Cuando Helen conocio a Swift y Ava Havilland en una galeria de arte, su vida se hallaba en su punto mas bajo. Detenida por conducir bajo los efectos del alcohol, habia perdido la custodia de su hijo de ocho anos y solo lo veia cada dos sabados. Atrapada en un trabajo frustrante, Helen asistia todas las noches a las reuniones de Alcoholicos Anonimos y ocasionalmente salia con algun hombre. Todo eso cambio cuando conocio a Ava y Swift Havilland, una pareja de filantropos ricos y carismaticos, locamente enamorados y grandes defensores de los animales. Los Havilland se convirtieron rapidamente en el centro de la existencia de Helen, que no solo comenzo a trabajar para ellos sino que se sumo a su circulo de amistades: vestia la ropa que Ava desechaba, entretenia a la pareja con sus anecdotas de citas desastrosas, catalogaba su coleccion de arte y compartia con ellos comidas y secretos cada vez mas intimos. Entonces conocio a Elliot, un contador de vida apacible y rutinaria al que los Havilland tacharon de aburrido. Pese a que empezaba a enamorarse de el, la desaprobacion de sus amigos hizo dudar a Helen de sus sentimientos. Tenia muy presente lo que los Havilland habian hecho por ella y su hijo. Ollie habia caido bajo el embrujo de Swift: el nino solitario idolatraba a aquel hombre colosal que lo trataba como a un hijo. Y Swift le habia prometido a Helen los servicios de su abogado para ayudarla a recuperar la custodia del nino. Entonces sobrevino la tragedia: Ollie presencio un accidente de consecuencias devastadoras en la casa que los Havilland tenian en el lago Tahoe. Ahora, Helen y el habrian de pagar por la generosidad de sus nuevos amigos. O arriesgarse a asumir las consecuencias.

They were born on the same day, in the same small New Hampshire hospital, into families that could hardly have been less alike.

Ruth Plank is an artist and a romantic with a rich, passionate, imaginative life. The last of five girls born to a gentle, caring farmer and his stolid wife, she yearns to soar beyond the confines of the land that has been her family's birthright for generations.

Dana Dickerson is a scientist and realist whose faith is firmly planted in the natural world. Raised by a pair of capricious drifters who waste their lives on failed dreams, she longs for stability and rootedness.

Different in nearly every way, Ruth and Dana share a need to make sense of who they are and to find their places in a world in which neither has ever truly felt she belonged. They also share a love for Dana's wild and beautiful older brother, Ray, who will leave an indelible mark on both their hearts.

Told in the alternating voices of Ruth and Dana, The Good Daughters follows these "birthday sisters" as they make their way from the 1950s to the present. Master storyteller Joyce Maynard chronicles the unlikely ways the two women's lives parallel and intersect--from childhood and adolescence to first loves, first sex, marriage, and parenthood; from the deaths of parents to divorce, the loss of home, and the loss of a beloved partner--until past secrets and forgotten memories unexpectedly come to light, forcing them to reevaluate themselves and each other.

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.

With the end of summer closing in and a steamy Labor Day weekend looming in the town of Holton Mills, New Hampshire, lonely, friendless thirteen-year-old Henry spends most of his time watching television, reading, and daydreaming with only his emotionally fragile, long-divorced mother for company. But everything changes on the Thursday before the holiday weekend when a mysterious bleeding man named Frank asks Henry for a hand. Over the next five days, Henry will learn some of life's most valuable lessons, about the breathless pain of jealousy, the power of betrayal, and the importance of putting those we care about above ourselves--and that real love is worth waiting for.

From acclaimed author Joyce Maynard comes a beautiful, poignant tale of love, sex, adolescence, and devastating treachery as seen through the eyes of a young teenager--and the man he later becomes.

Enter the magical world of La Llorona with New York Times bestselling author Joyce Maynard. After a childhood filled with heartbreak, Irene, a talented artist, finds herself in a small Central American village where she checks into a beautiful but decaying lakefront hotel called La Llorona at the base of a volcano. The Bird Hotel tells the story of this young American who, after suffering tragedy, restores and runs La Llorona. Along the way we meet a rich assortment of characters who live in the village or come to stay at the hotel. With a mystery at its center and filled with warmth, drama, romance, humor, pop culture, and a little magic realism, The Bird Hotel has all the hallmarks of a Joyce Maynard novel that have made her a a leading voice of her generation The Bird Hotel is a big, sweeping story spanning four decades, offering lyricism as well as whimsy. While the world New York Times bestselling author Joyce Maynard brings to life on the page is rendered from her imagination, it's one informed by the more than twenty years of which she has spent a significant amount of her time in a small Mayan indigenous village in Guatemala. As the New York Times said, "[Maynard] has an unswerving eye, a sharply perked ear, and the ability to keep her readers hanging on her words." People Magazine said of her: "Maynard's spare prose packs a rich emotional punch."

