Hidden Pictures

Hidden Pictures is a horror novel by the American writer Jason Rekulak, published in 2022. It is a supernatural thriller in which a woman takes work as a nanny for a young boy who keeps strange and disturbing secrets, and it is illustrated with the drawings the child produces in the story.

Just out of rehab, Mallory Quinn is hired to look after five-year-old Teddy Maxwell for his parents, Ted and Caroline. The job gives her her own living space, nightly runs and the stability she has been craving, and she bonds with Teddy, who is never without his sketchbook. She is glad of the job and determined to keep it.

Teddy's drawings are the usual fare of trees, rabbits and balloons until one day he produces a different picture: a woman being dragged through a forest by a man. Later drawings start matching details from a case that was never solved, and Mallory begins to look into both the boy's history and the house.

The novel uses the illustrations as part of the narrative rather than as decoration, so the reader sees what Mallory sees. It is a standalone book, and it is set among the routines of a live-in job rather than in an isolated location.