A Loeb Award-winning reporter at the New York Times, Clifford turns her sharp eye on Manhattan's young and self-assuredly privileged. But Evelyn Beegan is not so self-assured or privileged; her high-aspiring mother has pushed her into a fancy prep school and equally fancy college, and now she's copped a job at a newly minted social networking site that depends on her exploiting the high-flying connections she presumably made. At a quick glance, the writing is delicious and well observed, and film rights for this debut novel have already been purchased by Fox 2000.

Twentysomething Evelyn Beegan has just enough social-climbing bona fides (prep school, good college, a somewhat prominent attorney father, a somewhat pedigreed mother) to reach the fringes of 2006 Manhattan high society. When she lands a job with People Like Us, a start-up social media site for superrich young New Yorkers, she is charged with quickly increasing membership. She uses her school friends, her minimal connections, her quick mind, her dogged research skills, and her facility for lying to gain entry into the charity events, regattas, debuts, and stunningly excessive shopping and dining experiences that define the lives of her targets. The deeper she gets, the more she needs, and eventually she pays a price more terrible than the massive debts she runs up trying to buy her way in. Clifford, an award-winning reporter at the New York Times, has penned either a how-to (how-don't?) manual or a cautionary tale for those seeking access to this rarefied world. VERDICT A compulsive, up-close-and-personal read about the first cracks in the greed-and-bleed U.S. economy that went flying off the rails so spectacularly a short time later. [See Prepub Alert, 2/23/15.]—Beth Andersen, formerly with Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI