:
    March 1976
  • Latest Book:
    September 2017
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Book List in Order: 11 titles

  • Bloodline

    In these five stories, Ernest Gaines returns to the cane fields, sharecroppers' shacks, and decaying plantation houses of Louisiana, the terrain of his great novels A Gathering of Old Men and A Lesson Before Dying. As rendered by Gaines, this country...

  • In My Father's House

    A compelling novel of a man brought to reckon with his buried past... In St. Adrienne, a small black community in Louisiana, Reverend Phillip Martin -- a respected minister and civil rights leader -- comes face to face with the sins of his youth in t...

  • A Gathering of Old Men

    A powerful depiction of racial tensions arising over the death of a Cajun farmer at the hands of a black man--set on a Louisiana sugarcane plantation in the 1970s.

    The Village Voice called A Gathering of Old Men “the best-written novel ...

  • The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

    “Grand, robust, a rich and big novel.” -- Alice Walker, The New York Times Book Review “In [Jane Pittman], Ernest Gaines has created a legendary figure. . . . Gaines’s novel brings to mind other great works: The Odyssey, for the way his heroi...

  • Lesson Before Dying

    • / General Fiction
    • Buy Buy

    From the author of A Gathering of Old Men and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman comes a deep and compassionate novel. A young man who returns to 1940s Cajun country to teach visits a black youth on death row for a crime he didn't commit. Togethe...

  • Catherine Carmier

    A compelling debut love story set in a deceptively bucolic Louisiana countryside, where blacks, Cajuns, and whites maintain an uneasy coexistence--by the award-winning author of A Lesson Before Dying and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. After ...

  • Of Love and Dust

    This is the story of Marcus: bonded out of jail where he has been awaiting trial for murder, he is sent to the Hebert plantation to work in the fields. There he encounters conflict with the overseer, Sidney Bonbon, and a tale of revenge, lust and pow...

  • Mozart and Leadbelly

    The beloved author of the classic, best-selling novel A Lesson Before Dying shares the inspirations behind his books and his reasons for becoming a writer in this collection of stories and essays. Told in the simple and powerful prose that...

  • A Long Day in November

    An affectionate and funny story set in the “black quarter" of a Southern sugar cane plantation in the 1940s and told by a child named Eddie, who watches his mother leave his father over his preoccupation with his car, which his father ultimately bu...



  • My Grandpa and the Haint

    A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection   The fish are nearly jumping in the bayous of Louisiana, but hoodoo magic is just as easy to find. And one day, Bobby’s grandfather catches a haint.    With his characteristically ...

  • The Tragedy of Brady Sims

    Ernest J. Gaines's new novella revolves around a courthouse shooting that leads a young reporter to uncover the long story of race and power in his small town and the relationship between the white sheriff and the black man who "whipped children" to ...

Award-Winning Books by Ernest J. Gaines

Lesson Before Dying
1993 National Book Critics Circle Award -- Fiction
1994 Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary Award -- Fiction


Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Ernest J. Gaines has published 11 books.

Ernest J. Gaines does not have a new book coming out soon. The latest book, The Tragedy of Brady Sims, was published in September 2017.

The first book by Ernest J. Gaines, Bloodline, was published in March 1976.

No. Ernest J. Gaines does not write books in series.
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