Joyce Maynard

The New York Times bestselling author of Labor Day and After Her returns with a poignant story about the true meaning-and the true price-of friendship. Drinking cost Helen her marriage and custody of her seven-year-old son, Ollie. Once an aspiring art photographer, she now makes ends meet taking portraits of school children and working for a caterer. Recovering from her addiction, she spends lonely evenings checking out profiles on an online dating site. Weekend visits with her son are awkward. He's drifting away from her, fast. When she meets Ava and Swift Havilland, the vulnerable Helen is instantly enchanted. Wealthy, connected philanthropists, they have their own charity devoted to rescuing dogs. Their home is filled with fabulous friends, edgy art, and dazzling parties. Then Helen meets Elliott, a kind, quiet accountant who offers loyalty and love with none of her newfound friends' fireworks. To Swift and Ava, he's boring. But even worse than that, he's unimpressed by them. As Helen increasingly falls under the Havillands' influence-running errands, doing random chores, questioning her relationship with Elliott-Ava and Swift hold out the most seductive gift: their influence and help to regain custody of her son. But the debt Helen owes them is about to come due. Ollie witnesses an accident involving Swift, his grown son, and the daughter of the Havillands' housekeeper. With her young son's future in the balance, Helen must choose between the truth and the friends who have given her everything.

Året är 1979 och det är en torr och varm sommar i Marin County i Kalifornien. När flera unga flickor hittas döda i bergen bakom Rachels och hennes syster Pattys hem får deras pappa stadens stiliga och karismatiska (och notoriskt otrogna) kriminalinspektör leda utredningen. Systrarna fantiserar om vem som är mördaren, samtidigt som de ser hur pappan långsamt bryts ner och deras mamma sjunker allt djupare in i en depression. Månaderna går, fler flickor dör, och Rachel bestämmer sig för att ta saken i egna händer. Ett agerande som får förödande konsekvenser för alla hon älskar. Trettio år senare återvänder Rachel. Hon är fast besluten att ge sin far upprättelse, men överraskas av ett oväntat avslöjande. Berget bakom huset är en liten del thriller och en stor del familjedrama. Det är en stark berättelse om att växa upp, banden systrar emellan och en dotters skadeskjutna relation med sin far. *** Joyce Maynard, journalist och författare, har skrivit femton böcker. Romanen Labor Day har filmatiserats med Kate Winslet och Josh Brolin i huvudrollerna.

Cuando Helen conoció a Swift y Ava Havilland en una galería de arte, su vida se hallaba en su punto más bajo. Detenida por conducir bajo los efectos del alcohol, había perdido la custodia de su hijo de ocho años y solo lo veía cada dos sábados. Atrapada en un trabajo frustrante, Helen asistía todas las noches a las reuniones de Alcohólicos Anónimos y ocasionalmente salía con algún hombre.Todo eso cambió cuando conoció a Ava y Swift Havilland, una pareja de filántropos ricos y carismáticos, locamente enamorados y grandes defensores de los animales. Los Havilland se convirtieron rápidamente en el centro de la existencia de Helen, que no solo comenzó a trabajar para ellos sino que se sumó a su círculo de amistades: vestía la ropa que Ava desechaba, entretenía a la pareja con sus anécdotas de citas desastrosas, catalogaba su colección de arte y compartía con ellos comidas y secretos cada vez más íntimos.Entonces conoció a Elliot, un contador de vida apacible y rutinaria al que los Havilland tacharon de aburrido. Pese a que empezaba a enamorarse de él, la desaprobación de sus amigos hizo dudar a Helen de sus sentimientos. Tenía muy presente lo que los Havilland habían hecho por ella y su hijo. Ollie había caído bajo el embrujo de Swift: el niño solitario idolatraba a aquel hombre colosal que lo trataba como a un hijo. Y Swift le había prometido a Helen los servicios de su abogado para ayudarla a recuperar la custodia del niño. Entonces sobrevino la tragedia: Ollie presenció un accidente de consecuencias devastadoras en la casa que los Havilland tenían en el lago Tahoe. Ahora, Helen y él habrían de pagar por la generosidad de sus nuevos amigos. O arriesgarse a asumir las consecuencias.

