Find out next readers' choice for CBS New Book Club with Mary Calvi
The CBS New York Book Club's next "Readers' Choice" is...
"The Audrey Hepburn Estate" by Brenda Janowitz has been selected as the next read for the CBS New York Book Club with Mary Calvi!
We asked you to choose from our "Top 3 FicPicks," as we call fiction picks, all of which have plots and/or authors connected to New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut.
Now it's time to get your copy of "The Audrey Hepburn Estate" and read along with Mary.
We will have about five weeks to read the novel. Mark your calendars for Tuesday, June 6 for our book club meeting with author Brenda Janowitz.
Prefer to listen? Audible has a 30-day free trial available right now.
From the publisher: When Emma Jansen discovers that the grand Long Island estate where she grew up is set to be demolished, she can't help but return for one last visit. After all, it was a place filled with firsts: learning to ride a bike, sneaking a glass of champagne, falling in love.
But once Emma arrives at the storied mansion, she can't ignore the more complicated memories. Because that's not exactly where Emma grew up. Her mother and father worked for the family that owned the estate, and they lived over the garage like Audrey Hepburn's character in the film Sabrina. Emma never felt fully accepted, except by the family's grandson, Henry—a former love—and by the driver's son, Leo—her best friend.
As plans for the property are put into motion and the three are together for the first time in over a decade, Emma finds herself caught between two worlds and two loves.
Brenda Janowitz lives in New York.
"The Audrey Hepburn Estate" by Brenda Janowitz (paperback), $16
"The Audrey Hepburn Estate" by Brenda Janowitz (Kindle), $12
Excerpt: "The Audrey Hepburn Estate" by Brenda Janowitz
They say lots of things about going home. Home is where the heart is. There's no place like home.
You can never go home again.
But Emma Jansen was, in fact, going home again. Well, not home, exactly, because the place she grew up wasn't really hers, never really belonged to her.
Still, she had lived there. She had lived there and loved there and had a life there. And that meant something to her.
The train slid into the station at Glen Cove three minutes late. Every time she walked off the train at the Glen Cove station, she imagined herself as Audrey Hepburn, in that scene from Sabrina. She would simply walk to the curb and the dashing David Larrabee would drive up, as if on cue, in his Nash Healey Spider.
Was that why she hadn't taken one of the catering vans out to Long Island? An attempt to live out the plot of one of her favorite childhood movies? She'd watched and rewatched Sabrina so many times with her father as a kid that she had practically every line, every scene memorized. Sabrina may have been a chef, like Emma was now, but Sabrina Fairchild certainly did not drive around in a catering van like Emma Jansen usually did.
Emma walked to the cab stand. No David Larrabee in sight. She adjusted her tote bag on her shoulder as she got in line for a taxi. Moments later, she was in the back of a cab, windows down.
"First time in Glen Cove?" the driver asked when she told him the address.
"No, I grew up here," she said, forcing a smile as she looked out the open window.
In the city, thirty-two-year-old Emma usually took the subway. She hated when cabdrivers tried to make conversation. She never knew what to say. She chastised herself for not ordering a rideshare. At least with the press of a button she could request a quiet ride.
It wasn't that Emma was unkind. She simply wasn't good at small talk. Emma usually jumped right to the big talk.
"In that case, welcome home," the cabdriver said, his smile as wide as the length of Long Island.
Emma didn't know how to respond.
The longer they drove through Glen Cove, the larger the houses became. When they drove up to the address Emma had given him, it looked like an abandoned parcel, not the formerly grand estate it once was: Rolling Hill. A huge construction gate circled the property, with a small opening off the main road.
"This it?" the cabdriver asked. A tiny sign on the gate read, Sales Center, with an arrow directing cars to drive through.
"Yes," Emma said, staring out the window up the long, sweeping driveway. Even in its disarray, she'd know this place anywhere. "That's it."
As they pulled up the drive, Emma felt as if she were in a dream. The sort of dream where you know exactly where you are, but everything is different somehow. The property seemed smaller than she'd remembered. Was that because now, as an adult, she was bigger herself? Or had her mind made things grander in her memory, made every pathway wider, made every structure more imposing?
The estate was in shambles. The grass was brown, dried-up, all over. The bricks on the main driveway were falling apart, breaking away at the edges in some spots, completely missing in others. Gone were the beautiful rows of boxwood shrubs, lined up neatly with nary a leaf out of place, that Linwood would tend to with care. He would spend hours each day meticulously cutting back the greenery, making sure the garden looked polished, manicured. But now there were no flowers in sight, no hydrangea bushes or peonies. Things that made the estate look alive, happy. Lived-in.
It looked abandoned. Which was what it was, really. When the family left, it had been bought by a real estate developer who'd planned to flip the house and the property. But then the recession hit, and there were no buyers for the house and its surrounding eight acres. It soon went into foreclosure and sat empty for years. As the estate deteriorated, it became harder and harder to sell, because even though the property had value, it was a fixer-upper. The amount of money it would take to get the estate back to its former glory seemed infinite. No other developer would touch it.
Until now.
The cab drove past the main house. Emma squinted—surely that wasn't it. The house she knew was stately, and stood proudly among the tall pine trees. One of the pines had fallen over and had taken permanent residence in the left wing of the house, in what used to be the formal living room. The rest of the house hadn't fared much better: the Juliet balconies on the front windows were in various stages of disrepair, and there were broken windows throughout the first floor. The grand lighting fixture that used to hang under the porte cochere was missing, and Emma noticed some faint spray paint marks across the front door.
The house wasn't her house anymore. It had been damaged and vandalized. It wasn't cared for, loved, like in its heyday. Emma felt it in the pit of her belly. Coming back had been a mistake.
"Up here?" the cabdriver asked, stopping at a clearing with a lonely construction trailer standing in the middle. A few luxury cars—one Mercedes and two BMWs—were parked in front. There was a small sign next to the door marked Sales Center.
"Thank you," Emma said, and paid the driver.
She stepped out of the cab and took a deep breath. Whenever she'd come home, the smell of the pine trees would always calm Emma down. She'd forgotten that, the way the pine trees greeted you. The smell of the place was such a huge part of her memory. Walking into the kitchen, the warm perfume of roasted garlic, fresh rosemary, and bread baking in the oven. Every spring, the faint smell of the lilacs, which would tell her that summer was coming. When the lilacs bloomed, they'd sleep with the windows open, the lovely scent seeping into her dreams, making them sweet. Even the back shed, which housed the bikes, had a particular aroma. Dirt and sweat and nectar. It smelled like an adventure to come.
From The Audrey Hepburn Estate by Brenda Janowitz. Copyright © 2023 by Brenda Janowitz. Published by arrangement with HTP Books, a division of HarperCollins.
