A sharp, biting and irresistible debut about parties and ambition in New York City--introducing a talented Mr. Ripley for the digital age, with all the glitz and grit of Bright Lights, Big City.

They say if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. Louise Wilson is an expert at just barely making it. She's mastered the tricks and shortcuts that a penniless small-town girl needs to survive in New York City. When she meets the beautiful, wealthy, eccentric and aimless Lavinia Williams, she thinks her dreams of a cosmopolitan lifestyle may be coming true. Lavinia introduces her to echelons and experiences she didn't know existed: opera boxes, secret bookstores in brownstones, Shakespearean masked balls, underground cabarets, closets full of hundreds of dresses, and the finest champagne money can buy.

The more time Louise spends in Lavinia's world, the greater her yearning is to truly be a part of it. She can speak with the right affectation, wear the best makeup, drop the appropriate references, but she is always afraid people can see who she really is. And Louise's true nature is darker than anyone can imagine. She finds herself haunted by the imbalance between them: Lavinia has so much and is so undeserving, and Louise has nothing despite how much she desires. Unwilling to give up all she has fought for, and reluctant to face the harsh light of morning, Louise will do whatever it takes to keep the party going. This delicious debut takes a classic tale of obsession and makes it undeniably modern.

TARA ISABELLA BURTON has followed a female hermit into the remote Caucasus, gotten love amulets from Turkish Islamic shamans, and held signs with the street preachers of Las Vegas. Currently, she covers the religion beat for Vox. Her work on religion, culture, and place can be found at National Geographic, National Geographic Traveler, The Wall Street Journal, Al Jazeera, The Economist's 1843, Smithsonian, Hazlitt, Aeon, The BBC, The Atlantic, The American Interest, The Village Voice, Salon, The Guardian, The New Statesman, The Telegraph, and more. Her fiction has appeared at The New Yorker's Daily Shouts, Great Jones Street, Tor.com, PANK, Shimmer, and other places. She is the winner of The Spectator's 2012 Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize for travel writing and a 2016 Lowell Thomas Award. Tara is also a Clarendon Scholar at Trinity College, Oxford, working on a doctorate in theology and fin de siècle French literature.