Tampa: A Novel [Paperback]

In this sly and salacious work, Nutting forces us to take a long, unflinching look at a deeply disturbed mind, and more significantly, at societys often troubling relationship with female beauty. -San Francisco Chronicle

In Alissa Nuttings novelTampa, a shocking work of transgressive fiction, Celeste Price, a smoldering 26-year-old middle-school teacher in Florida, unrepentantly recounts her elaborate and sociopathically determined seduction of a 14-year-old student.

Celeste has chosen and lured the charmingly modest Jack Patrick into her web. Jack is enthralled and in awe of his eighth-grade teacher, and, most importantly, willing to accept Celestes terms for a secret, forbidden romancecar rides after dark, rendezvous at Jacks house while his single father works the late shift, and body-slamming erotic encounters in Celestes empty classroom. In slaking her sexual thirst, Celeste Price is remorseless and deviously free of hesitation, a monstress of pure motivation. She deceives everyone, is close to no one, and cares little for anything but her pleasure in this gripping psychological thriller.

Tampais a sexually explicit, virtuosically satirical, American Psychoesque rendering of a monstrously misplaced but undeterrable desire. Laced with the black humor of a dark comedy and crackling sexualized prose, Alissa NuttingsTampais a grand, seriocomic examination of the want behind student / teacher affairs and a scorching literary debut.

Celeste Price is twenty-six years old, beautiful, smart, married to a handsome man with money, and starting a new job as a junior high school teacher in suburban Tampa. Yet she harbors a dark secret. She is driven by a singular sexual obsession—fourteen-year-old boys. As the school year begins, Celeste has chosen and seduced the naive Jack Patrick, a quiet, thoughtful boy in awe of his teacher. But when her lustful frenzy begins to spiral out of control, the inl³®