{"product_id":"how-to-be-lost-isbn-9780345483171","title":"How to Be Lost","description":"\u003cb\u003eFrom the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Jetsetters \u003c\/i\u003e. . . Years ago, five-year-old Ellie disappeared. But then her sister finds her photograph in the pages of a magazine, leading her to ask: Was Ellie ever \u003ci\u003ereally\u003c\/i\u003e missing?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Invites comparison to \u003ci\u003eThe Lovely Bones\u003c\/i\u003e . . . Ward’s depiction of family, with its attendant love and guilt, will keep you turning pages.”—\u003ci\u003ePeople\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJoseph and Isabelle Winters seem to have it all: a grand home in Holt, New York,  a trio of radiant daughters, and a sense that they are safe in their affluent corner  of America. But when five-year-old Ellie disappears, the fault lines within the family  are exposed: Joseph, once a successful businessman, succumbs to his demons; Isabelle  retreats into memories of her debutante days in Savannah; and Ellie’s bereft sisters  grow apart—Madeline reluctantly stays home, while Caroline runs away.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Fifteen years  later, Caroline, now a New Orleans cocktail waitress, sees a photograph of a woman  in a magazine. Convinced that it is Ellie all grown up, Caroline embarks on a search  for her missing sister. Armed with copies of the photo, an amateur detective guide,  and a cooler of Dixie beer, Caroline travels through the New Mexico desert, the mountains  of Colorado, and the smoky underworld of Montana, determined to salvage her broken  family.“You’ve got a great book in your hands—Amanda Eyre Ward shines here with . . . humor and brilliance . . . setting vivid descriptions of women’s interior lives within a haunting mystery, all told in the clear, no-nonsense prose that has won her such acclaim.”\u003cb\u003e—Andrew Sean Greer, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of \u003ci\u003eLess\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Ward writes with authority, humor, intelligence, and poignancy, and these qualities make the book hard to put down. . . . Moving, credible, and absorbing.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eChicago Tribune\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“A compelling page-turner [that] unfolds as part suspense novel, part memoir . . . [\u003ci\u003eHow to Be Lost\u003c\/i\u003e] chronicles Caroline’s tale with vivid eloquence, clarity, and dark, nuanced humor.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“One of those sink-your-teeth-into-it novels that remind you why you love to read.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Charlotte Observer\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The narrative is so engrossing, so propelling,  you’re surprised to come upon the last page.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eTime Out New York\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e “Affecting . .  . sustains suspense to the very end and brings a tear to the eye.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Denver Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eAmanda Eyre Ward\u003c\/b\u003e is the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of seven novels including \u003ci\u003eThe Jetsetters,\u003c\/i\u003e a Reese’s Book Club pick. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her family.\u003cb\u003eOne\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The afternoon before, I planned how I would tell her. I would begin with   my age and maturity, allude to a new lover, and finish with a bouquet of  promises:  grandchildren, handwritten letters, boxes from Tiffany sent in  time to beat the  rush. I sat in my apartment drinking Scotch and planning  the words. “Mom,” I said  to Georgette, the cat. “Mom, I have something  important to discuss.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Georgette  stretched lazily on the balcony. Below, an ambulance wailed. A  man with a shopping  cart stood underneath my apartment building, eating  chicken wings and whistling.  The heat had dimmed, but the smell of New  Orleans seemed to grow stronger: old meat,  sweat, and beer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Mom,” I told the cat, “please listen to what I am telling  you.” Although  Georgette continued to ignore me, the man with the shopping cart  looked  up, and I took this as a good sign.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e I had to work that night, so  after the Scotch and a small nap, I stood in  front of the mirror and put on mascara.  I was going for sultry European,  so I took my hair in my fingers and twisted it,  securing the roll with  bobby pins. Was this a chignon? How did one pronounce chignon?  In any  case, my hair was out of my face, and this would please the health  department.  I washed my hands with the rose-scented soap my sister had  sent me, and slipped  my feet into heels. As a final   gesture, I drew a mole next to the left corner of  my mouth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e We had been told, at The Highball, to “glamorize our images.” This  is a  direct quote. Jimbo, the club’s elderly owner, had begun soliciting buyers   for his “little piece of New Orleans history.” The Highball was the  cocktail lounge  at the top of the World Trade Center in New Orleans. It  revolved. If you sat drinking  expensive themed cocktails for a full hour,  you would see the whole city, from the  lazy Mississippi River to the  dilapidated downtown, to the French Quarter, and back  again to the mighty  Miss, Old Man River. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Jimbo had implored us, in his memo,  to glamorize. I believe he thought  that despite the old plush décor, despite our  advancing ages (I was  thirty-two, in a town where many cocktail waitresses were  underage  runaways) and annoyed demeanors, if we tarted up, he could convince some   Yankee that The Highball was an exclusive club, and not a tourist trap  that revolved.  So, why not? My old look (irritable and overtired) hadn’t  gotten me many dates.  Along with Winnie, I went to Payless Shoes and  bought a few pairs of high heels.  We bought fishnet stockings and perfume.  And then we went to Bobby’s Bar and drank  beer from giant cans until we  ran out of quarters for the jukebox.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I  drove slowly to The Highball. With my car windows closed and my  air-conditioning  on, the night was lovely. People sat on their front steps  drinking from paper bags  and watching kids play soccer. I was one of the  few white people in my neighborhood,  and one of the many heavy drinkers. I  waved to Lady B, my landlord, who was sitting  on her porch swing and  braiding her daughter Lela’s hair. Lady B winked in response.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Although I didn’t have to, I drove up Canal Street, past Harrah’s. Three  frat  boys, their necks strung with beads, sat on the sidewalk outside the  casino. Their  eyes were glazed, and they were not drinking from their  giant daiquiris. They were  simply staring at the street, defeated. These  were the sorts of people who eventually  roused themselves to ride the  elevator to The Highball. More than one of my customers  had fallen asleep  in their velvet chair.