The Good Daughters by Joyce Maynard

(HarperCollins, $36.99)

Precocious teenager Joyce oaynard wrote a cover story for the New York Times oagazine when she was 18 years old, which changed her life forever.

The story – and her photo – caught the eye of American literary icon JD Salinger, author of the bestseller The Catcher in the Rye, and more than three decades her senior. He instigated an exchange of letters and soon after, she dropped out of college and moved in with him, only to be dumped less than a year later.

Joyce remained tight-lipped on the subject of the fiercely private Salinger until 1999 when she recounted their affair in her memoir, At Home in the World. At the time she came in for quite some criticism from people who felt she was exploiting their literary hero.

“I wonder,” she wrote in response, “why you are so quick to see exploitation in the actions of a woman – sought out at 18 by a man 35 years her senior, who promised to love her forever and asked her to forswear all else to come and live with him