Orphan

An explosive novel about a girl in upstate New York in the late 1980s and the power she takes back from those who underestimate her—a shocking, psychologically suspenseful story of family, class, and revenge.

“One of the greatest writers among us today.”—Gillian Flynn

“A genius in the truest sense of the word.”—Rebecca Makkai

"[Orphan is] compulsively readable with a masterfully played ending. Oates is our Balzac, our Dickens, she’s a legend and there will never be anyone like her again.”—Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander

When a young girl’s life is disrupted by events she struggles to understand—the siege of her family’s house by law enforcement officers, the arrest of her father, and the breakup of her family—she becomes an “orphan” haunted by the mystery of what she has lost.

Living with relatives, under the spell of an older, precocious girl cousin, Nelia begins to adjust to altered circumstances; then, reunited with her mother, she finds herself in a new, nightmare “family” from which she is desperate to escape by any means.

A tale written in the register of the American gothic, as mesmerizing as a Grimm fairy tale, Orphan is a compulsively readable, disturbing but ultimately cathartic novel by a literary legend who never ceases to enthrall readers with her intimately observed characters and visionary storytelling.