A stunning novel of celebrity and the price of fame from a Pulitzer-shortlisted playwright. So you want to know how to become famous? STEP 1: Get your photo taken for the New Yorker, along with your incredibly beautiful red-haired sisters. STEP 2: Watch as your face is plastered all over Times Square and New York goes crazy over you. (Why? Don't ask me.) STEP 3: Learn to fight off the paparazzi who are camped outside your school. Older brothers, especially seemingly invisible ones, are useful here. STEP 4: Pretend to be interested in letchy old filmstars at glitzy parties and don't let them realise you would rather be doing your homework. But, take a tip from me, Amelia, so-called IT Girl, fame is NOT all it's cracked up to be. All those glamorous parties are really just full of neurotic women studiously avoiding the canapes. Being followed by hoards of men with cameras can seriously threaten your social life. And no-one listens when you tell them that you never wanted all this in the first place. One bit of advice I would give you, and it's an important one so please listen: whatever you do don't do what I did and BITE the most famous filmstar in the world. It won't look good, believe me, and it'll get you into all kinds of trouble.

When a rich man you never knew dies and his opulent apartment is left to you, you'd think it was the answer to your dreams. But perhaps it is the start of a living nightmare... At stake: a magnificent though dilapidated apartment in the Dakota Buildings (where John Lennon lived and died). The dilemma: concede honourably to the rightful heirs or take what could be yours by an oversight in a will? Tina Finn was standing on the edge of her mother's grave when she heard about her possible inheritance. Her much-married mother had not included her earlier children in her new, reclusive and, most importantly, very rich husband's life. He died just shortly before her and, as he left no will, his wife was his heir for the week she survived him. Then the fortune, including the apartment, passed down to Tina. The family thought that possession was worth three points of the law and instructed Tina to move in right away. But when she did, she discovered many things about the place, including occupants who were also the rightful inheritors, people who seemed to have squatting rights, those who were growing strange plants in the place and running a variety of businesses from it. Inheritance turns out to be a messy business, but one almost impossible to avoid.