Fox

In September 2013, Francis Fox gets a job teaching English at Langhorne Academy, a posh boarding school in New Jersey, and thinks he has landed on his feet. Fox’s teaching career has been marked by frequent moves from one exclusive private school to the next as he dodges rumors of inappropriate behavior with the teenage girls in his classes. At Langhorne, he turns on the charm to rapidly become beloved by parents, students, colleagues, and the headmistress. But by November, he is believed dead, his car having been found submerged in a ravine, with parts of an unidentified body strewn about the woods. Oates’s (We Were the Mulvaneys) latest weaves together a murder mystery, an examination of pedophilia, and an analysis of town-versus-gown tensions. Most saliently, she explores human gullibility and the vulnerability of young girls. Oates digs deeply into her characters; not a student, parent, detective, teacher, or even dog escapes her penetrating gaze.