
Fox
A Novel
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About this listen
A spellbinding novel of literary and psychological suspense about the dark secrets that surface after the shocking disappearance of a charismatic, mercurial teacher at an elite boarding school—by the legendary author "who is surely on any shortlist of America’s greatest living writers” (The New York Times Magazine)
"Eerie, shocking, provoking, and beautifully written, Fox is yet further proof Oates is one of the greatest writers among us today."—Gillian Flynn
“I found it mesmerizing front to back.”—Michael Connelly
A New York Times and Vulture Most Anticipated Book
Who is Francis Fox? A charming English teacher new to the idyllic Langhorne Academy, Fox beguiles many of his students, their parents, and his colleagues at the elite boarding school, while leaving others wondering where he came from and why his biography is so enigmatic. When two brothers discover Fox’s car half-submerged in a pond in a local nature preserve and parts of an unidentified body strewn about the nearby woods, the entire community, including Detective Horace Zwender and his deputy, begins to ask disturbing questions about Francis Fox and who he might really be.
A hypnotic, galloping tale of crime and complicity, revenge and restitution, victim vs. predator, Joyce Carol Oates’s Fox illuminates the darkest corners of the human psyche while asking profound moral questions about justice and the response evil demands. A character as magnetically diabolical as Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley and Vladimir Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert, Francis Fox enchants and manipulates nearly everyone around him, until at last he meets someone he can’t outfox. Written in Oates’s trademark intimate, sweeping style, and interweaving multiple points of view, Fox is a triumph of craftsmanship and artistry, a novel as profound as it is propulsive, as moving as it is full of mystery.
©2025 Joyce Carol Oates (P)2025 Random House AudioCritic reviews
“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.”—#1 New York Times bestselling author Gillian Flynn
“What a gift this book is! As beautifully written and brilliantly constructed as this story is, as wonderful as the mystery is, Fox’s power is in the many depths of character Joyce Carol Oates explores and how she captures the nuances of the choices people make. I found it mesmerizing front to back—another master class from one of America’s greatest writers.”—#1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Connelly
“I just finished an extraordinary novel and am still in its spell. It’s Fox by Joyce Carol Oates, her first ‘whodunit’ or mystery thriller, and it’s unlike any other mystery I’ve read. It’s so fully imagined, in the way that only Oates can do, powerful and sinister and beautifully written in her mesmerizing prose. Nobody else writes like the great Joyce Carol Oates. Remarkable.”—New York Times bestselling author Joseph Finder
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