Synopsis

The Secret History - A Novel by Donna Tartt

For Bret Easton Ellis, whose generosity will never cease to warm my heart; and for Paul Edward McGloin, muse and Maecenas, who is the dearest friend I will ever have in this world."

Richard Papen had never been to New England before his nineteenth year. Then he arrived at Hampden College and quickly became seduced by the sweet, dark rhythms of campus life - in particular by an elite group of five students, Greek scholars, wordly, self-assured, and at first glance, highly unapproachable.

Yet as Richard was accepted and drawn into their inner circle, he learned a terrifying secret that bound them to one another... a secret about an incident in the woods in the dead of night where an ancient rite was brought to brutal life... and led to a gruesome death. And that was just the beginning.

An impressive debut novel from a new voice in fiction, The Secret History tells of a small circle of friends at an esteemed college in New England, whose studies in Classical Greek lead them to odd rituals, shocking behavior - and murder.


This novel is set on a small college campus in Vermont. Dissatisfied "with the crass values of their fellow students, a small corps of undergraduates groups itself around a favored professor of classics, who nurtures both their sense of moral elevation and an insularity from conventional college life that ultimately proves fatal. Among Prof. Julian Morrow's followers are Henry Winter, a tall scion of a wealthy St. Louis family, ... the twins Charles and Camilla Macaulay, both intellectually gifted and eccentric only in their excessive mutual devotion; Francis Abernathy, a dandyish homosexual slowly awakening to his sexuality; and Edmund (Bunny) Corcoran, ... {who} becomes the group's victim." (NY Times Book Rev)

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The Secret History Donna Tartt audio cassette

The Little Friend Donna Tartt audio cd (abridged) audio cassette (unabridged)

Donna Tartt's The Secret History: A Reader's Guide Tracy Hargreaves

Best of the Oxford American: Ten Years from the Southern Magazine of Good Writing edited by Mark Smirnoff

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