A contemporary literary classic and "an accomplished psychological thriller ... absolutely chilling" (Village Voice), from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt's bestseller The Secret History is a remarkable achievement - both compelling and elegant, dramatic and playful.

'What we did was terrible, but still, I don't think any of us were bad, exactly; chalk it up to weakness on my part, hubris on Henry's, too much Greek prose composition - whatever you like.' 

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of morality, their lives are changed profoundly and forever. The Secret History is a story of two parts; the chain of events that led to the death of a classmate - and what happened next.

"How best to describe Donna Tartt’s enthralling first novel? Imagine the plot of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment crossed with the story of Euripides’ Bacchae set against the backdrop of Bret Easton Ellis’s Rules of Attraction and told in the elegant, ruminative voice of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. The product, surprisingly enough, isn’t a derivative jumble, but a remarkably powerful novel that seems sure to win a lengthy stay on the best-seller lists... Forceful, cerebral and impeccably controlled, The Secret History achieves just what Ms Tartt seems to have set out to do: it marches with cool, classical inevitability toward its terrible conclusion."  - Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times