Playing Book

Melanie Abrams's debut novel is a bold and provocative tale about love, betrayal, and how one young woman's unconventional sexual reawakening uncovers the most guarded and shocking parts of her past. When Josie, an anthropology grad student, is unexpectedly offered a job as the nanny for Tyler, a six-year-old with a penchant for trivia and an obsession with counting, she innocently accepts. Though Josie doesn't necessarily need the job, there's something about Tyler's single mom, Mary--her beauty, her confidence, her resemblance to Josie's mother--that draws her in. While Josie's quick intimacy with Mary soothes her estrangement from her own parents, it also breeds betrayal when Josie falls for Mary's crush, Devesh. An Indian surgeon ten years her senior, Devesh is a strong and enigmatic man who pulls Josie into a dizzying world of sexual domination and submission that speaks to her deeply hidden desires. It is a world of games that fast becomes serious, forcing Josie to confront the darkest moments of her past as she desperately struggles with her family history, her own violent impulses, and her love for Devesh. Rapturous, illuminating, and emotionally charged, Playing is an unflinching look at the irrevocable consequences of giving in to our most secret passions, and the freedom and imprisonment that comes with true self-knowledge. "Playing is an audacious erotic debut novel that chills, thrills, shocks and enthralls. Through the story of a young American woman's love for a dark, handsome, older stranger, Melanie Abrams evokes the radiantly dark world of dangerous desires."--Bharati Mukherjee, author of Jasmine and Desirable DaughtersRead More