Forgive Me

FORGIVE ME PB

Literature & Fiction

Eyre Ward, Amanda

Contemporary

Harper-perennial

Reese’s Book Club x Hello Sunshine Book Pick • New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice “Dysfunctional family goes away together on a Mediterranean cruise: What’s not to love? This novel fell squarely in my wheelhouse and I was delighted anew in every port. The Jetsetters is fun, sexy, and engrossing.”—#1 New York Times bestselling author Elin Hilderbrand 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 partner; 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, when she was a single mother who meant everything to them. When she wins the contest, the family packs their baggage—both literal and figurative—and spends ten days traveling from sun-drenched Athens through glorious Rome to tapas-laden Barcelona on an over-the-top cruise ship, the Splendido Marveloso. As lovers new and old join the adventure, long-buried secrets are revealed and old wounds are reopened, forcing the Perkins family to confront the forces that drove them apart and the defining choices of their lives. Can four lost adults find the peace they’ve been seeking by reconciling their childhood aches and coming back together? In the vein of The Nest and The Vacationers, The Jetsetters is a delicious and intelligent novel about the courage it takes to reveal our true selves, the pleasures and perils of family, and how we navigate the seas of adulthood.

The Jetsetters: A Novel

Literary

Ballantine Books

“A book that is at once riveting and relevant as it unpeels the various meanings of motherhood, family, and loyalty. I tore through it.”—Miranda Cowley Heller, author of The Paper Palace\nThe bonds between three picture-perfect—but viciously protective—mothers and their close-knit sons are tested during one unforgettable summer in a gripping novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Jetsetters.\nAustin’s Zilker Park neighborhood is a wonderland of greenbelt trails, live music, and moms who drink a few too many margaritas. Whitney, Annette, and Liza have grown thick as thieves as they have raised their children together for fifteen years, believing that they can shelter them their children from an increasingly dangerous world. Their friendship is unbreakable—as safe as the neighborhood where they've raised their sweet little boys.\nOr so they think.\nOne night, the three women have been enjoying happy hour when their boys, lifeguards for the summer, come back on bicycles from a late-night dip in their favorite swimming hole. The boys share a secret—news that will shatter the perfect world their mothers have so painstakingly created.\nCombining three mothers’ points of view in a powerful narrative tale with commentary from entertaining neighborhood listservs, secret text messages, and police reports, The Lifeguards is both a story about the secrets we tell to protect the ones we love and a riveting novel of suspense filled with half-truths and betrayals, fierce love and complicated friendships, and the loss of innocence on one hot summer night.

