Having recently completed a stint in rehab, Mallory takes a job as nanny to 5-year-old Teddy. Knowing just how crazy it all sounds, Mallory nevertheless sets out to decipher the images and save Teddy before it’s too late. Mallory begins to wonder if these are glimpses of a long-unsolved murder, perhaps relayed by a supernatural force. Then, Teddy’s artwork becomes increasingly sinister, and his stick figures quickly evolve into lifelike sketches well beyond the ability of any five-year-old. But one day, he draws something different: a man in a forest, dragging a woman’s lifeless body. His drawings are the usual fare: trees, rabbits, balloons.

And she sincerely bonds with Teddy, a sweet, shy boy who is never without his sketchbook and pencil.

She has her own living space, goes out for nightly runs, and has the stability she craves. She is to look after their five-year-old son, Teddy. Mallory Quinn is fresh out of rehab when she takes a job as a babysitter for Ted and Caroline Maxwell. In that mode, he executes well and sticks the landing.From Edgar Award-finalist Jason Rekulak comes a wildly inventive spin on the supernatural thriller, for fans of Stranger Things and Riley Sager, about a woman working as a nanny for a young boy with strange and disturbing secrets. There are no shocking twists here, but Rekulak isn’t looking to keep readers up at night he’s holding a mirror up to white, affluent Gen X and asking pointed questions about class, trauma, and horror conventions. How is Anya manipulating Teddy? Could she be the murder victim? And why do Mallory’s concerns provoke such explosive emotion in Teddy’s parents? The plot unfolds at a good clip, and Mallory’s voice is engrossing, if occasionally too writerly for her working-class South Philly roots. Mallory takes Anya seriously, however, especially as Teddy’s art rapidly turns darker and impossibly sophisticated and Mallory learns of a long-ago murder in her guest house quarters. His uncanny muse/model is his “imaginary friend,” Anya, whom his erudite, politically correct parents dismiss. Narrator Mallory Quinn is a 21-year-old recovering addict getting a second chance as a live-in nanny to five-year-old Teddy Maxwell, a sweet-natured young artist whose wonderfully creepy pictures appear throughout the novel. Rekulak ( The Impossible Fortress) uses horror as a lens to bring the dark underbelly of suburbia into focus in this gripping supernatural thriller.

Hidden pictures by jason