I’ll Watch Your Baby

Viel (Listen To Your Sister) skewers the racist stereotype of the “welfare queen” in this delightfully gruesome, larvae-infested tale. In 1974, Lottie Turner makes her way in life through petty welfare fraud and kidnapping very young children on behalf of wealthy clients looking to adopt. Her only soft spot is her best friend, Filly, who struggles to raise her two children with a deadbeat husband and chronic illness, and whose house Lottie hides in after her plans go awry. In 1994, Bless Stewart commits a string of burglaries with her crew, with a particular devotion to their leader, Sasha. Their latest job is supposed to have a massive payout, but requires waiting five days in the home of their mark, a dying old woman. The plans of both criminals run up against a nightmare infestation of flies and ghosts that they’ll have to confront to survive. It’s greatly satisfying to see how the timelines converge and, in Viel’s skillful hands, Lottie and Bless prove horrifying and sympathetic in equal measures. Readers will find these antiheroines’ fierceness and determination to survive in a world that hates them impossible to look away from. Agent: Sharon Pelletier, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. (May)