The New York Times bestselling author of Labor Day and After Her returns with a poignant story about the true meaning--and the true price--of friendship.Drinking cost Helen her marriage and custody of her seven-year-old son, Ollie. Once an aspiring art photographer, she now makes ends meet taking portraits of school children and working for a caterer. Recovering from her addiction, she spends lonely evenings checking out profiles on an online dating site. Weekend visits with her son are awkward. He's drifting away from her, fast.When she meets Ava and Swift Havilland, the vulnerable Helen is instantly enchanted. Wealthy, connected philanthropists, they have their own charity devoted to rescuing dogs. Their home is filled with fabulous friends, edgy art, and dazzling parties.Then Helen meets Elliott, a kind, quiet accountant who offers loyalty and love with none of her newfound friends' fireworks. To Swift and Ava, he's boring. But even worse than that, he's unimpressed by them.As Helen increasingly falls under the Havillands' influence--running errands, doing random chores, questioning her relationship with Elliott--Ava and Swift hold out the most seductive gift: their influence and help to regain custody of her son. But the debt Helen owes them is about to come due.Ollie witnesses an accident involving Swift, his grown son, and the daughter of the Havillands' housekeeper. With her young son's future in the balance, Helen must choose between the truth and the friends who have given her everything.--Megan Abbott, Edgar Award-winning author of Dare Me and The Fever

“A seductive page-turner” about a murderously ambitious cable-news star by the New York Times–bestselling author of Labor Day (The New York Times Book Review). Local weather reporter Suzanne Maretto craves nothing more than to transcend life at her suburban cable television news station and follow in the footsteps of her idol: Barbara Walters. When she concludes that her unglamorous husband is getting in the way of her dream of stardom, the solution seems obvious: Get rid of him. She seduces a fifteen-year-old admirer, Jimmy, and persuades him to do her dirty work. Mission accomplished, Suzanne takes to the airwaves in her new role as grieving widow, in search of a TV deal. If that means selling Jimmy down the river, she’s ready. Maynard’s brilliant, funny, and groundbreaking novel—adapted by Gus Van Sant into the cult classic movie of the same name, starring Nicole Kidman—was first published in 1992 before the era of manufactured stardom and the phenomenon of televised murder trials as entertainment. The book still stands as a razor-sharp satire of celebrity-fixated culture and the American obsession with TV—a novel that imagined the phenomenon of reality television before its creation, with alternately bone-chilling and hilarious accuracy.

Marin County, California, summer, 1979. When young women start turning up dead on the mountain behind the home of Rachel and her devoted eleven-year-old sister, Patty, their father-a larger-than-life, irresistibly handsome (and chronically unfaithful) detective-is put in charge of finding the "Sunset Strangler." Watching her father's life slowly unravel as months pass and more women are killed, Rachel embarks on a dangerous game to catch the killer. Her actions will destroy her father's career and alter forever the lives of everyone she loves. Thirty years later, believing that the wrong man was arrested for the crimes, leaving the true killer at large, Rachel constructs a new strategy to smoke out the Sunset Strangler and vindicate her father-and discovers more than she bargained for. Loosely inspired by the Trailside Killer case, After Her is part thriller, part love story-a poignant, suspenseful, and painfully real family saga that traces a young girl's first sexual explorations, the loss of innocence, the bond shared by sisters, and the tender but damaged relationship between a girl and her father that endures even beyond the grave.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Labor Day comes At Home in the World, an honest and shocking memoir of falling in love--at age 18--with one of America's most reclusive literary figures, J. D. Salinger.When it was first published in 1998, At Home in the World set off a furor in the literary world and beyond. Joyce Maynard's memoir broke a silence concerning her relationship--at age eighteen--with J.D. Salinger, the famously reclusive author of The Catcher in the Rye, then age fifty-three, who had read a story she wrote for The New York Times in her freshman year of college and sent her a letter that changed her life. Reviewers called her book "shameless" and "powerful" and its author was simultaneously reviled and cheered. With what some have viewed as shocking honesty, Maynard explores her coming of age in an alcoholic family, her mother's dream to mold her into a writer, her self-imposed exile from the world of her peers when she left Yale to live with Salinger, and her struggle to reclaim her sense of self in the crushing aftermath of his dismissal of her not long after her nineteenth birthday. A quarter of a century later--having become a writer, survived the end of her marriage and the deaths of her parents, and with an eighteen-year-old daughter of her own--Maynard pays a visit to the man who broke her heart. The story she tells--of the girl she was and the woman she became--is at once devastating, inspiring, and triumphant.

