{"title":"Books by Joyce Maynard","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780062398284","title":"Count the Ways","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eIn her most ambitious novel to date, \u003cem\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/em\u003e 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\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEleanor 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThen 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOver 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA story of holding on and learning to let go, \u003cem\u003eCount the Ways\u003c\/em\u003e is an achingly beautiful, poignant, and deeply compassionate novel of home, parenthood, love, and forgiveness.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56222177231221,"sku":"9780062398284","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780062398284_11bda7be-1cfe-4173-bb20-20aca2268813.jpg?v=1786011600"},{"product_id":"9781648210761","title":"The Bird Hotel","description":"\u003cb\u003eEnter the magical world of La Llorona with \u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003ebestselling author Joyce Maynard.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e 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. \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Bird Hotel \u003c\/i\u003etells 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 magical realism, \u003ci\u003eThe Bird Hotel \u003c\/i\u003ehas all the hallmarks of a Joyce Maynard novel that have made her a leading voice of her generation.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Bird Hotel\u003c\/i\u003e is a big, sweeping story spanning four decades, offering lyricism as well as whimsy. While the world \u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003ebestselling 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. \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e As the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e said, \"[Maynard] has an unswerving eye, a sharply perked ear, and the ability to keep her readers hanging on her words.\" \u003ci\u003ePeople Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e said of her: \"Maynard’s spare prose packs a rich emotional punch.”","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56302898053493,"sku":"9781648210761","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781648210761_7b6e4e2e-e79e-4f96-866b-870ab9cc3d0b.jpg?v=1786034422"},{"product_id":"9780062398314","title":"How the Light Gets In","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFrom \u003cem\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/em\u003e bestselling author Joyce Maynard comes the eagerly anticipated follow-up to her beloved novel \u003cem\u003eCount the Ways\u003c\/em\u003e—a complex story of three generations of a family and its remarkable, resilient, indomitable matriarch, Eleanor.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFollowing the death of her former husband, Cam, fifty-four-year-old Eleanor has moved back to the New Hampshire farm where they raised three children to care for their brain-injured son, Toby, now an adult. Toby’s older brother, Al, is married and living in Seattle with his wife; their sister, Ursula, lives in Vermont with her husband and two children. Although all appears stable, old resentments, anger, and bitterness simmer just beneath the surface.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eHow the Light Gets\u003c\/em\u003e \u003cem\u003eIn\u003c\/em\u003e follows Eleanor and her family through fifteen years (2010 to 2024) as their story plays out against a uniquely American backdrop and the events that transform their world (climate change, the January 6th insurrection, school violence) and shape their lives (later-life love, parental alienation, steadfast friendship). With her trademark sensitivity and insight, Joyce Maynard paints an indelible portrait of characters both familiar and new making their way over rough, messy, and treacherous terrain to find their way to what is, for each, a place to call “home.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56420352065909,"sku":"9780062398314","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780062398314_4c1af8f7-adb2-418c-a87c-b2e4edb9415a.jpg?v=1786011601"},{"product_id":"in-wonderland","title":"In Wonderland","description":"In one golden summer, Frances trades her working-class world for an elite Maine lakeside estate—where privilege and betrayal turn into a deadly game.     Frances believes she’s found a ticket to paradise when a wealthy couple hires her for the summer as their mother’s helper at their lakefront summer home in Maine. The vintage wooden boats, the days at the country club, a shiny new bicycle, and a tennis racquet—suddenly Frances has everything her modest childhood lacked. Best of all, she gets to spend the summer with Forrest Emerson, her father's charismatic childhood friend who escaped their neighborhood when he married into money.     But below the glittering surface of Lake Catherine, nothing is what it seems. When Forrest’s wife, Regina, pulls Frances into her private obsession, the girl finds herself witness to the intimate secrets of adult lives. As the summer heat builds, so do the tensions within Wonderland’s walls. By Labor Day, a death will shatter the seemingly perfect family, leaving Frances to question everything she thought she knew about privilege, power, and the price of belonging.   © 2026 by Joyce Maynard, all rights reserved.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":57685929066869,"sku":"9781662541230","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":57487839166837,"sku":"9781662540899","price":19.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781662541230_841ceb27-3a9e-437c-968e-1b318fa7b7b9.jpg?v=1792599174"},{"product_id":"at-home-in-the-world","title":"At Home In The World","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn 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'. Among the hundreds of letters she received as a result, one expressed deep affection for her writing, and concern at the exploitation that she might be subjected to. The writer was J.D. Salinger, author of Catcher in the Rye and famous recluse. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTheir correspondence led first to friendship, and then to love, and after a few months she dropped out of college to live with him. 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. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCourageous, beautifully written and affecting, this book is destined to become a classic memoir of a modern woman's life.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57490202296693,"sku":"9781862300415","price":15.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781862300415.jpg?v=1786442086"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-joyce-maynard.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}