Joyce Maynard – författare

“Joyce Maynard is in top-notch form withLabor Day. Simply a novel you cannot miss.”

—Jodi Picoult,New York Timesbestselling author ofMy Sister’s KeeperandKeeping Faith

“Maynard has created an ensemble of characters that will sneak into your heart, and warm it while it breaks.”

—St. Petersburg Times

Joyce Maynard, acclaimed author ofAt Home in the World,is back withLabor Day.Theunforgettable story of a mother and son forever changed during a long summer weekend when a mysterious man comes into their lives.Labor Day is “a sexy, page turning, poignant story” (Jane Hamilton, author ofA Map of the World) that “affirms Maynard’s reputation as a master storyteller and shows her to be a passionate humanist with a gifted ear and heart” (People)

“Joyce Maynard is in top-notch form with Labor Day. Simply a novel you cannot miss.” —Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author of My Sister’s Keeper and Keeping Faith

In a manner evoking Ian McEwan''s Atonementand Nick Hornby''s About a Boy, acclaimed author Joyce Maynard weaves a beautiful, poignant tale of love, sex, adolescence, and devastating treachery as seen through the eyes of a young teenage boy—and the man he later becomes—looking back at an unexpected encounter that begins one single long, hot, life-altering weekend.

With the end of summer closing in and a steamy Labor Day weekend looming in the town of Holton Mills, New Hampshire, thirteen-year-old Henry—lonely, friendless, not too good at sports—spends most of his time watching television, reading, and daydreaming about the soft skin and budding bodies of his female classmates. For company Henry has his long-divorced mother, Adele—a onetime dancer whose summer project was to teach him how to foxtrot; his hamster, Joe; and awkward Saturday-night outings to Friendly''s with his estranged father and new stepfamily. As much as he tries, Henry knows that even with his jokes and his "Husband for a Day" coupon, he still can''t make his emotionally fragile mother happy. Adele has a secret that makes it hard for her to leave their house, and seems to possess an irreparably broken heart.

But all that changes on the Thursday before Labor Day, when a mysterious bleeding man named Frank approaches Henry and asks for a hand. Over the next five days, Henry will learn some of life''s most valuable lessons: how to throw a baseball, the secret to perfect piecrust, the breathless pain of jealousy, the power of betrayal, and the importance of putting others—especially those we love—above ourselves. And the knowledge that real love is worth waiting for.

“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.

“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.

The New York Times bestselling author of Labor Day and The Good Daughters returns with a haunting novel of sisterhood, sacrifice, and suspense.

I was always looking for excitement, until I found some . . .

Summer, 1979. A dry, hot Northern California school vacation stretches before Rachel and her younger sister, Patty—the daughters of a larger-than-life, irresistibly handsome (and chronically unfaithful) detective father and the mother whose heart he broke.

When we first meet her, Patty is eleven—a gangly kid who loves basketball and dogs and would do anything for her older sister, Rachel. Rachel is obsessed with making up stories and believes she possesses the gift of knowing what's in the minds of people around her. She has visions, whether she wants to or not. Left to their own devices, the sisters spend their days studying record jackets, concocting elaborate fantasies about the mysterious neighbor who moved in down the street, and playing dangerous games on the mountain that looms behind their house.

When young women start turning up dead on the mountain, the girls' father is put in charge of finding the murderer known as the "Sunset Strangler." Watching her father's life slowly unravel as months pass and more women are killed, Rachel embarks on her most dangerous game yet . . . using herself as bait to catch the killer. But rather than cracking the case, the consequences of Rachel's actions will destroy her father's career and alter forever the lives of everyone she loves.

Thirty years later, still haunted by the belief that the killer remains at large, Rachel constructs a new strategy to smoke out the Sunset Strangler and vindicate her father—a plan that unexpectedly unearths a long-buried family secret.

Loosely inspired by the Trailside Killer case that terrorized Marin County, California, in the late 1970s, After Her is part thriller, part love story. Maynard has created a poignant, suspenseful, and painfully real family saga that traces a young girl's first explorations of sexuality, 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.

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.

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.In the spring of 1972, Joyce Maynard, a freshman at Yale, published a cover story in The New York Times Magazine about life in the sixties. Among the many letters of praise, offers for writing assignments, and request for interviews was a one-page letter from the famously reclusive author, J.D. Salinger.At Home in the World is the story of a girl who loved and lived with J.D. Salinger, and the woman she became. A crucial turning point in Joyce Maynard''s life occurred when her own daughter turned eighteen--the age Maynard was when Salinger first approached her. Breaking a twenty-five year silence, Joyce Maynard addresses her relationship with Salinger for the first time, as well as the complicated, troubled and yet creative nature of her youth and family. She vividly describes the details of the times and her life with the finesse of a natural storyteller.Courageously written by a women determined to allow her life to unfold with authenticity, At Home in the World is a testament to the resiliency of the spirit and the honesty of an unwavering eye.

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.With a new preface.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.