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Joyce Maynard

Biography

Joyce Maynard

Joyce Maynard is the author of 18 books, including the New York Times bestselling novel LABOR DAY, and TO DIE FOR (both adapted for film), UNDER THE INFLUENCE and the memoirs AT HOME IN THE WORLD and THE BEST OF US.  

Her latest novel is COUNT THE WAYS, the story of a marriage and a divorce, and the children who survived it.

She is currently at work on a book about her return to Yale University two and a half years ago as an undergraduate, 48 years after dropping out at age 18.  

Maynard is a fellow of the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. She is the founder of Write by the Lake, a week-long workshop on the art and craft of memoir, held every year since 2001 at Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. 

Joyce Maynard

Books by Joyce Maynard

by Joyce Maynard - Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

Tammy Partridge and her boyfriend, Kevin, are on a photo-ready road trip across America in pursuit of influencer fame. Only a couple hundred followers so far, including Roxanne, a superfan of the beautiful young couple. But when Tammy’s body is discovered in the Utah wilderness, and Kevin is nowhere to be found, the picture-perfect adventure suddenly goes wrong --- and viral, with three million followers and counting. Motives are questionable. Conspiracy theories cloud the dark corners of the internet. As everyone spins their own version of the truth, reality is getting harder to see. Except for Roxanne, who’s been following closer than anyone else.

by Joyce Maynard - Fiction, Women's Fiction

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. 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.

by Joyce Maynard - Memoir, Nonfiction

In 2011, when she was in her late 50s, beloved author and journalist Joyce Maynard met the first true partner she had ever known. Jim was not the husband Joyce imagined, but he quickly became the partner she had always dreamed of. Before they met, both had believed they were done with marriage, and even after they married, Joyce resolved that no one could alter her course of determined independence. Then, just after their one-year wedding anniversary, her new husband was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. During the 19 months that followed, as they battled his illness together, Joyce discovered for the first time what it really meant to be a couple --- to be a true partner and to have one.

by Joyce Maynard - Fiction

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. When she meets wealthy philanthropists Ava and Swift Havilland, the vulnerable Helen is instantly enchanted. As she increasingly falls under their influence, 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.

by Joyce Maynard - Fiction

Loosely inspired by the Trailside Killer case that terrorized Marin County, California, in the late 1970s, AFTER HER is 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.