The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

'Philyaw's tender, truthful stories capture all the awkward untidiness of love, desire and family life, yet have a core of joy that makes them wonderfully uplifting. The Secret Lives of Church Ladies is a terrific collection, full of flawed, bruised, bold, complex, intensely human characters.' - Sarah Waters

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

'A wonderful book whose joyful, riotous, interlaced stories combine to paint a picture of a group of women torn between the exigencies of their religion and the urges of their bodies. Philyaw finds beauty in unexpected places, lifting everyday experience into something almost sacred... I was reminded repeatedly of Woolf's Mrs Dalloway - Philyaw's great triumph is to permit her characters to inhabit fully their rich and particular interior lives.' - Observer

'Philyaw expertly treads the line between humour and heartbreak in stories you'll want to wolf down.' - Guardian

'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' - Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

'Mind-opening, heart-revealing, soul-shaking....triumphant' - Robert Jones, Jr., author of the New York Times instant bestselling novel, The Prophets, a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction

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

'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' - Yona Harvey, author of Hemming the Water and writer for the Marvel Comics World of Wakanda series

'Startlingly fresh and flavoursome. These characters will blast through readers' preconceptions and win them over. All hail Philyaw for telling it like nobody else.' - Emma Donoghue, author of Room and The Pull of the Stars

'An astounding collection... so powerful' - Lauren Christensen, New York Times Book Review Podcast

'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' - Melissa Cummings-Quarry, Black Girls Book Club

'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' - Jan Carson

'Tender, fierce, proudly black and beautiful, these stories will sneak inside you and take root' - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)