Twelve

Published to critical acclaim around the world, and soon to be a major motion picture directed by Joel Schumacher, Twelve established its seventeen- year-old author Nick McDonell as a powerful voice of the new millennium. The chilling novel follows prep school dropout White Mike through the week between Christmas and New Year’s 1999, as he takes a year off to deal an alluring new drug to his privileged peers on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The kids of Twelve have it all; Chris and Claude and Hunter and Laura have the best, and most, of everything, but are constantly looking for something more exotic, and more dangerous. But Twelve is not a coming-of-age story, because these kids never had a childhood—their parents are off on holiday in Bali or business in Brussels, leaving hired help to look the other way as the kids stay home alone in their multimillion-dollar town houses, partying with drugs and sex and, in the end, much worse.