Sold to fourteen publishers around the world and receiving tremendous critical acclaim, Twelve was one of the most significant literary debuts of 2002. It quickly established its seventeen-year-old author as an astonishing voice of the new millennium. A chilling novel of urban adolescence that is "both an indictment of excess and a cry of teenage loneliness" (Joe Heim, People), it has appeared on The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, London Times, and Sydney Morning Herald best-seller lists, and on The New York Times extended list. Set among the privileged prep-school students of Manhattan's Upper East Side, Twelve follows White Mike, a dropout drug dealer, through the week between Christmas and New Year's. Throughout the book, where there is an excess of everything but hope, we are filled with that very emotion as White Mike struggles for nothing less than his soul.

"White Mike dresses in an overcoat and lives with his dad on Manhattan's Upper East Side (his mom died of breast cancer not too long ago). The 17-year-old doesn't smoke, doesn't drink and doesn't do drugs. He dropped out of high school and now sells drugs pot and an Ecstasy-like upper called "twelve" to the city's moneyed teens. In this shocker of a first novel, McDonell who was 17 when he wrote it carries readers through White Mike's frantically spinning world, one alternately peopled with obscenely wealthy teenagers who live in gated townhouses with parents rarely in town and FUBU-clad basketball players in Harlem. In terse, controlled prose, McDonell describes five days in White Mike's life during Christmas break. He introduces a host of characters, ranging from Sara Ludlow ("the hottest girl at her school by, like, a lot") to Lionel ("a creepy dude" with "brown and yellow bloodshot eyes" who also sells drugs), writing mainly in the present tense, but sometimes flashing back in italics. His prose darts from one scene and character to the next, much like a cab zipping down city streets, halting quickly at a red light and then accelerating madly as soon as the light turns green. And although it brims with New York references e.g., the MetLife Building and Lenox Hill Hospital this is really a story about excess and its effects. The final scene, at a raging New Year's Eve party, will leave readers stunned, as well as curious as to what might come next from this precocious writer." Publishers Weekly

"As fast as speed, as relentless as acid....Mr. McDonell sketches in these characters with brisk authority, deftly cutting from one subplot to another in quick, cinematic takes." Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"He maintains a teasing affection for the absurdities of adolescence — an impressive feat of synthesis." Jennifer Egan, The New York Times Book Review

"[McDonell] employs a prose style that affects pithiness and punch — a bit of Hemingway here, a bit of Hammett there...beneath the tough-guy veneer, a soft inner core of sentimentality." Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post

"Seventeen-year-old Nick McDonell, like the young Jim Carroll, displays a frightening accuity in his astonishing debut...a plunge into the depraved realm of overprivileged, drug-gobbling preppies." Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair

"Nick McDonell?s Twelve is an astonishing rush of a first novel, all heat and ice and inexorable narrative drive..." Joan Didion

"Nick McDonell is the real thing, a powerful young writer with the look of a dangerous freak and very sharp teeth. The ratio of age to talent is horrifying. His trick is he writes the truth." Hunter S. Thompson

"Twelve has a mentorless feel, like something that percolated from his experiences and came out fresh." Los Angeles Times

"The artfulness of Twelve is undeniable. The story moves, dips into big issues of race and class, and has great writing that reveals what McDonell calls ?the spiritual debilitation of a generation.?" Heidi Benson, San Francisco Chronicle

"An arresting debut....[McDonell] knows how to make you keep turning pages....He knows how to establish a mood (completely creepy) that he sustains to the bitter, blood-soaked end." Malcolm Jones, Newsweek

"The novel, both an indictment of excess and a cry of teenage loneliness, is briskly paced and snappy, name-checking both Camus and Eminem in its sketches of the nihilistic spawn of Manhattan?s big fish." Joe Heim, People

"Written with an exquisite eye for detail and character development....A worthy page turner." Deborah Schoeneman, New York Post

"There?s no denying this young author?s talent....In cinematic style, McDonell cuts from one scene to another, one character to another....Remarkable." Polly Paddock, Charlotte Observer

"[A] hot-hot, smartly composed debut....It is clear that the truth, if not necessarily the facts, is what McDonell hopes to convey through the bleak grittiness of Twelve." Margarita Fichtner, The Miami Herald

"Impressive....[McDonell] can write, and with style....A good novel, period." Emiliana Sandoval, Detroit Free Press

"An absorbing ride through a weird version of counter-culture." Arizona Republic

"McDonell has the guts to take on the nihilism of today?s youth, a subject that?s been hyped post-Columbine but rarely explored." Sarah Ferguson, High Times

"Sparse, fiercely unsentimental prose....[An] engrossing read." John Green, Booklist

"A smart, sharply written fable of drugs and violence." Tim Adams, The Observer (London)

Sold to 14 publishers around the world and receiving tremendous critical acclaim, Twelve was one of the most significant literary debuts of the year. A chilling novel of urban adolescence that is "both an indictment of excess and a cry of teenage loneliness" (People), it has appeared on multiple bestseller lists.

Nick McDonell was born in 1984 in New York City.