PublishedSwift Press, January 2023 |
ISBN9781800752450 |
FormatSoftcover, 608 pages |
Dimensions23.4cm × 15.3cm |
Los Angeles, 1981 17-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.
Bret's obsession with Mallory is equalled 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 them with grotesque threats and horrific, sharply local acts of violence.
Can he trust his friends or his own mind to make sense of the danger they appear to be in? Thwarted by the world and by his own innate desires, buffeted by unhealthy fixations, Bret spirals into paranoia and isolation as the relationship between The Trawler and Robert Mallory hurtles inexorably toward a collision.
Gripping, sly, suspenseful, deeply haunting and often darkly funny, The Shards is a mesmerizing fusing of fact and fiction that brilliantly explores the emotional fabric of Bret's life at 17 sex and jealousy, obsession and murderous rage.
Adam finished his undergraduate in writing and publishing in 2021 and has been working at Boffins ever since! He especially likes to read queer fiction, sociology and biographies.
This book is equal parts scandalous, sexy, and scary. Bret is a senior high school student in 1981, navigating life amongst LA’s trust fund kids. The horrors and politicking of puberty for the uber-wealthy gains a sinister edge when a serial killer called The Trawler begins preying on those same kids. The line between fact and fiction blurs in this semi-autobiographical take on Ellis’s life. I found myself becoming embroiled with Bret’s obsessions. The prose is sometimes beautiful, sometimes brutal, but always enthralling.
