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Sue Monk Kidd is an American #1 New York Times bestselling author of historical fiction and non-fiction books.

Brought up in a tiny Georgian town that heavily inspired her debut novel The Secret Life of Bees (2001), Kidd is a graduate of Texas Christian University, and the recipient of an honorary doctor of letters degree from the same institution.

She has also done creative writing courses at Emory University and Anderson College, on top of studying at Sewanee, Bread Loaf, and other writers conferences.

The recipient of several literary awards, such as the Florida Book of Year Award and the SIBA Book Award for her novel The Invention of Wings (2014), Kidd’s books have been translated into several languages, selling millions of copies across the globe.

Kidd, who serves on the Writers Council for Poets & Writers, Inc, currently resides in North Carolina with her beloved husband, Sandy, and their lovely dog, Barney.

More about Sue Monk Kidd

Genres: Historical Fiction, Non-fiction

Born: 1948

United States

Website: https://suemonkkidd.com

Non Series

  • The Secret Life of Bees (2001)
  • The Mermaid Chair (2004)
  • The Invention of Wings (2014)
  • The Book of Longings (2020)

Non-fiction

  1. God's Joyful Surprise: Finding Yourself Loved (1987)
  2. This Is the Day (1987)
  3. All Things Are Possible (1988)
  4. When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life's Sacred Questions (1990)
  5. Love's Hidden Blessings: God Can Touch Your Life When You Least Expect It (1990)
  6. The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman's Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine (1996)
  7. Firstlight: The Early Inspirational Writings of Sue Monk Kidd (2006)
  8. Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother and Daughter Journey to the Sacred Places of Greece, Turkey, and France (2009)
  9. Business Opportunities at Home: How to Start and Maintain Home Based Business (2014)
  10. The Spiritual Sampler (2016)

Detailed book overview

Non Series

The Secret Life of Bees

Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed.

When Lily's fierce-hearted Black "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free. They escape to Tiburon, South Carolina—a town that holds the secret to her mother's past.

Taken in by an eccentric trio of Black beekeeping sisters, Lily is introduced to their mesmerizing world of bees and honey, and the Black Madonna.

This is a remarkable novel about divine female power, a story that women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.

Author: Sue Monk Kidd
First Release: 2001
ISBN: 978-0142001745
Publisher: Penguin Books
The Mermaid Chair

A transcendent tale of a woman's self-discovery...

Inside the church of a Benedictine monastery on Egret Island, just off the coast of South Carolina, resides a beautiful and mysterious chair ornately carved with mermaids and dedicated to a saint who, legend claims, was a mermaid before her conversion.

When Jessie Sullivan is summoned home to the island to cope with her eccentric mother’s seemingly inexplicable behavior, she is living a conventional life with her husband, Hugh, a life “molded to the smallest space possible.” Jessie loves Hugh, but once on the island, she finds herself drawn to Brother Thomas, a monk about to take his final vows.

Amid a rich community of unforgettable island women and the exotic beauty of marshlands, tidal creeks, and majestic egrets, Jessie grapples with the tension of desire and the struggle to deny it, with a freedom that feels overwhelmingly right, and with the immutable force of home and marriage.

Is the power of the mermaid chair only a myth? Or will it alter the course of Jessie’s life? What happens will unlock the roots of her mother’s tormented past, but most of all, it will allow Jessie to discover selfhood and a place of belonging as she explores the thin line between the spiritual and the erotic.

Author: Sue Monk Kidd
First Release: 2004
ISBN: 978-0143036692
Publisher: Penguin Books
The Invention of Wings

Hetty “Handful” Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimke’s daughter, Sarah, has known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women.

Kidd’s sweeping novel is set in motion on Sarah’s eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership of ten year old Handful, who is to be her handmaid. We follow their remarkable journeys over the next thirty five years, as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically shaping each other’s destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement and the uneasy ways of love.

As the stories build to a riveting climax, Handful will endure loss and sorrow, finding courage and a sense of self in the process. Sarah will experience crushed hopes, betrayal, unrequited love, and ostracism before leaving Charleston to find her place alongside her fearless younger sister, Angelina, as one of the early pioneers in the abolition and women’s rights movements.

Inspired by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke, Kidd goes beyond the record to flesh out the rich interior lives of all of her characters, both real and invented, including Handful’s cunning mother, Charlotte, who courts danger in her search for something better.

Author: Sue Monk Kidd
First Release: 2014
ISBN: 978-0143121701
Publisher: Penguin Books
The Book of Longings

An extraordinary story set in the first century about a woman who finds her voice and her destiny.

Raised in a wealthy family with ties to the ruler of Galilee, she is rebellious and ambitious, with a brilliant mind and a daring spirit. She engages in furtive scholarly pursuits and writes narratives about neglected and silenced women. Ana is expected to marry an older widower, a prospect that horrifies her. An encounter with eighteen-year-old Jesus changes everything.

Their marriage evolves with love and conflict, humor and pathos in Nazareth, where Ana makes a home with Jesus, his brothers, and their mother, Mary. Ana's pent-up longings intensify amid the turbulent resistance to Rome's occupation of Israel, partially led by her brother, Judas. She is sustained by her fearless aunt Yaltha, who harbors a compelling secret.

When Ana commits a brazen act that puts her in peril, she flees to Alexandria, where startling revelations and greater dangers unfold, and she finds refuge in unexpected surroundings. Ana determines her fate during a stunning convergence of events considered among the most impactful in human history.

