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Bret Easton Ellis was 21 and still a student at Bennington College when Simon & Schuster published Less Than Zero in 1985, a short novel about rich Los Angeles teenagers on Christmas break that opens with the line “People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles.” Six years later Simon & Schuster cancelled his third novel, American Psycho, before publication; Vintage brought it out in 1991 and a chapter of the National Organization for Women called for a boycott. Since then he has written about the same few worlds — Los Angeles, Manhattan, a New England college — and about a character called Bret Easton Ellis. This guide covers his nine key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 9 key books · 1985–2023 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Bret Easton Ellis has published nine books: seven novels, one collection of linked stories and one book of essays. The best known are American Psycho (1991), Less Than Zero (1985) and The Rules of Attraction (1987); his most recent novel is The Shards (2023). Start with Less Than Zero, his short first novel, which introduces the cool, flat voice of everything that follows.
Where to Start with Bret Easton Ellis
If you want to see where it all began
→ Less Than Zero (1985) — his debut, written while he was still a student.
If you want his defining book
→ American Psycho (1991) — the novel his first publisher refused to publish.
If you want his latest and longest novel
→ The Shards (2023) — Los Angeles, 1981, and a serial killer at his school.
If you want his opinions without a novel around them
→ White (2019).
9 Bret Easton Ellis Books, in Order
Less Than Zero
Clay, a wealthy college student, comes home to Los Angeles for winter break and drifts through parties, drugs and his parents’ empty houses while looking for his old best friend Julian. The title comes from an Elvis Costello song. A loose film version with Andrew McCarthy as Clay followed in 1987.
The Rules of Attraction
A term at Camden College, a small arts college in New England, told in turn by three students — Sean, Lauren and Paul — who are each in love with the wrong person. Sean Bateman is the younger brother of Patrick Bateman of American Psycho. Roger Avary directed the 2002 film.
American Psycho
Patrick Bateman, a young Wall Street banker in late-1980s Manhattan, narrates his days of restaurant bookings, business cards and grooming routines alongside detailed accounts of torture and murder. Simon & Schuster dropped the book in 1990; Vintage published it in 1991 amid protests. Mary Harron’s film with Christian Bale followed in 2000, and a Broadway musical in 2016.
The Informers
Linked stories set among the rich and the drifting in early-1980s Los Angeles — film executives, a rock star on tour, students, parents — whose lives cross in passing. Ellis co-wrote the screenplay for the film version, directed by Gregor Jordan.
Glamorama
Victor Ward, a male model and would-be club owner in 1990s Manhattan, is sent to Europe and finds himself among a group of models who carry out terrorist bombings. It is his longest satire of celebrity, and its people are as interchangeable as the fashion they wear.
Lunar Park
The narrator is a novelist called Bret Easton Ellis who, after years of excess, settles in a suburb with a wife and son; then the house starts to change and killings that copy American Psycho begin. The early chapters parody his own career. The book is dedicated to his late partner Michael Wade Kaplan.
Imperial Bedrooms
A sequel to Less Than Zero: Clay, now a screenwriter in his forties, returns to Los Angeles to cast a film and is drawn back into the lives of Julian, Rip and Blair. It is short and closer to a noir thriller than the first book.
White
His first nonfiction book: essays mixing memories of 1970s and 1980s film and culture with arguments about social media, outrage and American politics after 2016.
The Shards
A fictional memoir of his last year at a private school in Los Angeles in 1981, when a new student arrives and a serial killer called the Trawler is at work in the city. Ellis first read it aloud in instalments on his podcast from 2020; Knopf published it on 17 January 2023, his first novel in 12 years. FX and Hulu began a ten-part series, co-created with Ryan Murphy, on 5 August 2026.
In What Order to Read Bret Easton Ellis
The books stand alone, but they share people: Sean Bateman in The Rules of Attraction is Patrick’s brother, the people of Less Than Zero return in Imperial Bedrooms, and Lunar Park plays on everything that came before. Reading in publication order lets you catch those links.
Read Less Than Zero before Imperial Bedrooms, which is its direct sequel, and read American Psycho before Lunar Park, which assumes you know it. The Shards goes back to 1981 and can be read at any point.
A reading path
1. Less Than Zero (1985)
2. The Rules of Attraction (1987)
3. American Psycho (1991)
4. Lunar Park (2005)
5. The Shards (2023)
The years · 1964–2026
Quick facts about Bret Easton Ellis
- Known for
- Writing the cool, affectless fiction of wealthy young people in the 1980s, above all American Psycho, whose narrator Patrick Bateman became one of the most recognised characters in modern fiction.
