These Violent Delights

Paul arrives at university in Pittsburgh in the early 1970s, hoping to put the recent death of his father behind him. He is sensitive and insecure, and his grieving family does not understand him. On campus he feels alone.

In his freshman ethics class he meets Julian, a worldly classmate with an easy charm. Paul takes him for his only intellectual equal and an ally against a conventional world that feels suffocating to him. He is willing to do almost anything to earn the friendship, because life beside Julian feels more alive than anything he has known.

Julian can be charismatic when he chooses, but he is also volatile and cruel on a whim. Paul grows afraid that he will never meet what Julian expects. The friendship tightens into a consuming closeness, and each boy learns how far the other will go to keep them together.

This is a dark psychological novel about obsession and desire, set on a university campus. The pace is propulsive and the plot tightly built, moving toward an act of violence that cannot be undone. Expect a tense, unsettling read that follows two intense young people as their bond turns dangerous.