Publication Date: June 30, 2026
Award-winning author Teddy Wayne follows his breakout sensation The Winner—a New York Times Top Ten Thriller of the Year—with another seductively twisty page-turner about the explosive impact of a beautiful Norwegian au pair on a celebrated novelist and his wife.
Steven Hammer was once a literary star. Now, his career is floundering, his marriage to a high-powered woman is crumbling, and the only bright spot in his life is Astrid, the Norwegian au pair who cares for their children—and reveres his neglected novels. But what begins as a secret infatuation soon spirals into a scandal that makes them both infamous.
As a headline-grabbing trial captivates the world with a salacious story of sex, power, and betrayal, Steven must confront the wreckage he’s created—and the deeper insecurities that fueled it. Is Astrid an innocent young woman caught up in a case beyond her control, or a calculating femme fatale? And how far will he go, driven by desperation and obsession, for her professed love?
With inexorable momentum and sly, lucid prose, Teddy Wayne’s The Au Pair is a sleek literary thriller about desire, deception, and the unraveling of a man as he grapples with his fading relevance—when the lies others spin pale beside the fictions we tell ourselves.
A married man’s dalliance with the family’s live-in babysitter serves as the basis for an intense psychological thriller.
Author Teddy Wayne introduces Steven and Lucy Hammer, along with their two young children, in The Au Pair. From the beginning, fractures are evident in the Hammer marriage.
Lucy is depicted as a woman devoted to her career with a tight hold on household financials. Steven, as a struggling writer, resents having to rely on Lucy’s monthly stipends. From the moment he began looking at replacement nannies, Steven is captivated by a young Norwegian girl named Astrid.
Bringing Astrid into the household leads to an explosive plot featuring adultery, deception and murder. By the time the dust settles, clues dropped earlier in the story reveal a shocking conclusion.
The Au Pair serves up a twisted domestic thriller illustrating the aftermath of a husband’s betrayal.
Teddy Wayne is the author of six novels, most recently “The Winner.” A former columnist for the New York Times and a regular contributor to The New Yorker, he is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship. He lives in Brooklyn.