- 1964
- Born in Los Angeles
- 1985
- Less Than Zero, at 21
- 1991
- American Psycho
- 2005
- Lunar Park
- 2013
- Launches The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast
- 2026
- The Shards on FX and Hulu
- Born
- 7 March 1964, Los Angeles, California
- Education
- The Buckley School, Sherman Oaks; Bennington College, Vermont
- First book
- Less Than Zero (1985), published when he was 21
- Screenwriting
- The Informers; The Canyons (2013), directed by Paul Schrader
- Podcast
- The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, since November 2013
- Television
- Co-creator of The Shards (FX, 2026) with Ryan Murphy
The red mark is 1991: American Psycho, the novel his first publisher cancelled.
How Bret Easton Ellis Writes: The Flat Voice
Ellis writes almost entirely in the first person and in a deliberately flat register: short declarative sentences, brand names, lists of clothes, songs and restaurants, and the same weight given to a dinner reservation as to a death. In Less Than Zero that flatness belongs to a numb teenager; in American Psycho it becomes the joke and the horror at once, as Patrick Bateman reviews a Huey Lewis album with the same care he gives to a murder.
His novels form a loose shared world. Characters cross between books, and the narrators are often unreliable: American Psycho never confirms how much of Bateman’s account happened, and Lunar Park and The Shards give the narrator Ellis’s own name and history, then lead him somewhere fictional.
From Lunar Park on he has borrowed more openly from genre — the haunted-house novel, noir, the serial-killer thriller — while keeping the same subjects: Los Angeles, money, youth and the gap between how people look and what they do. The Shards, his longest novel, is also the slowest and most detailed of these.
Frequently asked questions about Bret Easton Ellis’s books
How many books has Bret Easton Ellis written?
Nine: seven novels, one collection of linked stories (The Informers, 1994) and one book of essays (White, 2019). All nine are on this page.
What are Bret Easton Ellis’s books in order?
Less Than Zero (1985), The Rules of Attraction (1987), American Psycho (1991), The Informers (1994), Glamorama (1998), Lunar Park (2005), Imperial Bedrooms (2010), White (2019) and The Shards (2023).
Where should I start with Bret Easton Ellis?
Less Than Zero (1985): it is short, it was his first book, and it sets up the voice and the Los Angeles world he keeps returning to. If you already know the film of American Psycho, the novel is the obvious next step.
What is Bret Easton Ellis’s most famous book?
American Psycho (1991), narrated by Patrick Bateman, a Manhattan banker and serial killer. Mary Harron’s 2000 film with Christian Bale made the character known well beyond readers of the novel.
Why was American Psycho so controversial?
Because of its long, graphic scenes of violence, much of it against women. Simon & Schuster, which had contracted the book, cancelled it in 1990; Vintage published it in 1991. Tammy Bruce of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women called for a boycott, arguing it was misogynist. Ellis has said the book came out of his own alienation and that Bateman was partly about himself.
Which Bret Easton Ellis books have been adapted?
Less Than Zero (film, 1987), American Psycho (film, 2000, and a Broadway musical in 2016), The Rules of Attraction (film, 2002), The Informers (film, with a screenplay co-written by Ellis) and The Shards (FX and Hulu series, 2026). A new film of American Psycho by Luca Guadagnino was announced as in development at Lionsgate in 2025.
Is Imperial Bedrooms a sequel to Less Than Zero?
Yes. Imperial Bedrooms (2010) brings back Clay, Julian, Rip and Blair about 25 years later, with Clay now a screenwriter returning to Los Angeles. Read Less Than Zero first.
Are Patrick Bateman and Sean Bateman related?
Yes. Sean Bateman, one of the narrators of The Rules of Attraction (1987), is the younger brother of Patrick Bateman, the narrator of American Psycho (1991). Patrick appears briefly in the earlier book.
Is The Shards a true story?
No, though it borrows from Ellis’s life. The narrator is called Bret, and the novel is set in his final year at a private school in Los Angeles in 1981, but the Trawler killings and the plot around them are fiction.
Is Bret Easton Ellis still alive?
Yes. He was born on 7 March 1964 in Los Angeles. His most recent novel is The Shards (2023), and he co-created its television adaptation, which began on FX and Hulu in August 2026.
Footnotes
- Bret Easton Ellis — Wikipedia
- Less than Zero (novel) — Wikipedia
- American Psycho — Encyclopædia Britannica
- Organizer calls for boycott of American Psycho — Fresh Air, 1991
- The Shards TV series: cast, release date, plot — W Magazine
- Luca Guadagnino confirms American Psycho remake — Film Stories, 2025
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles.”
— Bret Easton Ellis, Less Than Zero (1985), the first line of his first novel
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