by Amy Poeppel
My agent Linda Chester is a champion. Thank you, Linda, along with Laurie Fox and Gary Jaffe, for your confidence in me, your friendship, and your support. I’m also so grateful to my fantastic publicist Kathleen Carter of Kathleen Carter Communications.
A million thanks to Anika Streitfeld for her patience (seriously, endless patience) and for her humor, high expectations, and brilliance. Working with her is a pleasure, and I appreciate everything she has taught me.
I have an incredibly funny, lively musical family. Sending love and gratitude to my husband, David, for surrounding me with classical music and for reading so many early drafts, traveling with me to new places, and keeping our (middle-aged) life fun and unpredictable. And sending love to my sons, Alex, Andrew, and Luke, for all the inspiration, comedy, and encouragement, with special thanks to Luke for his keen eyes and vast knowledge of classical music. My family and my family in-law are the best early readers, party throwers, audience members, book buyers, website designers, publicists, and cheerleaders ever–thanks to you all for your love and support, especially to my sisters, Wendy O’Sullivan and Laurie Mitchell, my brother-in-law Brent Woods, my nieces and nephews, and, of course, my father, Jere Mitchell.
For their expertise (in chamber music, parrot behavior, sperm donation, and barn restoration, in that order), I am so grateful to authors Marcia Butler, Kira Jane Buxton, Julie Clark, and Amanda Stauffer for answering my many questions. And I’m so indebted to all the wonderful fiction writers I’ve been fortunate enough to get to know and love in New York City and beyond, especially the partiers of the NY Writers Salon and the authors with whom I’ve and traveled and done events. You are endlessly understanding, generous, and entertaining and you always help me see the humor in this crazy life. Thank you, M. Elizabeth Lee, Suzanne Rindell, Caroline Leavitt, Marcy Dermansky, Elinor Lipman, Stephen McCauley, Fiona Davis, Lynda Cohen Loigman, Grant Ginder, Georgia Clark, Jenni Walsh, Lauren Willig, Jamie Brenner, Elyssa Friedland, Susie Orman Schnall, Rochelle Weinstein, Crystal King, Sara Goudarzi, Lisa Barr, Brian Platzer, Sara Goudarzi, Laura Catherine Brown, to name only a few.
Speaking of generosity, many thanks to April Benasich and Jamie Melcher for the many invitations to their home in Litchfield County, Connecticut; their beautiful property was always on my mind when I was writing scenes set in “the Castle.”
My hilarious, lovely friends are always willing to share funny stories, work on plot holes, talk me down, and cheer me up. Hugs to Amy and Jonathan White, Hilton Als, Felice Kaufmann, Donna James, Jon Virden, Dawn Charles, and my beloved B-CC crowd, Liz and Matthew King, Liz Lee, Dacel Casey, the Gan clan, Candy and Mitchell Moss, Julie Kutner, Anna Salajegheh, Brett Burns, John Kim, Amy Weinberg and Norbert Hornstein, Ana Blohm and Keith Sigel, Lindsay Ratowsky, Theo Theoharis, Karina Schultz, Ashley Cooper Bianchi, Heidi Dolan, Maria White, and Tracy Tisler. I’m also very happy to have recently reconnected with so many classmates from Kent (’84) and Hockaday (’83) who are just as wonderful as adults as they were when we were kids.
And I have to give a special thanks to Andrea Peskind-Katz (Great Thoughts, Great Readers) for her friendship, good advice, terrific sense of humor, and shared love of guac.
Many thanks to BookSparks for their marketing know-how and non-stop Instagram parties. And I’m so grateful to the librarians, book sellers, and online book enthusiasts/bloggers who put novels like mine in the hands of readers… from Interabang in TX to Warwick’s in CA, from House of Books in CT to Pamela Klinger-Horn (Literature Lovers’ Night Out/Excelsior Bay Books/Valley Book Sellers) in MN, from Book Culture and Shakespeare & Co in NYC to Belmont Books in MA, from Suzanne Weinstein Leopold to Ann-Marie Nieves, from Robin Kall Homonoff and Emily Homonoff to Lauren Margolin, from Cindy Burnett to Zibby Owens, along with Jamie Rosenblit, Kristy Barrett, Christina Powers, Kathy Lewison, Melissa Amster, Betsy Blumberg Maxwell, Cindy Roessel… There are far too many wonderful book people to list here, all of whom do such a wonderful service to authors and readers. Thank you!
And above all, thank you, readers.
And a special shout-out to Tucker, the lapdog next to my laptop, for being the best writing companion.
No comment on my cats.
More from the Author
Limelight
Small Admissions
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
AMY POEPPEL is the author of the novels Small Admissions and Limelight. She and her husband have three sons and split their time between New York City and the wilds of Connecticut.
SimonandSchuster.com
www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Amy-Poeppel
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@EmilyBestler @EmilyBestler
Also by Amy Poeppel
Limelight
Small Admissions
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Amy Poeppel
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
ISBN 978-1-5011-7641-8
ISBN 978-1-5011-7643-2 (ebook)