Jeg lurte på om du kunne gi meg en hånd." Den fremmede ser på Henry. Han har på seg samme uniform som de ansatte på kjøpesenteret, men klærne passer ham ikke. Han blør fra hodet og det ene beinet. Men Henry stoler på mannen. Det er noe godt i ham, det synes i øynene. Det er først senere, da den fremmede har blitt med ham og mamma hjem, at han begynner å bli mistenksom. I nyhetene advares det mot en farlig fange som er på flukt ... Henry vet ikke hva han skal gjøre - for det skjer et eller annet mellom moren og den fremmede. Selv en usikker tenåring kan ikke unngå å legge merke til spenningen mellom dem, og han ser blikkene de sender hverandre og de stjålne kjærtegnene. Sensommerdager handler om å våge elske og om å bli sett. Tenåringen Henry lærer seg å håndtere livet, og mellom den fremmede og moren skjer det noe stort, noe uhørt, som fanger leseren og ikke slipper taket. Romanen filmatiseres med Kate Winslet."

"A story of choices and events so intimate I felt I was part of it. The novel is wrenching, the emotions radiant, and it will leave readers transformed"--Luanne Rice, author of The Deep Blue Sea for Beginners "Joyce Maynard has outdone herself in this beautifully written story you'll find hard to put down and impossible to forget."-- Elizabeth Berg, author of The Last Time I Saw You Bestselling author of the critically acclaimed Labor Day, Joyce Maynard now brings us The Good Daughters, a spellbinding novel about friendship, family secrets, and the strange, unexpected twists of fate that shape our lives. The story of two women born the same day in the same hospital, but raised in vastly different emotional environments, The Good Daughters is another high note in Maynard's already distinguished writing career.

In 1972, Joyce Maynard, an undergraduate at Yale, wrote an article for the New York Times Magazine called 'An Eighteen Year Old Looks Back on Life'. In spite of the thirty-five year difference in their ages, she believed they would be together always - but after a year, he sent her away.

When Nate Chance arrives home from school, he sees two police cars and an ambulance in his yard. Before his mother can get him and his little sister, Junie, inside, Nate and Junie witness their father, blood pouring down his face, being led by two police officers into an ambulance. He has tried to kill himself. Home quickly becomes a different place. Junie stays curled up in front of the TV; Nate's mom retreats inside herself; and the rumor of mental illness makes Nate a social pariah at school. Only the promise of winning the science fair holds any hope of happiness for Nate. He's building a cloud chamber, the project that he and his dad dreamed of working on together. Maybe if he can build it, Nate can give his father something that will help him feel better and finally come home.

Set against the backdrop of global and personal tragedy, and written in a style alternately wry and heartbreaking, Joyce Maynard's The Usual Rules is an unexpectedly hopeful story of healing and forgiveness that will offer readers, young and old alike, a picture of how, out of the rubble, a family rebuilds its life. It's a Tuesday morning in Brooklyn---a perfect September day. Wendy is heading to school, eager to make plans with her best friend, worried about how she looks, mad at her mother for not letting her visit her father in California, impatient with her little brother and with the almost too-loving concern of her jazz musician stepfather. She's out the door to catch the bus. An hour later comes the news: A plane has crashed into the World Trade Center---her mother's office building. Through the eyes of thirteen-year-old Wendy, we gain entrance to the world rarely shown by those who documented the events of that one terrible day: a family's slow and terrible realization that Wendy's mother has died, and their struggle to go on with their lives in the face of such a crushing loss. Absent for years, Wendy's real father shows up without warning. He takes her back with him to California, where she re-invents her life: Wendy now lives more or less on her own in a one-room apartment with a TV set and not much else. Wendy's new circle now includes her father's cactus-grower girlfriend, newly reconnected with the son she gave up for adoption twenty years before; a sad and tender bookstore owner who introduces her to the voice of Anne Frank and to his autistic son; and a homeless skateboarder, on a mission to find his long-lost brother. Over the winter and spring that follow, Wendy moves between the alternately painful and reassuring memories of her mother and the revelations that come with growing to know her real father for the first time. Pulled between her old life in Brooklyn and a new one 3,000 miles away, our heroine is faced with a world where the usual rules no longer apply but eventually discovers a strength and capacity for compassion and survival that she never knew she possessed. At the core of the story is Wendy's deep connection with her little brother, back in New York, who is grieving the loss of their mother without her. This is a story about the ties of siblings, about children who lose their parents, parents who lose their children, and the unexpected ways they sometimes find one another again.