Ghosts of Manhattan: A Novel - Couverture rigide

“Former Internet exec Brunt offers up a savage, jaded, and comical depiction of freewheeling Wall Street bond traders during their precollapse heyday in this engaging debut... As Nick’s life, his marriage, and the U.S. economy edge closer to meltdown, Brunt brings all the pieces together for a satisfying climax to this compulsively readable novel.” (Publishers Weekly)

“Mix together Charles Dickens, Theodore Dreiser and Tom Wolfe and you get novelist Doug Brunt and his modern day financier character, Nick Farmer. Faust would have a feast with so many of the people populating Farmer’s world – and you will have a literary feast devouring this book.” (Steve Forbes, Chairman, Forbes Media)

“After the mortgage bubble burst, if you ever wondered “What were they thinking?” GHOSTS OF MANHATTAN provides a thoughtful and thrilling portrait of what they were doing instead of thinking.” (John Stossel, Fox News)

"Awesomeness." (Kid Rock)

“Douglas Brunt...is a persuasive storyteller...Reading [Ghosts of Manhattan], it is easy to understand how the worst of Wall Street came apart. But in Nick’s determination to escape his own inevitable destruction we are uplifted and find renewed hope for a cleaned-up world without Bear Stearns.” (Forbes.com)

“With his noir-ish debut novel, former broker (and spouse of Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly) Brunt delves not just into the mechanics of the financial crash, but also the mindset that created the explosive state of affairs.... A smart shot at the absurdity of Wall Street and the long fall that brought us all down.” (Kirkus)

This instant New York Times bestseller offers a withering view of life on Wall Street from the perspective of an unhappy insider who is too hooked on the money to find a way out, even as his career is ruining his marriage and corroding his soul.

It’s 2005. Nick Farmer is a thirty-five-year-old bond trader with Bear Stearns clearing seven figures a year. The novelty of a work-related nightlife centering on liquor, hookers, and cocaine has long since worn thin, though Nick remains keenly addicted to his annual bonus. But the lifestyle is taking a toll on his marriage—and on him.

When a nerdy analyst approaches him with apocalyptic prognostications of where Bear’s high-flying mortgage-backed securities trading may lead, Nick is presented with the kind of ethical dilemma he’s spent a lifetime avoiding. Throw in a hot financial journalist who seems to be more interested in him than in the percolating financial Armageddon and the prospect that his own wife may have found a new romantic interest of her own, and you have the recipe for Nick’s personal and professional implosion.

By turns hilarious and harrowing, Ghosts of Manhattan follows a winning but flawed protagonist as he struggles to find the right path in a complicated urban heart of darkness