These Violent Delights
A Literary Hub Best Book of Year - A Crime Reads Best Debut of the Year - A Newsweek 25 Best Fall Books - A Philadelphia Inquirer 10 Big Books for the Fall - An O Magazine.com LGBTQ Books That Are Changing the Literary Landscape - An Electric Lit Most Anticipated Debut - A Paperback Paris Best New LGBTQ+ Books To Read This Year Selection - A Passport Best Book of the Month
The Secret History meets Lie with Me in Micah Nemerever's compulsively readable debut novel--a feverishly taut Hitchcockian story about two college students, each with his own troubled past, whose escalating obsession with one another leads to an act of unspeakable violence.
When Paul enters university in early 1970s Pittsburgh, it's with the hope of moving past the recent death of his father. Sensitive, insecure, and incomprehensible to his grieving family, Paul feels isolated and alone. When he meets the worldly Julian in his freshman ethics class, Paul is immediately drawn to his classmate's effortless charm.
Paul sees Julian as his sole intellectual equal--an ally against the conventional world he finds so suffocating. Paul will stop at nothing to prove himself worthy of their friendship, because with Julian life is more invigorating than Paul could ever have imagined. But as charismatic as he can choose to be, Julian is also volatile and capriciously cruel, and Paul becomes increasingly afraid that he can never live up to what Julian expects of him.
As their friendship spirals into all-consuming intimacy, they each learn the lengths to which the other will go in order to stay together, their obsession ultimately hurtling them toward an act of irrevocable violence.
Unfolding with a propulsive ferocity, These Violent Delights is an exquisitely plotted excavation of the depths of human desire and the darkness it can bring forth in us.
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"Few novelists make an impression as quickly and effectively as Micah Nemerever does in his stirring debut, an explosively erotic and erudite thriller. Kicking off with an electrifying prologue... readers will keep turning pages in desperate pursuit of the tension-breaking relief that can only come from seeing the story to its conclusion."--Stephenie Harrison, BookPage
"Visceral, intimate, and all-consuming, this gutsy debut is both intellectual and fiercely animal. A chilling exploration into desire and infatuation that questions how well we ever really know our lovers--or ourselves. Nemerever's propulsive, crystalline language and gutting insights make the pages fly by, hurtling you toward the inevitable, astounding ending."--Julia Fine, author of What Should Be Wild
"These Violent Delights is an utterly captivating fever dream of a novel whose tone and atmosphere will haunt you long after you finish. More haunting still is the skill with which Micah Nemerever reveals to us the lengths we will go to in order to be known, to be seen, to be understood. A thrilling first novel."--Brandon Taylor, author of Real Life
"A gorgeous and wickedly smart novel. I was so seduced by the dazzling love story of these two vulnerable young men I became an unwitting accomplice in their swerve toward violence. Nemerever has created a rich, engrossing, and morally complex book filled with dark truths and dangerous delights."--Christopher Bollen, author of A Beautiful Crime
"These Violent Delights is a captivating portrait of alienation and loneliness with the cool gaze of a Highsmith novel. Punctuated by arpeggios of violence and rage, Micah Nemerever has crafted a thrilling page-turner anchored in an examination of desire, love, and moral inquiry."--Patty Yumi Cottrell, author of Sorry to Disrupt the Peace
"[A] dark, inspired debut.... Fans of Patricia Highsmith will definitely want to take note of this promising writer."--Publishers Weekly
As unsettling as it is enthralling, These Violent Delights will engulf you: first in the intoxication of obsession, then in its toxic consequences. Micah Nemerever's debut is a beautiful portrait of intimacy, desperation, and the damage that damaged hearts can cause. It shattered me.--Robin Wasserman, author of Girls on Fire and Mother Daughter Widow Wife
Nemerever's darkly shrewd debut exists in that hazy liminal space between desire and obsession, where the vagaries of a relationship come shaded with the constant threat of cruelty.--Michelle Hart, O Magazine.com
"It's only a matter of time before things start to explode in this enthralling, unpredictable thriller."--Patrick Rapa, Philadelphia Inquirer
