Regular price: $31.93
From his first novel – Less Than Zero – published when he was still a college student – to his most recent – the fierce American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis has been a powerful and original presence in contemporary literature, whether giving voice to a previously inchoate generation or provoking a controversy that raged throughout the culture. Now he takes a quantum leap forward: an awesome reckoning of the American Century at endgame. In Glamorama, a young man in what is recognizably fashion and celebrity-obsessed Manhattan is gradually, imperceptibly drawn into a shadowy looking-glass of that society, there and in London and Paris, and then finds himself trapped on the other side, in a much darker place where fame and terrorism and family and politics are inextricably linked and sometimes indistinguishable. At once implicated and horror-stricken, his ways of escape blocked at every turn, he ultimately discovers – back on the other, familiar side – that there was no mirror, no escape, no world but this one in which hotels implode and planes fall from the sky.
Clay, a successful screenwriter, has returned from New York to Los Angeles to help cast his new movie, and he’s soon drifting through a long-familiar circle. Blair, his former girlfriend, is married to Trent, an influential manager who’s still a bisexual philanderer, and their Beverly Hills parties attract various levels of fame, fortune, and power.
Clay comes home for Christmas vacation from his Eastern college and reenters a landscape of limitless privilege and absolute moral entropy, where everyone drives Porsches, dines at Spago, and snorts mountains of cocaine. He tries to renew feelings for his girlfriend, Blair, and for his best friend from high school, Julian, who is careering into hustling and heroin.
Set at a small, affluent liberal-arts college in New England at the height of the Reagan '80s, The Rules of Attraction is a startlingly funny, kaleidoscopic novel about three students with no plans for the future - or even the present - who become entangled in a curious romantic triangle.
The time is the early '80s. The characters go to the same schools and eat at the same restaurants. Their voices enfold us as seamlessly as those of DJs heard over a car radio. They have sex with the same boys and girls and buy from the same dealers. In short, they are connected in the only way people can be in that city.
Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.
From his first novel – Less Than Zero – published when he was still a college student – to his most recent – the fierce American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis has been a powerful and original presence in contemporary literature, whether giving voice to a previously inchoate generation or provoking a controversy that raged throughout the culture. Now he takes a quantum leap forward: an awesome reckoning of the American Century at endgame. In Glamorama, a young man in what is recognizably fashion and celebrity-obsessed Manhattan is gradually, imperceptibly drawn into a shadowy looking-glass of that society, there and in London and Paris, and then finds himself trapped on the other side, in a much darker place where fame and terrorism and family and politics are inextricably linked and sometimes indistinguishable. At once implicated and horror-stricken, his ways of escape blocked at every turn, he ultimately discovers – back on the other, familiar side – that there was no mirror, no escape, no world but this one in which hotels implode and planes fall from the sky.
Clay, a successful screenwriter, has returned from New York to Los Angeles to help cast his new movie, and he’s soon drifting through a long-familiar circle. Blair, his former girlfriend, is married to Trent, an influential manager who’s still a bisexual philanderer, and their Beverly Hills parties attract various levels of fame, fortune, and power.
Clay comes home for Christmas vacation from his Eastern college and reenters a landscape of limitless privilege and absolute moral entropy, where everyone drives Porsches, dines at Spago, and snorts mountains of cocaine. He tries to renew feelings for his girlfriend, Blair, and for his best friend from high school, Julian, who is careering into hustling and heroin.
Set at a small, affluent liberal-arts college in New England at the height of the Reagan '80s, The Rules of Attraction is a startlingly funny, kaleidoscopic novel about three students with no plans for the future - or even the present - who become entangled in a curious romantic triangle.
The time is the early '80s. The characters go to the same schools and eat at the same restaurants. Their voices enfold us as seamlessly as those of DJs heard over a car radio. They have sex with the same boys and girls and buy from the same dealers. In short, they are connected in the only way people can be in that city.
Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.
Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk is a novel made up of stories: 23 of them, to be precise. Twenty-three of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach-churning tales you'll ever encounter, sometimes all at once. They are told by people who have answered an ad headlined "Writers' Retreat: Abandon Your Life for Three Months", and who are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of "real life" that are keeping them from creating the masterpiece that is in them.
