{"product_id":"the-shards-a-novel","title":"The Shards: A novel","description":"\u003cp\u003eNEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER  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  A thrilling page turner from Ellis  who revisits the world that made him a literary star with a stylish scary new story that doesnt disappoint. Town \u0026amp; Country  Bret Easton Elliss masterful new novel is a story about the end of innocence  and the perilous passage from adolescence into adulthood  set 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 bright  handsome  charismatic  and shielding a secret from Bret and his friends even as he becomes a part of their tightly knit circle. Brets obsession with Mallory is equaled only by his increasingly unsettling preoccupation with the Trawler  a serial killer on the loose who seems to be drawing ever closer to Bret and his friends  taunting themand Bret in particularwith grotesque threats and horrific  sharply local acts of violence. The coincidences are uncanny  but 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 friendsor his own mindto make sense of the danger they appear to be in? Thwarted by the world and by his own innate desires  buffeted by unhealthy fixations  he 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 fiction  the real and the imagined  that brilliantly explores the emotional fabric of Brets life at seventeensex and jealousy  obsession and murderous rage. Gripping  sly  suspenseful  deeply haunting  and often darkly funny  The Shards is Ellis at his inimitable best.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44985200082997,"sku":"ByrdShop_059353560X","price":35.62,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780593535608.jpg?v=1770851888","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-shards-a-novel","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}