Crystal Smith Paul Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Crystal Smith Paul
Crystal Smith Paul went to UCLA, Spelman College, and NYU, and is originally from Charlotte, North Carolina. Crystal’s writing has been featured by The Huffington Post, Salon, and Jezebel.

She is a writer with a lot of experience in e-commerce and digital editorial writing and marketing.

“Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?”, her debut novel, was inspired by growing up in the South with a diverse family, and going to a historical black college, which influenced her views on colorism, race, and social justice as a young black woman.

After obtaining her Master’s in Journalism from New York University, she has worked in digital media as an editor for a startup where she edited the work of Marc Lamont Hill, Mark Anthony Neal, and Keli Goff. Crystal also worked as a paralegal at the Department of Justice as she worked on her first novel.

She loves German Shepard dogs, writing creatively on her weekends, dining, and staying on top of pop culture.

Getting her master’s in journalism made her realize that she doesn’t actually like research and journalism, but loves the creative license that it offers her. Through that, she realized that she wants to create, and she still wants to come from this place of interconnectedness versus some outside reinterpretation of somebody’s life.

So she went to UCLA for film school, so when she was not busy working in screenwriting, she was doing a bunch of education in screenwriting and she realized that this was the sort of writing she wanted to do. This element has informed her novel writing because she still thinks in pictures and in scenes.

It took Crystal about ten years to write her first novel. It was in her for as long as she can remember, and she just knew that she had to keep going with it because she was never going to truly be happy in life if this never came to fruition and not in terms of getting it published, she only needed to finish it.

The three sisters part of “Kitty Karr” was a theme that Crystal has been writing about ever since her first short story during high school. Her mom has got all these sisters, and Crystal has always been obsessed with the idea of having sisters. And this dual timeline narrative has changed a bunch through the years since it never had an anchor to her.

“Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?” is the first stand alone novel and was released in 2023. A multigenerational saga which traverses the glamour of old Hollywood and the seductive draw of modern day showbiz.

Kitty Karr Tate, who is a White icon of the silver screen, dies and bequeaths her million dollar estate to the St. John sisters, who are three young and wealthy Black women, it prompts questions. A lot of questions.

Elise St. John, who is a celebrity in her own right, would much rather focus on sorting Kitty’s affairs out instead of dealing with the press. However what she finds in one of Kitty’s journals rocks her world much harder than any other brewing scandal possibly could, and between the fallout from a controversial social media post and a cheating fiance, there are plenty.

The full truth behind Kitty’s ascent to stardom from her beginnings in the segregated South threatens to expose this web of debts owed, unexpected family ties, debatable crimes that could, with just a single pull, unravel the all-American fabric of the St. John sisters and those that are closest to them.

While Elise digs deeper into Kitty’s past, she has to also turn that lens upon herself, facing the burdens and gifts of the choices she’s made and the power that the secrets of the dead hold over the living.

“Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?” is a sprawling page turner set against the backdrop of the Hollywood machine, and is a nuanced and insightful glimpse of the inheritances of race, family, and gender, and the decisions that some women make in order to break free of them.

This was a Book of the Month May 2023 Pick and a Reese’s Book Club May 2023 Pick.

This is a seductive and intoxicating debut novel, which draws you into this underground Hollywood world which is just as glamorous as it is dangerous. Kitty Karr is a complicated, iconoclastic, and fascinating woman whose legacy is just as relevant as ever today. Crystal is a thrilling new voice in fiction and readers are thrilled to see what she does next.

Crystal delivers a novel that is an engrossing saga, and explores the heartbreaking sacrifices which a woman has to make in order to just succeed during the Golden Age of Hollywood, and the way in which her tough decisions echo throughout later generation. Her debut about celebrity, family, racism, both modern and historic, is captivating.

Kitty Karr Tate is the heroine to whom any reader can seamlessly direct their imagination. In such a dazzling and sweeping debut novel, you get ushered behind the velvet rope that guards the pristine glamour of Old Hollywood and whispered the wildly complex secrets that are hidden by larger-than-life on-screen personas. Nothing is like it seems, and indeed the truth was infinitely more intriguing than any part of the facade. This is entertaining and propulsive, with broad historical relevance and critical cultural significance, here is the uniquely American tale that we all need to read, since it holds a piece of every one of us.

It epitomizes the American Dream, a success that is fueled by ingenuity, bold ambition, and a healthy dose of breathtaking beauty.

The novel is historically accurate which provokes a genuine understanding and empathy for each of these characters. Crystal makes you feel so many different emotions at once throughout the novel, but never allows you to sympathize with characters without presenting the painful facts.

This is a compelling odyssey into the consequences that our choices can have across generations and history, the psychic toll and the moral complexities of such choices, as well as the devastating secrets that are hidden behind even the most glamorous and opulent of lives and the most ‘pristine’ of family trees.