Tender Branson, the last surviving member of the so-called Creedish Death Cult, is dictating his life story into the flight recorder of Flight 2039, cruising on autopilot at 39,000 feet somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. He is all alone in the airplane, which will crash shortly into the vast Australian outback. But before it does, he will unfold the tale of his journey from an obedient Creedish child and humble domestic servant to an ultra-buffed, steroid-and-collagen-packed media messiah.
At the center of The Broom of the System is the betwitching (and also bewildered) heroine, Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman. The year is 1990 and the place is a slightly altered Cleveland, Ohio, which sits on the edge of a suburban wasteland-the Great Ohio Desert. Lenore works as a switchboard attendant at a publishing firm, and in addition to her mind-numbing job, she has a few other problems. Her great-grandmother, a one-time student of Wittgenstein, has disappeared with twenty-five other inmates of the Shaker Heights Nursing Home.
There's something eerily unsettling about Ottessa Moshfegh's stories, something almost dangerous, while also being delightful and even laugh-out-loud funny. Her characters are all unsteady on their feet in one way or another; they all yearn for connection and betterment, though each in very different ways, but they are often tripped up by their own baser impulses and existential insecurities.
In the tradition of Orange Is the New Black and Jerry Stahl's Permanent Midnight, Amy Dresner's My Fair Junkie is an insightful, darkly funny, and shamelessly honest memoir of one woman's battle with all forms of addiction, hitting rock bottom, and forging a path to a life worth living.
In a small Arizona town, a man counts his blessings: a loving wife, two teenage daughters, and a job that allows him to work at home. Then "The Store" announces plans to open a local outlet, which will surely finish off the small downtown shops. His concerns grow when "The Store's" builders ignore all the town's zoning laws during its construction. Then dead animals are found on "The Store's" grounds. Inside, customers are hounded by obnoxious sales people, and strange products appear on the shelves.
The intellectual and religio-philosophical awakening of young Stephen Dedalus as he begins to question and rebel against the Catholic and Irish conventions with which he has been raised. He finally leaves for abroad to pursue his ambitions as an artist. The work is an early example of some of Joyce's modernist techniques that would later be represented in a more developed manner by Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. The novel, which has had a "huge influence on novelists across the world", was ranked by Modern Library as the third greatest English-language novel of the 20th century.
When a listless office employee (the narrator) meets Tyler Durden, his life begins to take on a strange new dimension. Together they form Fight Club - a secretive underground group sponsoring bloody bare-knuckle boxing matches staged in seedy alleys, vacant warehouses, and dive-bar basements. Fight Club lets ordinary men vent their suppressed rage, and it quickly develops a fanatical following.
In this taut, chilling audiobook, Lester Ballard - a violent, dispossessed man falsely accused of rape - haunts the hill country of East Tennessee when he is released from jail. While telling his story, Cormac McCarthy depicts the most sordid aspects of life with dignity, humor, and characteristic lyrical brilliance.
Once every year, Scoutmaster Tim Riggs leads a troop of boys into the Canadian wilderness for a weekend camping trip - a tradition as comforting and reliable as a good ghost story around a roaring bonfre. The boys are a tight-knit crew. There’s Kent, one of the most popular kids in school; Ephraim and Max, also well-liked and easygoing; then there’s Newt the nerd and Shelley the odd duck. For the most part, they all get along and are happy to be there - which makes Scoutmaster Tim’s job a little easier.
Jason Taverner - world-famous talk show host and man-about-town - wakes up one day to find that no one knows who he is - including the vast databases of the totalitarian government. And in a society where lack of identification is a crime, Taverner has no choice but to go on the run with a host of shady characters, including crooked cops and dealers of alien drugs. But do they know more than they are letting on? And just how can a person's identity be erased overnight?
In honor of the 10-year anniversary of The Heroin Diaries, Nikki Sixx’s definitive and bestselling memoir on drug addiction is now available on audio for the first time, read by Nikki Sixx! This shocking, gripping, and at times darkly hilarious memoir explores Nikki’s yearlong war with a vicious heroin addiction. Now more than ever, with opioid addiction ravaging our country and rising by 20 percent in the past year alone, Nikki’s story is now more relevant than ever.
