'Left me wanting more. Masterfully written' Candice Carty-Williams, author of Queenie

'This book is the one I've passed to friends, family and anyone else who will listen to me rave about how warm and wonderful this writing is... beautiful and honest' Caleb Azumah Nelson, author of Open Water

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies explores the raw and tender places where Black women and girls dare to follow their desires, and pursue a momentary reprieve from being good.

There is fourteen-year-old Jael, who nurses a crush on the preacher's wife; the mother who bakes a sublime peach cobbler every Monday for her date with the married Pastor; and Eula and Caroletta, single childhood friends who seek solace in each other's arms every New Year's Eve.

With their secret longings, new love, and forbidden affairs, these church ladies are as seductive as they want to be, as vulnerable as they need to be, as unfaithful and unrepentant as they care to be - and as free as they deserve to be.



Deesha Philyaw is an American author, columnist and public speaker. Her debut, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, won the 2021 Pen/Faulkner Award, the 2020/2021 Story Prize, and the 2020 LA Times Book Prize for First Fiction and was shortlisted for the National Book Award. It is currently being adapted for television by HBO Max. Deesha is also a Kimbilo Fiction Fellow and will be the 2022-2023 John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi.



Following in the footsteps of Hurston, Angelou and Morrison before her - Deesha Philyaw tenderly explores words left unsaid and stories yet to be told by capturing the raw intimacies of Black women and those they can't help but love. A triumph



The Secret Lives of Church Ladies is one of the most original and essential short story collections of the year. Deesha Philyaw cuts right through the hypocrisy, religiosity and overbearing men to give her readers a rare glimpse into the deliciously dark, irreverent and fascinating world of church-going women. As a former church lady, I've been waiting to read a collection like this for an awfully long time



By turns warm and wicked, funny and caustic, Deesha Philyaw conjures characters who immediately feel like friends. The Secret Lives of Church Ladies is a collection to dash through and then turn back to savour a second time



Warm, sharp, familial, and refreshing



The writing is at once deeply, satisfyingly familiar and brilliantly, sparklingly new. Excellence



Mind-opening, heart-revealing, soul-shaking....triumphant



Tender, fierce, proudly black and beautiful, these stories will sneak inside you and take root



Triumphant... Philyaw's stories inform and build on one another, turning her characters' private struggles into a beautiful chorus



Vivid, vibrant stories that will linger on your tongue like sweet tea



An award-winning, deliciously rebellious short story collection that teems with feeling



This collection marks the emergence of a bona fide literary treasure



Our new decade deserves a new literary force with major literary skills. Deesha Philyaw uses the comic, the allegorical, and the geographic to examine Black intimacies and Black secrets. Her work is as rigorous as it is pleasurable to read



Sex, friendship, freedom, and agency are centered throughout this cheeky, insightful, and irresistible new book



I adored this collection... equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking



Enticing



Beautifully crafted



An honest, joyful exploration of Black female culture



Sparkling



Superb



Fresh, gutsy and charged with hurtling energy



A brilliantly real collection. These are stories pulsating with life, full of small, devastating epiphanies that will mean so much to so many readers



A warm and affectionate "sisterly" chronicle of the lives of small town American black women



The Secret Lives of Church Ladies is exquisite! Deesha's ravishing tales of private desires of church loving black women took hold of my heart, squeezed it tightly, then slowly let go. I loved these delicious, uprising and intimate stories and every friend I've ever loved will find one landing in their lap next year



To encounter Deesha Philyaw's work is to encounter contemporary folktales. They are the stories of southern customs and mores and of voices over the back fence. The daughters and granddaughters of Toni Cade Bambara and Bebe Moore Campbell readers need this book



Full of lived-in humanity, warmth, and compassion



These are stories about Black women that haven't been told with this level of depth, wit, or insight before, so it will not shock me if Oprah gets around to selecting it before the end of the year



I am a major fan of Deesha Philyaw: THE SECRET LIVES OF CHURCH LADIES. She is a phenomenal storyteller, but don't take my word for it. Read her book and be changed and enlightened



Beguiling



Tender, truthful... joyous... full of flawed, bruised, bold, complex, intensely human characters



It's terrific. I'm savouring every story in it, reading them once, then again.



Joyous... It's a book in love with life



Left me wanting more. Masterfully written. Deesha Philyaw knows the craft of writing as well as she does the nuances of sex



Joyful, riotous... Philyaw's great triumph is to permit her characters to inhabit fully their rich and particular interior lives



This book is the one I've passed to friends, family and anyone else who will listen to me rave about how warm and wonderful this writing is. This collection is as wise as it is tender, the writing beautiful and honest. I'll be returning to these stories for a long time to come



Deesha Philyaw's The Secret Lives of Church Ladies is startlingly fresh and flavoursome. These characters will blast through readers' preconceptions and win them over. All hail Philyaw for telling it like nobody else



Exquisite... at turns tender and heartbreaking and moving and funny, with sharp, gorgeously crafted sentences that have the ability to both spear through your heart and bolster it. There is such love for these women. Delicious



Glorious - the smart, sad and very funny portrait of several generations wrestling with their desires and their faith



Touching, inspiring, funny, raw, these church ladies will make you want to switch congregations



Deesha Philyaw's debut collection is outstanding.... Raging and aching and joyful, these vividly drawn characters tackle sexual shame, fraught mother-daughter relationships, absent fathers and sibling loyalty with a hard-won wisdom



Beautifully crafted. A lovely collection



It's impossible to pick a standout from this collection of short stories as they're all that good... a tender and rich look at all the complexities and layers of female sexuality



Achingly intimate... deftly crafted



I've [...] been really enjoying The Secret Lives Of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw, which are short stories that are incredibly sexy without being sexually explicit, which I think is a massive skill



Philyaw's frank, lyrical prose is a thing of beauty, deftly capturing whatever she turns her hand to, be it fractured mother-daughter relationships or burgeoning romances. These short stories offer an arresting view on the inner lives of black women, and the nourishment they find in their spirituality and each other



An astounding collection... so powerful



Brilliant