Party Girls Die in Pearls

April 3, 2017
Fortune favors Ursula Flowerbutton, the spunky “fresher” (first-year student) and aspiring reporter who stars in this frothy series launch set at Oxford University in 1985 from bestseller Sykes (Bergdorf Blondes). The orphan from Gloucestershire become instant besties with American gardening tools scion Nancy Feingold—thereby gaining entrée to the most exclusive soirées, as well as borrowing rights to a bottomless stash of Dynasty-worthy regalia. But then she discovers, on the morning of her first tutorial, the white satin–swathed corpse of one of the campus’s It Girls, putting her instantly on the journalistic fast track. Ursula’s subsequent sleuthing pulls her and the title-besotted Nancy, whose expressed goal is “minoring in Earl-Catching,” below the fictional Christminster College’s glossy surface, into the depths where greed, lust, and ambition roil. Though Sykes’s plotting proves serviceable enough, it’s her fizzy cocktail of satire and style that will leave readers thirsty for another round. Author tour. Agent: Luke Janklow, Janklow & Nesbit.

April 15, 2017
Even Oxford University was invaded by the excesses of the 1980s. When very innocent Ursula arrives, she finds her wealthy fellow students prone to almost nightly neon-outfitted and champagne-fueled soirees in the crumbling piles of stone that make up the college town. Just as readers start settling into the ever-so-odd traditions that are Oxford, helped by Sykes' footnotes on practices at the school, one of the posh typesLady Brattenbury, no lessis found rather dead. Ursula and her American sidekick, Nancy, must solve the crime so that Ursula can land a spot on the college's famed newspaper. Readers will find that she's helped by too many coincidences and doors that open too easily to a freshman. They'll also find Ursula a little overly tweedy English and Nancy a very airheaded American. But so what? This flashback to fabulousness from the author of Bergdorf Blondes (2004) isn't meant to be taken too seriously. This frothy romp will find fans among mystery readers who want an escape from it all or who enjoy books by Cecilia Ahern.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

December 1, 2016

Not rich and not glamorous, Oxford outsider Ursula Flowerbutton wants only to be left to her studies. But when she finds a classmate with her throat slashed, she's quick to investigate. The New York Times best-selling author of Bergdorf Blondes launches a new series.

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