Description

‘Chilling’
FINANCIAL TIMES

‘Tom Ripley, eat your heart out’
NPR

‘Eerie, shocking, provoking’ GILLIAN FLYNN

A chilling, captivating novel about the dark secrets that surface after the shocking disappearance of a charming, mercurial teacher at an elite boarding school.

Who is Francis Fox?

A charismatic, young English teacher joins an elite New Jersey boarding school. Francis Fox quickly beguiles many of his students, their parents and his colleagues, while leaving others in the small town wondering where he came from and why his biography is so enigmatic.

When Fox disappears and parts of an unidentified body are discovered in nearby woods, the community begins to ask disturbing questions about the charming, mercurial teacher, and who he might really be.

A hypnotic tale of crime, complicity and revenge, Fox is an unsettling portrait of a cunning predator, which illuminates the darkest corners of the human psyche.

‘Breathless and febrile … an utterly mesmeric account of how one man’s crimes can affect an entire community’
GUARDIAN

‘Impressive and unsettling’
NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

‘Rich in suspense, diabolical secrets and psychological insight’
ECONOMIST

‘Mesmerising … another masterclass from one of America’s greatest writers’ MICHAEL CONNELLY, author of The Lincoln Lawyer

Publisher Review

‘Reading Fox is like being spellbound by a hypnotist who may not wish you well, who leads you, with a deceptively gentle hand, toward that dark forest you fear. Joyce Carol Oates has created a sinister fable all the more chilling for persuading its readers to collude in the unthinkable. Eerie, shocking, provoking, and beautifully written, Fox is yet further proof that Oates is one of the greatest writers among us today’ Gillian Flynn

‘I can’t remember the last time I read something so (darkly, disconcertingly) addictive that yet bears so much realism and nuance and depth. Oates is a genius in the truest sense of the word-fearing nothing, including radical reinvention-and Fox is, to my mind, her most compelling book in her remarkable career’ Rebecca Makkai