Babysitter

From one of America's most renowned storytellers comes a novel about love and deceit, and lust and redemption, against a background of child abductions in the affluent suburbs of Detroit.Suspenseful, brilliantly orchestrated and engrossing, Babysitter is a starkly narrated exploration of the riskiness of pursuing alternate lives, calling into question how far we are willing to go to protect those whom we cherish most. In its scathing indictment of corrupt politics, unexamined racism, and the enabling of sexual predation in America, Babysitter is a thrilling work of contemporary fiction. "... dark, violent and tense. It also is a razor-sharp examination of social constructs like gender and power ... Oates never shies away from confronting the fear and terror of her characters or the harm they experience or perpetrate ... a disturbing exploration of the power of prestige, wealth and whiteness and the powerlessness of women, children and Black men in the U.S. Oates skews and lambasts ideas about women’s roles and expectations ... Violence and pain beget violence and pain in this brutal yet brilliant novel. Here is a raw and desolate story penned in Oates' signature style - flowing and visceral prose - that doesn’t allow characters or readers easy answers to the difficult questions posed." - Sarah Rachel Engelman, Bookreporter