A novel of sensational literary and psychological suspense from the best-selling author of Less Than Zero and American Psycho that tracks a group of privileged high school friends in a vibrantly fictionalized 1980s Los Angeles as a serial killer strikes across the city Bret Easton EllisΓÇÖs latest masterful novel is a story about the end of innocence,and the perilous passage from adolescence into adulthoodset in a vibrantly fictionalized Los Angeles in 1981 as a serial killer begins targeting teenagers throughout the city. Seventeen-year-old Bret is a senior at the exclusive Buckley prep school when a new student arrives with a mysterious past. Robert Mallory is brighthandsomecharismaticand shielding a secret from Bret and his friends even as he becomes a part of their tightly knit circle. BretΓÇÖs obsession with Mallory is equaled only by his increasingly unsettling preoccupation with the Trawlera serial killer on the loose who seems to be drawing ever closer to Bret and his friendstaunting themΓÇöand Bret in particularΓÇöwith grotesque threats and horrificsharply local acts of violence. The coincidences are uncannybut they are also filtered through the imagination of a teenager whose gifts for constructing narrative from the filaments of his own life are about to make him one of the most explosive literary sensations of his generation. Can he trust his friendsΓÇöor his own mindΓÇöto make sense of the danger they appear to be in? Thwarted by the world and by his own innate desiresbuffeted by unhealthy fixationshe spirals into paranoia and isolation as the relationship between the Trawler and Robert Mallory hurtles inexorably toward a collision. Set against the intensely vivid and nostalgic backdrop of pre-Less Than Zero L.A.The Shards is a mesmerizing fusing of fact and fictionthe real and the imaginedthat brilliantly explores the emotional fabric of BretΓÇÖs life at seventeenΓÇösex and jealousyobsession and murderous rage. Grippingslysuspensefuldeeply hauntingand often darkly funnyThe Shards is Ellis at his inimitable best.