Author: Sue Monk Kidd
First Release: 2020
ISBN: 978-0143111399
Publisher: Penguin Books

Non-fiction

God's Joyful Surprise: Finding Yourself Loved

The bestselling author's inspiring account of her spiritual journey into discovering the love of God.

Sue Monk Kidd explores the thrilling possibilities of God's everlasting love. God's Joyful Surprise makes an important statement about devotion to God rather than activity. Strands of humor and warmth woven throughout make it a joy to read from beginning to end.

Author: Sue Monk Kidd
First Release: 1987
ISBN: 978-0060645816
Publisher: HarperOne
This Is the Day
Author: Sue Monk Kidd
First Release: 1987
ISBN: 978-0837818283
Publisher: Peggy Pinson
All Things Are Possible

All Things Are Possible gives you encouragement through Psalms and verses of the Bible.

Author: Sue Monk Kidd
First Release: 1988
ISBN: 978-0837818146
Publisher: Peggy Pinson
When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life's Sacred Questions

From the bestselling author of The Secret Life of Bees, an inspiring autobiographical account of personal pain, spiritual awakening, and divine grace.

Blending her own experience with an intimate grasp of spirituality, Sue Monk Kidd relates the passionate and moving tale of her spiritual crisis, when life seemed to have lost meaning and her longing for a hasty escape from the pain yielded to a discipline of “active waiting.” Full of wisdom, poise, and grace, Kidd’s words will encourage us along our spiritual journey, toward becoming who we truly are.

Author: Sue Monk Kidd
First Release: 1990
ISBN: 978-0061144899
Publisher: HarperOne
Love's Hidden Blessings: God Can Touch Your Life When You Least Expect It

Love's Hidden Blessings by Sue Monk KIdd Having read several books by this author already-I am truly pleasantly surprised at the freshness of detail and insight she manages to convey.

Many details of her past have found a way of providing both the author and the reader with clarity and vision into the gentle, subtle, loving ways we all stumble in our faith. Sue Monk Kidd has found a way to reveal to us her often unexpected resting places where she has been able to travel in and out of her own way onto a more direct path to see and know her Creator.

Intent in finding her way, she is discontent at what it will cost her... Although she hesitates at times, she finds the past is no longer a perfect fit and the present is ever changing and the future has offered her something truly exciting, enriching, fulfilling, compelling and she yearns to go all the way... As long as she keeps moving forward she is headed in the right direction by becoming more connected to her own soul than ever before! H-21

Author: Sue Monk Kidd
First Release: 1990
ISBN: 978-0892836864
Publisher: Vine Books
The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman's Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine

For years, Sue Monk Kidd was a conventionally religious woman. Then, in the late 1980s, she experienced an unexpected awakening, and began a journey toward a feminine spirituality. With the exceptional storytelling skills that have helped make her name, Kidd tells her very personal story of the fear, anger, healing, and freedom she experienced on the path toward the wholeness that many women have lost in the church.

From a jarring encounter with sexism in a suburban drugstore, to monastery retreats and to rituals in the caves of Crete, she reveals a new level of feminine spiritual consciousness for all women—one that retains a meaningful connection with the "deep song of Christianity," embraces the sacredness of ordinary women’s experience, and has the power to transform in the most positive ways every fundamental relationship in a woman's life—her marriage, her career, and her religion.

Author: Sue Monk Kidd
First Release: 1996
ISBN: 978-0062573025
Publisher: HarperOne
Firstlight: The Early Inspirational Writings of Sue Monk Kidd

Before she won an international readership with her novels, Sue Monk Kidd was best known for her smart, passionate spiritual writings. Now many of those early stories and essays (most of which first appeared in Guideposts) are collected in one volume, organized around thirteen spiritual motifs.

In Firstlight, Kidd charts her emergence as a writer and seeker; reflects on her roles as wife, mother, daughter, nurse, and artist; and assesses what she has learned in settings as far-flung as Africa and her own home. The result is an intimate, uplifting book, filled with moments of recognition and discovery.

Author: Sue Monk Kidd
First Release: 2006
ISBN: 978-0143112327
Publisher: Penguin Books
Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother and Daughter Journey to the Sacred Places of Greece, Turkey, and France

Sue Monk Kidd has touched the hearts of millions of readers with her beloved novels and acclaimed nonfiction. Now, in this wise and engrossing dual memoir, she and her daughter, Ann, chronicle their travels together through Greece and France at a time when each was on a quest to redefine herself and rediscover each other.

As Sue struggles to enlarge a vision of swarming bees into a novel, and Ann ponders the classic question of what to do with her life, this modern-day Demeter and Persephone explore an array of inspiring figures and sacred sites. They also give voice to that most protean of human connections: the bond of mothers and daughters.

An absorbing book about spiritual growth and finding one's destiny, Traveling with Pomegranates is both a revealing self-portrait by a beloved author and her daughter, and a momentous story that will resonate with women everywhere.

Author: Sue Monk Kidd
First Release: 2009
ISBN: 978-0143117971
Publisher: Penguin Books
Business Opportunities at Home: How to Start and Maintain Home Based Business

This book is the perfect guide for people looking to exploit business opportunities at home.

Author: Sue Monk Kidd
First Release: 2014
ISBN: 978-1505728668
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
The Spiritual Sampler

Blending her own experiences with an intimate grasp of spirituality, Sue Monk Kidd relates the passionate and moving tale of her spiritual crisis, when life seemed to have lost meaning and her longing for a hasty escape from the pain yielded to a discipline of "active waiting."

Author: Sue Monk Kidd
First Release: 2016
Ebook: B01LXW10G6
Publisher: HarperOne