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Things were slow up at The H-ball.  Winnie was leaning on the bar, her  tight dress leaving no inch to the imagination.  Behind the bar, Peggy the  yoga queen mixed a martini like Tom Cruise, shaking her  hips this way and  that. A few customers gazed out the window. One couple was making  out  madly. The good thing about a revolving bar is that odious customers are  soon  out of sight.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Look at you!” said Winnie, pointing red fingernails and laughing   throatily.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “What?” I said. “It’s a chignon.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Winnie and Peggy looked at  each other. Sometimes, I surprised them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It was a long night, and everybody  wanted bourbon. When my shift was over,  even I wanted bourbon, instead of my usual  Scotch. Peggy poured me a stiff  one. “I am dreading tomorrow,” I told her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Why?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I have to tell my mother I’m not coming home for Christmas. She’s going   to flip.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Peggy sat down on her stool. She had removed every bit of her eyebrows,   and drawn thin lines. “Why not?” she said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “What?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Why aren’t you going  home?” said Peggy. She poured herself a glass of  bourbon.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Oh, it’s a long  story,” I said. “For one thing, I’m an adult, you know?  I can’t go flying home to  New York for every holiday like I’m in college  or something.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I never went  to college,” Peggy said, dreamily.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “And my family…well, it’s a bit f***ed up,  is the thing,” I said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I wonder,” said Peggy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “What?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Peggy sipped  her drink, and looked through the enormous windows at the  sparkling city below.  “I wonder who I would be,” she said, “if I had gone  to college.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I went to  college,” I said, “and I’m still here.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Peggy nodded. “But you’re you,” she  said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e On the drive home, I fantasized about my Christmas alone. I would  buy a  little tree for my apartment and decorate it with lights. I could spend  the  day at the movies, or at the Napoleon House, eating a muffaleta  sandwich and then  slowly drinking my way through a bottle of house red.  Winnie had already invited  me over for turkey, and I could watch all the  kids at her house open presents. Or  I could work on Christmas, and make a  bundle. Jimbo paid double on holidays.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I wouldn’t have to hear it from my sister Madeline and her investment  banker husband,  Ron. And the Christmas party. My mother insisted on  keeping up the Christmas party  tradition, making us don taffeta dresses,  hiring the bartender from the Liquor Barn.  She made the same meatballs, a  little too sweet, and the cheese ball. The cheese  ball! There must have  been a time when an enormous mass of orange and pink cheese  covered with  nuts and parsley was fashionable, and my mother has not moved past  that  time. My mother, who was a model in the sixties, who loved fondue, who  made  cheese balls and laughed so brightly it made me want to cry.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Last year, I wore  the costume and deflected questions about my career.  (“Just tell them you’re still  playing,” my mother had said, “I beg of  you.”) I drank too much wine, listened to  my brother-in-law’s investment  advice, and did not argue with Madeline. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I  went to sleep before making a scene, but in the middle of the night, I  woke up.  The guests were gone, and the condo was silent. Next to me, my  sister breathed slowly.  Strands of hair clung to her flushed cheeks, and  she smelled of face cream. I looked  at her, the curve of her nose, her  thin lips. Her eyelashes, clean of mascara, were  pale, and her skin was  lightly freckled. In many ways, she was a stranger to me  now: an Upper  East Side wife, nervous and easily wounded. And yet, in the glow of  the  streetlamp outside the bedroom, she was the same girl who had once told me   You and me are our family, her eyes searching mine for a promise. I  touched her  cheek with my fingers, and she stirred, furrowed her brow, but  did not wake.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Our room was on the third floor of my mother’s condo, and I went  downstairs, past  my mother’s bedroom and the den, where Ron slept on the  pullout couch. (For the  first year of their marriage, Madeline had slept  with him on the uncomfortable couch  at Christmastime, but now she came  upstairs to sleep next to me.) I had hoped to  find some leftover  meatballs, or to make a ham sandwich with the Harrington’s maple  ham and  the little slices of rye bread. I made my way to the kitchen, but as I   stepped carefully to avoid waking Ron, I heard something.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I turned toward the  sound, and closed my eyes. It was muffled, a sort of  breathing. For a moment, I  felt a wave of fear, thinking it was a prowler,  a robber, murderer, or rapist, but  then I remembered I was in suburban New  York, and not New Orleans, and my mother’ s condo complex had a guardhouse.  I was wearing wool socks and my Christmas nightgown.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e My eyes adjusted to the light. In the kitchen, by the sliding glass door  that  led to the third-story deck, I saw a figure: my mother. “Mom?” I said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She looked  up, and I could see she was crying. “Mom? What is it?” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Nothing,” she said.  She blinked quickly and ran the sleeve of her  bathrobe across her eyes. By the time  I reached her—a few seconds—she was  composed. “I was just thinking about Christmas,”  she said, a false edge of  cheer lining her voice. She clutched the picture in her  hands. The blurry  one, taken on a fall morning a lifetime ago when we had covered  Ellie in  leaves.New York Times bestselling author of The Jetsetters","brand":"Ballantine Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304505430245,"sku":"NP9780345483171","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780345483171.jpg?v=1767729376","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/how-to-be-lost-isbn-9780345483171","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}