Tampa
On the surface, 26-year-old Celeste Price seems to have it all. She’s stunningly beautiful, married to a handsome police officer from a wealthy family, and about to start a new job as a junior-high teacher. But Celeste is harboring a dark secret: she is driven by a sexual obsession with prepubescent teenage boys. Her new job allows her unrestricted access to the objects of her lust, and she soon settles on one—14-year-old Jack Patrick, a quiet, thoughtful boy in her third-period class. Celeste stalks Jack and discovers he lives alone with his father before making her move on the boy in her classroom. Her seduction of Jack is successful, and Celeste and the boy are soon engaging in steamy trysts wherever and whenever they can manage them. Though Celeste is able to keep her dim-witted husband at bay, she is thrown a curveball when Jack’s father, Buck, expresses interest in her. A chilling examination of a sociopath whose beautiful face masks her pathology, Nutting’s debut is taut, sexually explicit, and utterly engrossing. --Kristine Huntley