Donna Tartt

Aged 13, Theo Decker survives an accident that tears his life apart. Alone in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He clings to one thing that reminds him of his mother - a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the centre of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality.