Joyce Maynard Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Picture Books

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Joyce Maynard is a literary fiction author who came into the limelight with the publishing of her New York Times story. The 1972 published “An Eighteen Year Old Looks Back on Life” came out while she was in her freshman year at Yale. Since then she has gone on to become a columnist and reporter for The New York Times.

Domestic Affairs, her newspaper column has been syndicated to more than fifty newspapers across the United States. She has written articles and contributed to the likes of The New York Times Magazine, NPR, and Vogue among others.

When she achieved much success as a freshman in Yale she decided to drop out and returned as a sixty six year old The bestselling author would then write about her experiences in Yale where she would be almost seventy when she graduated.

She is currently a fellow of Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. She is also a founding member of the week-long workshop on the craft and art of memoir Write by the Lake that is held every year in Guatemala.

She has said that writing is something she always did and started publishing her short stories when was just thirteen. During her teenage years Joyce Maynard was consumed by the excitement of publishing her story in The New York Times and soon after dropped out of Yale.
When her article was published, she got a letter from JD Salinger the literary legend warning her to beware of the pitfalls of fame. They would write to each other for several months and their relationship soon turned romantic.

Joyce moved in with the 53 year old writer that had been recently divorced. But their relationship only lasted eight months during which Maynard published “Looking Back” shortly after their split in 1973.

The memoir explored the cultural history of the 1960s through opinionated but honest eyes. She writes about everything from the cover of Life Magazine that showed a fetus in utero, The Beatles and the procedures for school drills that were necessitated by the Cuban Missile Crisis. Joyce explored the world familiar to her growing up but resisted the urge to look into personal happenings in her life.
It was not until 1998 that she published “At Home in the World” , the controversial memoir that discussed her relationship with the legendary Salinger.

Joyce has published more than seventeen novels including the adapted for film novel “To Die for.” Her memoir “At Home in the World” would go on to become a bestseller across the world and was translated into more than sixteen languages.

“To Die For” was optioned by Buck Henry who got Gus Van Sant as director and Joyce the author also got a role in it. Labor Day one of her most popular novels was directed and adapted by Jason Reitman in a film that starred Josh Brolin and Kate Winslet.
Joyce Maynard worked on the film offering instruction on how to make the pie which is a crucial part of a major scene. The author is now a mother of three children who have left the nest.

She lives in Lafayette California from where she runs her workshops on memoir writing. She still attends and teaches at the Lake Atitlan Writing Workshop in Guatemala where she offers lessons on personal storytelling.

“Labor Day” by Joyce Maynard is a novel set at the end of summer where Henry, a thirteen year old, is feeling friendless and lonely with the long Labor Day weekend on the horizon. He has never been good at sports and hence is spending much of his time reading, watching TV and daydreaming about the budding bodies and soft skin of his co-eds.

He lives with Adele, his long divorced mother who wants to teach him how to foxtrot given that she was once upon a time a dancer. They sometimes spend their Saturday nights with the family of his estranged father and this often results in some awkward situations.
While he does try he knows that no matter what he does it is impossible to make his emotionally fragile mother happy. Adele seems to be suffering from an irreparably broken heart and also has a dark secret which means that she rarely leaves the house.
But everything changes on the eve of Labor Day when Frank, a profusely bleeding man, asks Henry for help. Over the next week he comes to learn some important life lessons.

He learns about the importance of putting others above oneself, how to throw a baseball, the power of betrayal, the breathless pain of jealousy and how to make the perfect pie crust.

Joyce Maynard’s novel “After Her” is set in the hot and dry summer of 1979. For Rachel and Patty, her younger sister, the school vacation stretches into the horizon. They are the children of an irresistibly handsome, larger than life and chronically philandering detective father who broke the heart of their mother.
The children have been left to do what they want and most days they can be found concocting wild fantasies about their newest neighbor, studying and playing records, and playing games on the small hill behind their home.

But things change when the police find dead women behind the house and their father who is christened “The Sunset Strangler” is charged with murder. He is unable to put a stop to the murders and not wanting to lose her father Rachel decides to become an amateur sleuth.
She makes herself the bait in a dangerous game that could destroy their lives and their father’s career if it fails. It is not until three decades later that Rachel finally finds the killer having persisted for years. This brings her back to the town where she grew up where she unearths a long held family secret.

“The Good Daughters” by Joyce Maynard is the story of two girls born in the same hospital in New Hampshire on the same day yet their families could not be any more different.

Ruth Plank is a romantic and artist with an imaginative, passionate and rich life. She is the last born of five girls born to a caring and gentle farmer and a stolid wife that dreams of moving away from the rural farm that has been her family;’s legacy for decades.
On the other hand is realist and scientist Dana Dickerson who believes in the natural world. She has been brought up by two drifters who never follow their dreams and now she longs for rootedness and stability.
Dan and Ruth are different in every way even as they are both looking to find a place in the world that neither feels they belong in. They also share a love for Ray, the beautiful and wild brother to Dana who promises to change their lives.
The novel follows the two girls as they live their lives from the 50s to the modern world.