7 Of The Best Bret Easton Ellis Books In Order

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“The better you look, the more you see.”

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If you’re looking to dive into the unsettling, razor-sharp world of Bret Easton Ellis, knowing where to begin can make all the difference. Famous for his controversial classic, American Psycho, Ellis has written a collection of novels that dissect wealth, excess, and disconnection with dark wit and unforgettable style. But with multiple books spanning decades, readers often wonder: What’s the best order to read Bret Easton Ellis’ novels? Here at What We Reading, we’ve put together the best Bret Easton Ellis books, ranked to help you decide where to begin and which novels are essential along the way. Whether you’re new to his work or a longtime fan revisiting his bibliography, this list covers everything from his breakout debut, Less Than Zero, to his later, more experimental fiction. Let’s explore the definitive order of Bret Easton Ellis’ books and why each one deserves a place on your shelf. 

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American Psycho (1991)

Where else could we start a list of the best Bret Easton Ellis books than with his infamous bestseller, American Psycho? Patrick Bateman is twenty-six and works on Wall Street. He is handsome, sophisticated, charming and intelligent. He is also a psychopath. 

Blending horror with black comedy, Ellis’ novel is a satire aimed at the yuppie movement and rife consumerism of the 1980s. Bateman’s quips alongside his brutal acts make American Psycho one of the most enthralling books where the main character is the villain. Taking us readers to a head-on collision with America’s greatest dream – and its worst nightmare – American Psycho is a bleak, bitter, black comedy about a world we all recognise, but do not wish to confront. 

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Check Out The Best Books Like American Psycho

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Less Than Zero (1985)

Less Than Zero is Bret Easton Ellis’ debut novel, released in 1985 when he was just twenty-one years old. Set in Los Angeles in the early 1980s, this coolly mesmerising novel is a raw, powerful portrait of a lost generation that experienced sex, drugs, and disaffection at too early an age, growing up in a world shaped by casual nihilism, passivity, and too much money. 

Clay comes home for Christmas vacation from his Eastern college and re-enters a landscape of limitless privilege and absolute moral entropy, where everyone drives Porches, dines at Spago, and snorts mountains of cocaine. He tries to renew his feelings for his girlfriend, Blair, and for his best friend from high school, Julian, who is careering into hustling and heroin. Clay’s holiday soon spirals into a dizzying descent of desperation that takes him through the relentless parties in glitzy mansions, seedy bars, and underground rock clubs, and into the seamy world of L.A. after dark. 

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Check Out The Best Books Like Less Than Zero 

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The Rules Of Attraction (1987)

Set at an affluent liberal arts college during the heyday of the Reagan eighties, The Rules of Attraction follows a handful of rowdy, spoiled, sexually promiscuous students with no plans for the future – or even the present. Three of them – Sean, Paul, and Lauren – become involved in a love triangle of sorts within a sequence of drug runs, “Dressed to Get Screwed” parties, and “End of the World” parties. 

As Bret Easton Ellis trains his incisive gaze on the kids at the self-consciously bohemian Camden College, treating their sexual posturing and agonies with a blend of acrid hilarity and compassion, he exposes the moral vacuum at the core of their lives. 

The Shards (2023)

Seventeen-year-old Bret is a senior at the exclusive Buckley prep school when a new student arrives with a mysterious past. Robert Mallory is bright, handsome, charismatic, and shielding a secret from Bret and his friends, even as he becomes a mainstay in their close-knit group. Bret’s obsession with Mallory is equalled only by his increasingly unsettling pre-occupation with The Trawler, a serial killer on the loose who seems to be drawing ever closer to Bret and his friends, taunting them with grotesque threats and horrifying local acts of violence. 

The coincidences are uncanny, but they are also filtered through the imagination of a teenager whose gifts for constructing narrative from the filaments of his own life are about to make him one of the most explosive literary sensations of his generation. The Shards is a mesmerising fusion of fact and fiction, the real and the imagined, that brilliantly explores the emotional fabric of Easton Ellis’ life at seventeen. Gripping, sly, suspenseful, deeply haunting, and often darkly funny, it is one of the best Bret Easton Ellis books for getting a flavour of his style. 

Lunar Park (2005)

Bret Ellis, the narrator of Lunar Park, is a writer whose first novel, Less Than Zero, catapulted him to international stardom while he was still in college. In the years that followed, he found himself adrift in a world of drugs, wealth, and fame, as well as grappling with the unexpected death of his abusive father. After a decade of decadence, a chance for salvation arrives: the chance to reconnect with an actress he was once involved with, and their son. Yet almost immediately, his new life is threatened by a freak sequence of events and a bizarre series of murders that all seem to connect to Ellis’ past. 

Reality, memoir, and fantasy combine to create not only a fascinating version of this most controversial author, but also a deeply moving novel about love and loss, parents and children, and ultimately forgiveness. 

Glamorama (1998)

Victor Ward, a twenty-something model in fashion – and celebrity-obsessed Manhattan, is gradually, imperceptibly drawn into a shadowy looking-glass of that society, there and in London and Paris, and then finds himself trapped on the other side, in a far darker place where fame and terrorism and family and politics are inextricably linked and sometimes indistinguishable. 

At once implicated and horror-stricken, his ways of escape blocked at every turn, he ultimately discovers – back on the other, familiar side – that there was no mirror, no escape, no world but this one in which hotels implode and planes fall from the sky. In this Bret Easton Ellis novel, the American Psycho author delivers a gripping and brilliant dissection of our celebrity-obsessed culture. 

Imperial Bedrooms (2010)

Twenty-five years on from the release of Less Than Zero, Ellis returns to the characters from the book, the band of infamous teenagers whose lives weave sporadically through his. But now, they face an even greater period of disaffection: their own middle age. Clay appears to have moved on. However, when he returns from New York to Los Angeles, he’s soon drifting through a long-familiar circle. Blair is now married to Trent, and their Beverly Hills parties attract excessive levels of fame and fortune.

Then there’s Clay’s childhood friend, Julian, who’s now a recovering addict, and their old dealer, Rip, face-lifted beyond recognition and seemingly even more sinister than he was in his notorious past. Clay, too, struggles with his own demons after a meeting with a gorgeous actress determined to win a role in his movie. And with his life careening out of control, he’s forced to come to terms with the deepest recesses of his character – and with his seemingly endless proclivity for betrayal.