Then imagine having a second chance 10 years later, as the Bret Easton Ellis of this remarkable novel is given, with a wife, children, and suburban sobriety, only to watch this new life shatter beyond recognition in a matter of days. At a fateful Halloween party he glimpses a disturbing (fictional) character driving a car identical to his late father's, his stepdaughter's doll violently "malfunctions", and their house undergoes bizarre transformations both within and without. Connecting these aberrations to graver events, a series of grotesque murders that no longer seem random and the epidemic disappearance of boys his son's age, Ellis struggles to defend his family against this escalating menace even as his wife, their therapists, and the police insist that his apprehensions are rooted instead in substance abuse and egomania.
Lunar Park confounds one expectation after another, passing through comedy and mounting horror, both psychological and supernatural, toward an astonishing resolution, about love and loss, fathers and sons, in what is surely the most powerfully original and deeply moving novel of an extraordinary career.
Bonus Feature: Includes an interview with the author.
I have always been a fan of the way Mr. Ellis writes and describes every detail with the total truth of what his mind is thinking, without apology. This book continued on with that honest depiction of a man who some would say they would hate, because they would be ashamed to admit they like. Someone they would enjoy sitting back and having conversations with, someone to "party" with. This story was disturbing and I was addicted to it. I wanted to read it all in one sitting. I couldn't wait to get back to it and spent every free time in two days going back to it. I came out wanting to re-read the authors previous books and then finish with re-reading this. Mr. Ellis' long awaited novel was well worth the wait. Again those who don't want to acknowledge the "gritty, dirty, filthy, plain truth about some human behavior" should not expect to be heart warmed by this story. But his honesty makes you believe in what is happening and that is frightening.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful
I loved this book! Very well narrated, spooky thriller with bits of Frankenstein, Macbeth, American Psycho and Stephen King. This is Ellis' best work since his debut -- well told, smart story with lots of interesting twists and turns.
I really enjoyed the confusion between biography and story as the book evolves.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful
I couldn't stop listening. The author twists elements of his own life and experience into a bizarre and disturbing phycological horror story. Through most of the book, one is not sure if the "monsters" are real or just in the mind of a very messed up character. In fact, at times I wanted them to be real just to ease the creepiness that comes from empathizing with a character who is so lost.
I don't know how well this narrator would do with another genre, but for this book, he was perfect!
I hope Audible can snag a few others by Ellis. I'd love to listen to Less Than Zero and American Psycho.
9 of 10 people found this review helpful
I have one thing to say: "Get trashed less and write more." This book is awesome and gripping and Van Der Beek makes it hum! I didn't want to miss a word. I would like audible.com to put the other books by Ellis in an audio format with Van Der Beek as the reader. I am emailing a thumbs up to all of my audiphile addicts.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful
This is not a pretty novel. Like the Less Than Zero and American Psycho movies, I empathized with the main characters making me feel unclean throughout the whole novel. I found it even difficult to blink, afraid I would miss something, even though I was listening to the book. I haven't been a fan of Bret Easton Ellis simply because I haven't payed attention to who he was but I am now.
7 of 8 people found this review helpful
This was my first Bret Easton Ellis book, so I am not bothered by the clash between the real and fictional author and enjoyed the book at surface value. It is unlike any other book I have listened to, and I really enjoyed the experience. It is strange, irrational, creepy - words that I would not use to describe most of my favorite books - but it worked for me and kept me riveted.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful
This was my first BEE book, and I found it by turns fascinating and frightening. It's a great story that is moving, scary, and involving. The narration is very strong as well. Very "Stephen King" esque, and an interesting act of meta-fiction (writing about himself fictionally).
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
Interesting blend of genres (autobiography, horror, satire, suspense) works well in my opinion. This was a lot of fun and kept me on the edge of my seat. Very well read, which always helps. Yes, the protaganist/author is very unlikable; but, so what? It makes me glad I'm not him! I appreciate books/movies that push the limits and this surely qualifies. Listen and enjoy!
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
I rarely get excited about a book written in the first person and this author told his tale with a great deal of talent. Why would he waste his skill on such a piece of trash? His interpertation of himself had me loathing him by chapter 2. He was everything evil and weak in my mind. I couldn't get past chapter 6. I hope this author gets serious about his craft because his talent will shine when he writes a real book. I want my money back on this one.
26 of 42 people found this review helpful
this was sometimes a bit difficult to stick with but was ultimately very rewarding.
if you're interested in literature, this should be interesting to you.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful