Sixteen-year-old Katya Spivak is out for a walk on the gracious streets of Bayhead Harbor with her two summer babysitting charges when she’s approached by silver-haired, elegant Marcus Kidder. At first his interest in her seems harmless, even pleasant; like his name, a sort of gentle joke. His beautiful home, the children’s books he’s written, his classical music, the marvelous art in his study, his lavish presents to her Mr. Kidder’s life couldn’t be more different from Katya’s drab working-class existence back home in South Jersey, or more enticing. But by degrees, almost imperceptibly, something changes, and posing for Mr. Kidder’s new painting isn’t the lighthearted endeavor it once was. What does he really want from her? And how far will he go to get it? In the tradition of Oates’s classic story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" A Fair Maiden is an unsettling, ambiguous tale of desire and control. Sixteen-year-old Katya is spending the summer working as a nanny in a wealthy Jersey Shore community when she meets Marcus Kidder, an elderly yet dashing artist to whom libraries and pavilions are dedicated all over town. He catches her eyeing display-case lingerie and offers to buy it for her; she refuses. Later, when she visits his mansion, he tries to gift her the same lingerie; again, she refuses. But despite each rebuff, she keeps returning to  Kidder and soon is posing for his paintings, some of which require the shedding of clothes. What sounds like a story of older-man-seduces-waif becomes, in Oates’ hands, something far thornier—a treatise on the faceted push-and-pull of female aspiration. There is a subtle mystery at the center of this unsettling short novel: Kidder insists that he has a “mission” for Katya that will be revealed in time. The mission, when it comes, is a dark one, involving not just transactions of subservience and control but of life and death, and readers’ takes on character motivations will govern their reactions. Fans of Oates’ gothic stylings will not be disappointed, however, and Katya’s belligerent exuberance (“He wants me! Me, me!”) gives the prose plenty of punch. --Daniel Kraus JOYCE CAROL OATES is the recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction and the winner of the National Book Award. Among her major works are We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde, and The Falls . She lives in Princeton, New Jersey.