The Lifeguards: A Novel

-1-\nLiza\nOur boys were lifeguards, we told ourselves, and were surely safe. Weren’t they safe? They knew CPR, had shown us their fanny packs filled with Band-Aids and plastic breathing tubes. Xavier, Bobcat, and Charlie (my son) had taken the course together, weekend mornings at Barton Springs. We’d dropped them off at dawn, the Texas sun just starting to climb above the horizon, making the surface of the spring-fed swimming hole flash red and orange. We’d said we’d walk Lady Bird Lake together, or we’d stand-up paddleboard or grab coffee. Instead, we smiled as we dropped the boys, went home to the adult lives we’d begun to create again, now that our children were fifteen. I was ghostwriting a cookbook; Annette was working at Hola, Amigos Daycare; and Whitney had become an Austin real estate titan.\nNow that we no longer had endless summer days with elementary schoolers underfoot, it was harder to connect. But our friendship was unbreakable, as safe as the neighborhood where we’d raised our sweet little kids.\nOr so we thought.\nBy the end of the summer, one of us would be gone.\n“Where are they?” I said, glancing at my watch. (I liked wearing a thin gold watch I’d bought at an antiques store. Sometimes, I told people it had been my mother’s, conjuring an “old money” family that didn’t exist. Oh, how I loved the idea of a mother who’d wear such an elegant timepiece on a slim wrist! My actual mother, in contrast, had a tattoo of a snake on her hand.)\nIt was 11:00 p.m., which was definitely too late.\n“Riding their bikes around the neighborhood, they said,” said Annette. Her son, Bobcat, was rail-thin and six-three, a reluctant ninth-grade basketball star. Despite Bobcat insisting he just wanted to build computers in his room, Annette’s husband forced their son to keep playing. During the last game of the season, an opponent elbowed Bobcat—hard—in the soft place underneath his rib cage. It was awful to see Bobcat’s face crumple in pain . . . but he only glanced toward the stands at his father . . . and didn’t make a sound.\nWhen my son, Charlie, went over his mountain-bike handles on a trail and cut his forehead, I felt his pain viscerally. I could scarcely watch him pedal away, even now that he wore the most expensive safety equipment available: a two-hundred-dollar full-face helmet, padded bike shorts, neck brace, wrist, elbow, and knee pads, and a back protector made of VPD, whatever that was. Despite Charlie’s complaints, I’d bought all the items at Dick’s Sporting Goods on layaway. (The sign above the gear was a siren call: you can buy the feeling of safety!) Sure, the other kids made fun of him with his braces and helmets, but I’d rather my son be embarrassed than dead.\nIt was possible, as Charlie had suggested gently, that I had anxiety issues. Maybe, as he’d said, I should “use our money to talk to someone.” But you couldn’t see a therapist on layaway, now could you? I’d handle my brain when I’d somehow gotten Charlie to college without any major bodily damage. Splurging on things that made me feel more secure was working for me, so I ignored Charlie’s complaints and insinuations and loved him hard and bought him safety equipment.\nAnnette went to every game wearing Austin High colors from head to toe. She had platinum blond hair and bronze skin, wide brown eyes. She carefully sculpted her thick eyebrows into perfect arches, accented her high cheekbones and naturally plump lips with drugstore makeup, and wore expensive jewelry at all times. When Louis (who had been too short to play basketball himself) led cheers for Bobcat from the stands and stomped his feet on the bleachers, tried to start “the wave” and was largely ignored, Annette stood by his side. We all loved Louis, his childlike enthusiasm, but Annette knew, as we all did, that Bobcat played only to please his father but really came alive when explaining the best graphics card for his latest home-built PC.\nLouis wanted his son to be the athlete he’d dreamed

Random House LCC US

The bonds between three picture-perfect--but viciously protective--mothers and their close-knit sons are tested during one unforgettable summer in a gripping novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Jetsetters. Austin's Zilker Park neighborhood is a wonderland of greenbelt trails, live music, and moms who drink a few too many margaritas. Whitney, Annette, and Liza have grown thick as thieves as they have raised their children together for fifteen years, believing that they can shelter them their children from an increasingly dangerous world. Their friendship is unbreakable&mdsah;as safe as the neighborhood where they've raised their sweet little boys. Or so they think. One night, the three women have been enjoying happy hour when their boys, lifeguards for the summer, come back on bicycles from a late-night dip in their favorite swimming hole. The boys share a secret--news that will shatter the perfect world their mothers have so painstakingly created. Combining three mothers' points of view in a powerful narrative tale with commentary from entertaining neighborhood listservs, secret text messages, and police reports, The Lifeguards is both a story about the secrets we tell to protect the ones we love and a riveting novel of suspense filled with half-truths and betrayals, fierce love and complicated friendships, and the loss of innocence on one hot summer night.

The Lifeguards (Wheeler Publishing Large Print Hardcover)

Wheeler Publishing Large Print

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Eyre Ward, Amanda. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Eyre Ward, Amanda

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Eyre Ward, Amanda. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

FORGIVE ME PB

The Jetsetters: A Novel

The Lifeguards: A Novel

The Lifeguards: A Novel

The Lifeguards (Wheeler Publishing Large Print Hardcover)