against the backdrop of the Atlanta Child Murders of 1979–81. The three perspectives in the novel are children: LaTasha Baxter, Rodney Green, and Octavia Fuller. This novel, which was written while she was a graduate student at Arizona State University, is based on her experience as a child in Atlanta during that period. It won the 2003 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction. Aletha Spann of 30Nineteen Productions has purchased the film option for Leaving Atlanta. The Untelling is also set in Atlanta. Described in Publishers Weekly as Jones's "deep-felt second novel", the book examines how the protagonist comes to terms with the loss of key members of her family as a child before having to redefine herself all over again in her mid-twenties. It was awarded the Lillian Smith Book Award in 2005. Silver Sparrow, Jones's third novel, was published by Algonquin Books in 2011. It was an American Booksellers Association number 1 "Indie Next" pick. An American Marriage, her latest novel, was published on February 6, 2018 by Algonquin. On the same day, Oprah Winfrey announced that An American Marriage would be a pick of Oprah's Book Club. An American Marriage is about an African-American couple whose lives are shaken when the husband, Roy, is arrested for a crime he did not commit. Winfrey has also announced that she is producing a film adaptation of the book. President Barack Obama included An American Marriage on his summer 2018 reading list. Jones also edited Atlanta Noir, an anthology of noir fiction published by Akashic Books in 2017. Jones' short story, Caramel, takes place in the Cascade Heights neighborhood of southwest Atlanta. Caramel is one of fourteen stories in the anthology that are set in Atlanta neighborhoods. Atlanta Noir is a collection of stories that Jones gathered to reveal the cruel reality of some of the major issues of Atlanta. Brennan Collins from Georgia State University explains, in the Atlanta Studies website, what Jones' use of the word 'rot' in “exposing the rot underneath the scent of magnolia and pine” (Jones p. 15) are "Atlanta's versions of gentrification, the suburbs, traffic, and inequality." Genre and style A major theme in Jones' writing is family, as seen in Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, and An American Marriage. Her novels portray the relationships, often fractured relationships, between parents and their children and married couples. Tina McElroy Ansa has written about the success that