In her most ambitious novel to date, New York Times bestselling author Joyce Maynard returns to the themes that are the hallmarks of her most acclaimed work in a mesmerizing story of a family-from the hopeful early days of young marriage to parenthood, divorce, and the costly aftermath that ripples through all their lives Eleanor and Cam meet at a crafts fair in Vermont in the early 1970s. She's an artist and writer, he makes wooden bowls. Within four years they are parents to three children, two daughters and a red-headed son who fills his pockets with rocks, plays the violin and talks to God. To Eleanor, their New Hampshire farm provides everything she always wanted-summer nights watching Cam's softball games, snow days by the fire and the annual tradition of making paper boats and cork people to launch in the brook every spring. If Eleanor and Cam don't make love as often as they used to, they have something that matters more. Their family. Then comes a terrible accident, caused by Cam's negligence. Unable to forgive him, Eleanor is consumed by bitterness, losing herself in her life as a mother, while Cam finds solace with a new young partner. Over the decades that follow, the five members of this fractured family make surprising discoveries and decisions that occasionally bring them together, and often tear them apart. Tracing the course of their lives-through the gender transition of one child and another's choice to completely break with her mother-Joyce Maynard captures a family forced to confront essential, painful truths of its past, and find redemption in its darkest hours. A story of holding on and learning to let go, Count the Ways is an achingly beautiful, poignant, and deeply compassionate novel of home, parenthood, love, and forgiveness.

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.

This is the darkly comic story-based on a real case and adapted into a cult classic film-of a fame-obsessed weather reporter who conspires to murder her husband for television glory. Local weather reporter Suzanne Maretto wants nothing more than to transcend life at her suburban television news station. Unrelentingly perky and ruthlessly ambitious, she dreams of national stardom. And she believes that in order to realize her destiny, she must get rid of her husband, whose buttoned-up demeanor has grown tiring and whose tragic death would win her the sympathy of millions of television viewers. With the help of three easily manipulated teenagers-one of them her lover-Suzanne sets her murderous plan in motion . . . Told through a series of recollections by twenty-four characters, To Die For, which inspired a movie of the same name starring Nicole Kidman and directed by Gus Van Sant, is a razor-sharp satire of a celebrity-obsessed culture, and the story of one woman's all-consuming pursuit of fame. "A seductive page turner." -The New York Times Book Review "A triumph." -The Boston Globe "A powerful novel of murder and sexual obsession. . . . Chilling." -The Star-Ledger Joyce Maynard (b. 1953) is the bestselling author of eleven books of fiction and nonfiction. She is best known for her memoir At Home in the World and her novel Labor Day, both bestsellers. Maynard launched her writing career as a teenager with the 1972 New York Times Magazine cover story "An 18-Year-Old Looks Back on Life." She went on to contribute hundreds of essays and columns for publications such as Vogue; More; O, The Oprah Magazine; the New York Times; and many essay collections. The mother of three grown children, Maynard now lives in Northern California, where, in addition to continuing her career as a writer and speaker, she performs regularly as a storyteller with the Moth and Porchlight series. She also runs the Lake Atitlan Writing Workshop in a small Mayan village on the shores of Lake Atitlan, Guatemala."

"New York Times" bestselling author of "Labor Day
"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.

"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 "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 of At Home in the World, is back with Labor Day. The unforgettable 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 of A 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)

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."

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

Left to their own devices, the sisters spend their days studying record jackets, concocting elaborate fantasies about a mysterious neighbor, 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. 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.

The bestselling author of Labor Day returns with a spellbinding novel about friendship, family secrets, and the strange twists of fate that shape our lives

The Good Daughters

They were born on the same day, in the same small New Hampshire hospital, into families that could hardly have been less alike.

Ruth Plank is an artist and a romantic with a rich, passionate, imaginative life. The last of five girls born to a gentle, caring farmer and his stolid wife, she yearns to soar beyond the confines of the land that has been her family's birthright for generations.

Dana Dickerson is a scientist and realist whose faith is firmly planted in the natural world. Raised by a pair of capricious drifters who waste their lives on failed dreams, she longs for stability and rootedness.

Different in nearly every way, Ruth and Dana share a need to make sense of who they are and to find their places in a world in which neither has ever truly felt she belonged. They also share a love for Dana's wild and beautiful older brother, Ray, who will leave an indelible mark on both their hearts.

Told in the alternating voices of Ruth and Dana, The Good Daughters follows these "birthday sisters" as they make their way from the 1950s to the present. Master storyteller Joyce Maynard chronicles the unlikely ways the two women's lives parallel and intersect--from childhood and adolescence to first loves, first sex, marriage, and parenthood; from the deaths of parents to divorce, the loss of home, and the loss of a beloved partner--until past secrets and forgotten memories unexpectedly come to light, forcing them to reevaluate themselves and each other.

Moving from rural New Hampshire to a remote island in British Columbia to the '70s Boston art-school scene, The Good Daughters is an unforgettable story about the ties of home and family, the devastating force of love, the healing power of forgiveness, and the desire to know who we are.

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.

In a manner evoking Ian McEwan's "Atonement" and 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.

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.

Thirteen year old Wendy lives with her mother, stepfather, and younger brother in Brooklyn. Her world is transformed one day in September 2001 - her mother goes to work that morning and doesn't come back. Through Wendy's eyes, readers follow her slow and terrible realisation that her mother has died, and the family's struggle to move forward with their lives. Wendy's journey takes her to California with her real father where she forges friendships with his cactus-growing girlfriend, a teenage mom, and a sad bookstore owner with an autistic son, and begins to understand the deep love and connection she has with her brother. The Usual Rules is an unexpectedly hopeful story of healing and forgiveness that offers readers a picture of how - out of the rubble - a family rebuilds its life.