The Winner

by Teddy Wayne

Genres: General Fiction; Black Humor; Suspense

Synopsis

From Whiting Award winner Teddy Wayne, a propulsive literary thriller about a young law student teaching tennis in a posh gated community near Cape Cod who finds himself erotically entangled with a ruthless divorcée—until he makes one final, irreversible mistake.

Conor O’Toole has never been anywhere as casually glamorous as Cutters Neck, where he's taken a summer job as a tennis instructor. He can't believe his luck, living for free in a guest cottage in exchange for lessons, deliciously far from the cramped Yonkers apartment he shares with his diabetic mother.

 Grateful as he is to be surrounded by this oceanfront luxury, however, he and his mom have bills to pay, and it isn’t proving as easy as he hoped to sign up new clients. That is, until a sharp-tongued divorcée appears on the court, offering him twice his usual hourly rate. Soon, he realizes Catherine is expecting additional, ah, services for her money, and Conor tumbles into a secret, sexy affair unlike anything he’s experienced before.

 Despite his steamy flings with a woman twice his age, Conor simultaneously finds himself falling for the quirky, outspoken girl he met on the beach. Desperate to manage this tangled web, Conor believes he’s found a way to continue seeing both women—until he makes one dreadful mistake.

 A darkly comedic literary thriller that brilliantly skewers the elite, this unputdownable novel is cinematic, shocking, and a psychological masterpiece.

Publisher: HarperCollins

Print pages: 320