Amanda Eyre Ward

"When seventy-year-old Charlotte Perkins submits a sexy essay to the 'Become a Jetsetter' contest, she dreams of reuniting her estranged children: Lee, an almost-famous actress; Cord, a handsome Manhattan venture capitalist who can't seem to find a bride; and Regan, a harried mother who took it all wrong when Charlotte bought her a Weight Watchers gift certificate for her birthday. Charlotte yearns for the years when her children were young and she...

"In Austin's Zilker Park, vigilance and money are enough to keep one insulated from the world's problems and inconveniences. Here, three mothers--Whitney, Annette, and Liza--have grown thick as thieves, and so have their fifteen-year-old sons. While each of them has their own set of values and backgrounds, they share the belief that they can shelter their boys from an increasingly dangerous world. They've raised their families together, and their...

The Winters family seemed to have it all: a grand home, a trio of radiant daughters, and a sense that they were safe in their affluent corner of America. But when five-year-old Ellie disappears, the fault lines within the Winters family are exposed. Fifteen years later, Caroline, now a New Orleans cocktail waitress, sees a photograph of a woman in People Magazine. Convinced that it is Ellie all grown up, Caroline embarks on a search for her missing...

Amanda Eyre Wards debut novel is an intimate portrait of three women whose lives collide during a brutal Texas summer. In Gatestown, Texas, twenty-nine-year-old Karen Lowens awaits her execution with a host of convicted serial killers on death row. In Manhattan, Dr. Franny Wren, also twenty-nine, tends to a young cancer patient, and resists the urge to run from her fiancé and her carefully crafted life. In Austin, Texas, brassy Celia Mills, a once-vibrant...

Struggling for closure years after her mother is murdered by her father, Lauren Mahdian analyzes her carefully constructed memories only to realize the role of her own denial, a process that illuminates the impact of split-second choices.