Pretty Things

1.

The nightclub is a temple, devoted to the sacred worship of indulgence. Inside these walls there is no judgment: You ll find no populists, no protestors, no spoilsports who might ruin the fun. (The velvet ropes out front stand sentry against all that.) Instead, there are girls in fur and designer silk, swanning and preening like exotic birds, and men with diamonds in their teeth. There are fireworks erupting from bottles of thousand-­dollar vodka. There is marble and leather and brass that is polished until it gleams like gold.

The DJ drops a bass beat. The dancers cheer. They lift their phones toward the sky and vamp and click, because if this is a church then social media is their scripture; and that tiny screen is how they deify themselves.

Here they are: the one percent. The young and ultra-­rich. Billionaire babies, millionaire millennials, fabu-grammars. Influencers. They have it all and they want the whole world to know. Pretty things, so many pretty things in the world; and we get them all, says their every Instagram photo. Covet this life, for it is the best life, and we are #blessed.

Out there, in the middle of it all, is a woman. She s dancing with abandon in a spot where the light hits her just so and glimmers on her skin. A faint sheen of sweat dampens her face; her glossy dark hair whips around her face as she swivels her body to the grinding beat. The waitresses headed to the bottle-­service tables have to maneuver around her, the fizzing sparklers on their trays in danger of setting the woman s hair alight. Just another L.A. party girl, looking for a good time.

Look close, though, and you can see that her half-­closed eyes are sharp and alert, dark with watching. She is watching one person in particular, a man at a table a few feet away.

The man is drunk. He lounges in a booth with a group of male friends ­gelled hair, leather jackets, Gucci sunglasses at night; twentysomethings who shout over the music in broken English and

Janelle Brown is the New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Things, Watch Me Disappear, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, and This Is Where We Live. An essayist and journalist, she has written for Vogue, The New York Times, Elle, Wired, Self, Los Angeles Times, Salon, and more. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their two children.

A page-turner. Real Simple

Impossible to put down, Pretty Things is smart, seductive, and utterly captivating. PopSugar

Full of tantalizing twists and shocking deceptions, this is an intelligent social commentary that is also deliciously fun to read. The Week

It s Dynasty meets Patricia Highsmith. . . . Duplicity abounds when two messed-up clans collide, and Brown s final multiple twists are doozies. The Washington Post

Fiendishly clever. Kirkus Reviews

A can t-look-away story of and for our generation, Pretty Things combines a spellbinding setting with dark, slippery secrets to expose what we ve always known or maybe just hoped to be true about the gilded lives presented in our social media feeds. Janelle Brown is a literary powerhouse. Chandler Baker, New York Times bestselling author of Whisper Network
 
I devoured this book an incredible read. Jessica Knoll, New York Times bestselling author of Luckiest Girl Alive and The Favorite Sister
 
I love a good con story especially when I can t tell who s the actual mark and who s the real con artist. In Janelle Brown s compulsively readable Pretty Things, the good girls and the bad girls keep switching places in a story that will keep you turning pages till the end. Even more richly told than Watch Me Disappear, Brown s latest novel has the same sharp observations that are her trademark about shifting identities and the secrets we all keep. Attica Locke, author of Heaven, My Home
 
Hungry, sexy, and packed with twists, this latest novel from Janelle Brown exposes what s hidden behind the stone walls of the elite s mansions and the slick facades of con artists scams. Money, family, and Instagram collide to make a book you won t be able to put down. Julia Phillips, author of Disappearing Earth
 
Part psychological thriller and part morality tale, Janelle Brown s