{"product_id":"the-au-pair-9780008849771","title":"The Au Pair","description":"\u003cp\u003eA New York Times Novel Everyone Will Be Talking About This Year'Is anything more dangerous than a fragile male ego?' New York Times'Nerve-wrackingly fun' Vogue, Best Books of the Year So Far\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSteven Hammer was once a literary star. Now, his career is floundering, his marriage to high-powered banker Lucy is crumbling, and the only bright spot in his life is Astrid, the Norwegian au pair who cares for their children – and reveres his neglected novels. But what begins as a secret infatuation soon spirals into a scandal that makes them both infamous.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs a headline-grabbing trial captivates the world with a salacious story of sex, power, and betrayal, Steven must confront the wreckage he’s created – and the deeper insecurities that fuelled it. Is Astrid an innocent young woman caught up in a case beyond her control, or a calculating femme fatale? And how far will he go, driven by desperation and obsession, for her professed love?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWith propulsive momentum, sharp wit and sly, lucid prose, The Au Pair is a sleek literary thriller about failure, desire, and the unravelling of a man as he grapples with his fading relevance – when the lies others spin pale beside the fictions we tell ourselves.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePerfect for fans of The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair and Fleishman is in Trouble\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e* * * *\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePraise for The Au Pair:\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e'Wayne, perhaps no surprise, is an expert guide into the complex psyche of an author. He is also a deft social satirist, no more than when skewering his characters' politically correct pretensions' Wall Street Journal\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘The Au Pair is Teddy Wayne at his immensely readable best. The plot ratchets up in the creepiest, most chilling way while deliciously skewering the Brooklyn literary set. It’s a book you’ll tear through, one that leaves you guessing until the last page’ Maria Semple, author of Go Gentle\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘A scandalous thriller, we read it in one sitting’ Heat\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘This compulsive thriller gleefully and skilfully skewers both stereotypical tropes and the contemporary publishing landscape’ Boston Globe\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘The reigning king of taut literary novels… Wayne knows how to write about men in a way that few modern writers are capable of pulling off… this is one you won’t be able to put down’ Men's Journal\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘You may think you know where it’s going, this novel about a disappointed writer, his frosty wife, and a comely young nanny. You may be in for a surprise. Propulsive but also insightful – and funny, in its merciless skewering of midlife, marriage, and more – The Au Pair cements Teddy Wayne’s status as a master of the wicked little literary thriller’ Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘A heart-pounding mystery that reads like a movie’ People\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘An ingenious dissection of marriage, masculinity, and privilege, propelled by a gimlet-eyed wit… A sly, unsettling hybrid of social satire and domestic thriller’ Kirkus Reviews (starred review)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘[A] tightly constructed, endlessly exhilarating thriller’ Town \u0026amp; Country\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘I could not put it down. I raced through it’ Jennifer Weiner\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘Teddy Wayne has written a book about selling out that doesn’t—a guilty pleasure that earns its guilt. The Au Pair is a canny seduction wrapped in a page-turning thriller wrapped in an elegy for the literary novel: a threefold delight’ Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Homeland Elegies and The Radiance\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eAuthor: Teddy Wayne\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003ch4\u003eNew York, Modern \u0026amp; contemporary fiction (post c 1945), Thriller \/ suspense\u003c\/h4\u003e\u003ch5\u003ePublished on 10 Sep 2026 by HarperCollins Publishers.\u003c\/h5\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHardback\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Teddy Wayne","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57320067793274,"sku":"9780008849771","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0373\/4125\/files\/9780008849771.jpg?v=1790641954","url":"https:\/\/belfastbooks.co.uk\/pt\/products\/the-au-pair-9780008849771","provider":"Belfast Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}