When fourteen-year-old Polly Milton goes to stay with her friend Fanny for the summer, she finds that the Shaw family's wealthy city life couldn't be more different from her country upbringing. With her plain clothes and more practical interests, Polly is out of place among a crowd focused on following the latest trends and presenting the right image. One of the few people who doesn't pressure her to fit in is Fanny's brother, Tom, but he's also one...

"[M]urder and glamour set in the ambiguous and claustrophobic world of an exclusive New England prep school"-- "Death sets the plot in motion: the murder of Nica Baker, beautiful, wild, enigmatic, and only sixteen. The crime is solved, and quickly--a lonely classmate, unrequited love, a suicide note confession--but memory and instinct won't allow Nica's older sister, Grace, to accept the case as closed. Dropping out of college and living at home,...

Charity Royall, a New Englander of humble origins, begins a torrid love affair with aristocratic Lucius Harney against all societal norms.