AVAILABLE JUNE 25, 2024 EVERYWHERE BOOKS ARE SOLD
I read every note.
#1 in France for a foreign author.
Write By The Lake
Photo by Xiren Wang
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.
"In The Bird Hotel, Joyce Maynard imagines a glorious landscape where one broken woman, Irene, must lose herself in order to find the hope of survival. Although it's Irene whose heart-stopping tale drives the narrative, this is also a rich ensemble novel about endurance, courage, healing, and the salvation of human generosity--the glittering, unexpected ways we save each other every day, despite all the reasons not to. Much more than just an expat novel filled with memorable characters of all stripes, The Bird Hotel is a careful love letter of discovery, and a reminder that life can provide the antidote to suffering if you're open, patient, and you know where to look." -- JEANINE CUMMINS, #1 New York Times bestselling author of American Dirt
Accomplished musician and producer, Xiren Wang @xirenaissance recorded birdsong in spring 2019 during her first visit to Lake Atitlan for Write By The Lake.
In 2020, Xiren returned to Write By The Lake right before the world began to shut down, and as the last plane left Guatemala, Xiren stayed, and was with me at Lake Atitlan during the months of quarantine.
It was spring and summer 2020 (and, on subsequent visits in 2021) that Xiren recorded the sounds for what was to become Escape to Bird Hotel. Each morning, she woke earlier and earlier to record the different calls.
To hear the sounds of Escape to Bird Hotel, click below.
50 YEARS
A memoir of what it was like to be a teenager in a tumultuous era, from the New York Times best-selling author of The Best of Us.
Joyce Maynard was 18 years old when her 1972 New York Times Magazine cover story catapulted her to national prominence. Published one year later, Looking Back is her remarkable follow-up—part memoir, part cultural history, and part social critique. She wrote about diving under her desk for air-raid practice during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Beatles’ first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, and catching the first glimpse (on the cover of Life magazine) of a human fetus in utero.
Extraordinarily frank, sincere, and opinionated, Maynard seemed unafraid to take on any subject—including herself. But as she reveals in a poignant and candid new foreword, she carefully kept her inner life off the page. She didn’t write about her difficult relationship with her mother, or her father’s alcoholism, or the fact that her best friend at college had struggled with the knowledge that he was gay. And she did not mention the most important part of her life at the time she was writing this book: her relationship with reclusive author J. D. Salinger, who read and corrected every page, even as he condemned her for writing it. In this special anniversary edition, Maynard’s candid introductory reflections on the girl behind the girl who wrote Looking Back lend a new dimension to this iconic analysis of a generation.
50 YEARS 1973 - 2023
AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK!
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WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING
"How did Maynard know that this is exactly the novel we all need now? Yes, it's a page-turning thriller and the characters are all so alive they breathe on the page, but there's something even grander going on here. Her exhilaratingly brilliant new novel isn't just an indelible story of the falling dominoes of a family struggling through crisis and through generations, it's also about the times we live through, from the draft to Aids to #MeToo and more. And, being Joyce, she gets at the heart of the most basic and important and beautiful of questions: What binds us together and what tears us apart, and how we can know the difference? How does love survive? This gorgeous story reminds us how, and that love is always, always worth it.”
- Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You and With or Without You
By Maynard, Joyce