Bad Animals

A sexy, propulsive novel that confronts the limits of empathy and the perils of appropriation through the eyes of a disgraced small-town librarian. Now that her brilliant daughter is off at college, buttoned-up Maeve Cosgrove loves her job at her quiet Maine public library more than anything. But when a teenager accuses Maeve―Maeve!―of spying on her romantic escapades in the mezzanine bathroom, she winds up laid off and humiliated. While Maeve attempts to clear her name, her favorite author, Harrison Riddles, finally responds to her invitation to speak at the library. Riddles announces a plan to write a novel about another young library patron, a Sudanese refugee, and enlists Maeve’s help in convincing him to participate. A scheme to get her job back draws Maeve further into Riddles’s universe―where shocking questions about sex, morality, and the purpose of literature threaten to upend her orderly life.

A writer of “savage compassion” (Salvatore Scibona, author of The Volunteer ), Sarah Braunstein constructs a shrewd, page-turning caper that explores one woman’s search for agency and ultimate reckoning with the kind of animal she is.