Nancy Lemann, the New Orleans-born novelist who published her debut at 28, is experiencing an unexpected literary revival after two decades of professional silence. The 70-year-old author, known for her atmospheric prose and idiosyncratic characters, has a new novel coming from New York Review Books and two of her out-of-print works being reissued.

Her return to prominence follows years Lemann calls "the doom" - a period of prolific writing that failed to find publishers. Despite publishing five books between the mid-1980s and early 2000s, her success was always of the quieter sort, earning devoted fans who prize fiction's subtler qualities. Her 1985 novel "Lives of the Saints" won stellar reviews but modest sales.

Now a new generation of readers has discovered her work, with young women in book clubs offering fresh interpretations and literary magazines publishing tributes. Even her only nonfiction book, "The Ritz of the Bayou," is being reissued by Hub City Press as an "unjustly neglected masterpiece." Yet Lemann remains uncomfortable with the spotlight, preferring to discuss regret and failure rather than her comeback. As she told an interviewer, "What are you going to say?" about tributes.