The Sunday Times Bestseller
‘A full-spectrum triumph’ Guardian
A stunning new novella from the bestselling author of Less Than Zero and American Psycho that follows a group of privileged friends in Los Angeles as a serial killer strikes throughout the city. The Shards is the first novel in 13 years, at Bret Easton Ellis's best.
Los Angeles, 1981. Buckley College under pressure. 17-year-old Bret is a senior at the exclusive preparatory school Buckley when a new student with a secret history arrives. Robert Mallory is smart, handsome, charismatic, and hides a secret from Bret and his friends while simultaneously becoming a member of their close-knit group. Bret's obsession with Mallory is matched only by his increasingly disturbing attention to the Trawler, a serial killer at large, who seems to be closing in on Bret and his friends, taunting them with grotesque threats and horrific, local acts of violence.
Can he trust his friends – or his own mind – to understand the danger in which he seems to find himself? Hindered by the world and his own innate desires, with obsessions tormenting him, Bret descends into paranoia and isolation as the relationship between the Trawler and Robert Mallory inevitably leads to a confrontation.
Exciting, sly, suspenseful, deeply haunting, and often darkly funny, The Shards is an intoxicating merger of fact and fiction that skillfully explores the emotional fabric of Bret's life at 17 – sex and jealousy, obsession and murderous rage.
Pages: 608, Dimensions: 12.9x12.9cm
