Richard Mason: Us

They were never an obvious group of friends. Julian came from the most staid of county families, a worn copy of Hobbes' Leviathan his guide to navigating the sinister rituals of public-school life. Jake's passage from unassuming suburbia to the dreaming spires of Oxford happened only by chance - and at great cost. And Adrienne, daughter of one of New York's wealthiest and most glamorous families, grew up more used to appearances in Vogue than to Oxford's cold and dusty lecture halls. When the three of them arrive at university, it is Julian's sister, Maggie, who brings them together. It is her idea to teach Jake's childhood tormentor a lesson. But what begins as a game has life-changing consequences for them all. This is a novel about bullying and the lingering effects of childhood cruelty; about cliques, class and not fitting in; and about what happens when the most charismatic person you know draws you into their world - and then disappears from it.