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High fashion, corporate malfeasance, celebrity culture, and an obsessed media collide with exuberant violence and volatile intensity in Grey, the explosive debut novel by Jon Armstrong.

For Michael Rivers, life is perfect. Michael has everything; tall, handsome, and famous, he is worshipped by billions of fans around the globe. He is wealthy beyond measure, the heir apparent to RiverGroup, one of the handful of high-tech corporations that controls the world. He is fashionable, setting trends with his wardrobe of immaculate designer suits, each a unique and celebrated work of art. And Michael is in love, perfect love, sharing a private language based entirely on quotes from the latest fashion magazine advertisements, with Nora, his beautiful, witty, and equally perfect fiance, the only woman with whom he can see surgically-altered monochromatic eye to eye.

When an assassin's bullets pierce Michael's body before the unblinking eyes of cameras, reporters, and viewers at a press junket, everything changes, forcing Michael to question everything about his previously perfect world. Illusions shattered and forcibly separated from Nora, Michael seeks to uncover the reasons behind the attempted assassination, embarking on a quest that leads him to question his relationships with his loud, profane, and narcissistically Ultra father; his estranged mother; and the perilous, contaminated, neo-feudalistic world that lies beyond the safe and protected bubble of corporate family life.

Michael must delve deep into his past, finding that all paths he uncovers seem to lead to the now-closed PartyHaus, and to a time when he was the golden boy, dancing furiously to the beat of notorious all-night Rage parties thrown by his father.

Grey was published by NightShade Books in February 2007.

"Grey is a legendary book waiting to happen. It's a mad, stylish, trippy, endlessly inventive romp through the biohazardous wastes of post-genre literature. Jon Armstrong is a genius, with an umlaut, to the fifth power."
-- Michael Chabon, author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and The Wonder Boys.

"A dazzling trip through a world alternately glamorous and grimy, set in a crumbling but media-saturated future, with eyeball-kicks galore." --Locus Magazine

"If you enjoy or, better yet, prefer a more literary than commercial read and you can appreciate a satirical stab at not only the fashionable elite of entertainment but a subtle yet obvious social comment on the general public and its destructive nature, then give Grey a read; it will not disappoint you." -- Book Opinions

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works- 3.0 United States License.

Audio Quality: Out of 27 ratings

Narration Quality: Out of 27 ratings

Writing Quality: Out of 27 ratings

Overall Rating: Out of 27 ratings

By: Heywoody
Holy crap! Armstrong is a Hemingway on LSD! Writes well, but he probably would write well regardless of the subject. In this case he wrote about a bad acid trip, or while on one. That kind of story is usually not my cup of tea, but it was interesting enough to finish the book. Now if Armstrong would only have used his powers for good.......

By: Samantha
Amazing writing! Mr. Armstrong sure does know how to turn a phrase. The plotline is increasingly addictive too. A delicious read. It's stimulating both my sense of writing aesthetics (if you will) and my desire for a good fun story. Whee!

By: Heather
I'm on chapter 5 and really enjoying the book thoroughly. Just my kind of dystopian satire.

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