Down the Shore

An exhilarating debut novel of reinvention, friendship, and ambition?from the Jersey shore to Scotland

Tom Alison is weeks away from collecting his diploma at an East Coast boarding school and heading off to the Ivy League. His goal: a job in high finance alongside the power brokers he's been watching from a distance as the working-class son of a single mom. But when he gets caught selling drugs on campus, his life among the children of privilege quickly falls apart.

Tom escapes his ruined reputation with a new friend?Claire Savage, the son of a disgraced financier?and the two of them flee to the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. But what they find is a world shaped by even more powerful and unforgiving forces of greed, class, and ambition than the one they left behind. As Tom is sucked into a life of sex, drugs, status, and greed, he learns what it takes to break the rules?and how we can be broken by them.

Reminiscent of early Bret Easton Ellis and Jay McInerney, Down the Shore is an unflinching, unforgettable novel of youth and excess.

Stan Parish has worked as a senior features editor at Departures and as an associate editor at GQ. His writing has appeared in Esquire and he is a contributor to the New Jersey section of The New York Times.