Published 1992, E. P. Dutton

"Now sex... You put sex into a situation and everything changes.

A woman wants to get out of her marriage. Her husband doesn't

want a divorce. She's got to dump him, but he's holding on.

Nobody know what to do. Then sex enters in. She get a

sixteen-year-old boyfriend. Now she's crossed a line. Broken the

rules. Once she's done that, it's an easy step to the next point."

In a brilliant, shocking novel of ambition and sexual obsession, Joyce Maynard tells the chilling story of a young woman who arranges the cold-blooded murder of her husband. Written in a unique documentary style, To Die For exposes with disturbing accuracy a community for whom television is more real than their own lives.

Suzanne Stone is a golden girl, her family's favorite, a lively accomplished young woman with one driving ambition: to be a network anchorwoman -- a television star. The job she lands at a local cable station os merely an expected stepping stone to the big time. What is unexpected is her husband's murder.

As those around the case -- and Suzanne herself -- start talking to the media, a fascinating picture of seduction and fixation emerges. Has Suzanne promised a sixteen-year-old boy unlimited sex to shoot her husband? Why would three teenagers become pawns in a depraved plot to kill? The people closest to Suzanne see her as a role model, a woman striving to become like her television idols. Others see her as a self-centered, coldhearted manipulator, a woman who considers the media celebrity that follows her husband's murder a career opportunity. Who Suzanne really is and what impels a young boy to swear he will not only die for the woman he thinks he loves, but will kill for her, combine to form this riveting novel of sexual and psychological domination. Joyce Maynard brilliantly and insightfully captures the odd combinations of personality, sex, class, culture, and chance that shape and destroy these lives.

READ AN EXCERPT FROM TO DIE FOR

READ JOYCE’S ESSAY ON THE ORIGINS OF THE BOOK