The Amateur.jpg
The Amateur.jpg

The Amateur by Chris Bohjalian

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Hardcover:

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Midwives and The Flight Attendant: When a young woman, a golf prodigy, kills a caddy with a stray ball at the country club, the investigation of this freak accident reveals a dark and shocking tale of secret affairs, predatory men, and a teenager on trial.

1978: It is the first Thursday in August and temperatures are flirting with ninety when Mira Winston, eighteen years old, drives a golf ball from her tee toward the practice net near the clubhouse and caddy shack. The golf ball, weighing 1.6 ounces, tears through the net, traveling 150 miles per hour, and slams, with sickening force, into the temple of a high school junior named Kenny Foster, rupturing an artery and unleashing a torrent of blood. Kenny brings his hand to the side of his head, then topples onto his side. He's dead before the ambulance even arrives.

In the wake of this terrible accident—and everyone, at first, agrees it was an accident—Mira looks for comfort in all the wrong places: In her lover, Theo Catton, a married man three decades her senior. In her mother, a well-kept woman with secrets of her own. In the dead caddy's little sisters, girls bewildered by grief. But when the investigators look more closely at the torn net, when a detective recalls Mira's history of recklessness, and when Kenny's father spies Mira with her married lover, the affluent and mannered community turns on this once-promising young woman. A gripping story that takes the reader from the sun-soaked greens of a tony Westchester country club to the fluorescent-lit stand of a county courtroom, The Amateur asks: What happens when one small moment—a swing, a ball, a piece of string—changes the course of an entire life?

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Midwives and The Flight Attendant: When a young woman, a golf prodigy, kills a caddy with a stray ball at the country club, the investigation of this freak accident reveals a dark and shocking tale of secret affairs, predatory men, and a teenager on trial.

1978: It is the first Thursday in August and temperatures are flirting with ninety when Mira Winston, eighteen years old, drives a golf ball from her tee toward the practice net near the clubhouse and caddy shack. The golf ball, weighing 1.6 ounces, tears through the net, traveling 150 miles per hour, and slams, with sickening force, into the temple of a high school junior named Kenny Foster, rupturing an artery and unleashing a torrent of blood. Kenny brings his hand to the side of his head, then topples onto his side. He's dead before the ambulance even arrives.

In the wake of this terrible accident—and everyone, at first, agrees it was an accident—Mira looks for comfort in all the wrong places: In her lover, Theo Catton, a married man three decades her senior. In her mother, a well-kept woman with secrets of her own. In the dead caddy's little sisters, girls bewildered by grief. But when the investigators look more closely at the torn net, when a detective recalls Mira's history of recklessness, and when Kenny's father spies Mira with her married lover, the affluent and mannered community turns on this once-promising young woman. A gripping story that takes the reader from the sun-soaked greens of a tony Westchester country club to the fluorescent-lit stand of a county courtroom, The Amateur asks: What happens when one small moment—a swing, a ball, a piece of string—changes the course of an entire life?

  • Publisher: Doubleday

    Title: The Amateur: A Novel

    Author: Chris Bohjalian

    On Sale Date: August 4, 2026

    ISBN 13: 9780385551298

    ISBN 10: 0385551290

    Format: Hardcover

    Retail Price: $33.00

    BISAC: Fiction / Psychological; Fiction / Thrillers

    Page Count: 336 pages

    Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.12 x 9.49 inches

  • Chris Bohjalian is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than two dozen novels, including Midwives, The Flight Attendant, and Hour of the Witch — several of which have become films and television series, among them the Emmy-winning adaptation of The Flight Attendant starring Kaley Cuoco. Known for never writing the same book twice, he lives in Vermont with his wife, photographer Victoria Blewer.

  • Critics and fellow bestselling authors are calling it gripping, masterful, and unputdownable:

    • "This literary thriller is a masterfully executed ace." —The Guardian (UK)

    • "Hard to think of any reason not to call this a perfect novel." —Kirkus (Starred Review)

    • "The Amateur is a joyous novel with an unforgettable narrator." —Clare Leslie Hall, New York Times bestselling author of Broken Country

    • "A gripping literary thriller . . . impossible to put down." —Gillian McAllister, New York Times bestselling author of Caller Unknown

This book is for you if

  • You love a literary thriller with courtroom drama and a startling final twist.

  • You're drawn to morally complicated narrators who aren't asking to be liked.

  • You enjoy stories that unpack class, privilege, and scandal in an affluent, buttoned-up community.

  • You're a longtime Chris Bohjalian reader curious to see him try something new.

  • You want a page-turner that doubles as a sharp study of guilt and consequence.

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