Barbara Bourland Bücher

CAREY LOGAN She was the genius wild child of the New York art scene, and my idol. FAKE I was a no-name painter from the Florida backwater, clawing my way into their world. LIKE When she died, she left a space that couldn't be filled. Except, maybe, by ME Everything that gets created destroys something else. When a fire rips through her studio and burns the seven enormous paintings for her next exhibition, a young, no-name painter is left with an impossible task: recreate her art in just three months - or ruin her fledgling career. Thirty-four, single and homeless, she desperately secures a place at an exclusive upstate retreat. Brimming with creative history and set on a sparkling black lake, Pine City and its founders - a notorious collective of successful artists - is what she's idolized all her life. She's dreamt of the parties, the celebrities, the privilege. What she finds is a ghost of its former self. The recent suicide of founding member Carey Logan haunts everyone, lurking beneath the surface like a shipwreck. And one thought begins to shadow her every move - what really happened to her hero? With a flair for sensational detail and acidic wit, Barbara Bourland delivers a darkly satirical thriller about art, money and identity with a twist so sharp it cuts.

When stylish Hillary Whitney dies alone in a locked, windowless conference room at the offices of high-concept magazine RAGE Fashion Book, her death is initially ruled an unfortunate side effect of the unrelenting pressure to be thin.But two months later, a cryptic note in her handwriting ends up in the office of the NYPD and the case is reopened, leading Det. Mark Hutton straight into the glamorous life of hardworking RAGE editor Catherine Ono, who insists on joining the investigation. Surrounded by a supporting cast of party girls, Type A narcissists and half-dead socialites, Cat and her colleague Bess Bonner are determined to solve the case and achieve sartorial perfection. But their amateur detective work has disastrous results, and the two ingenues are caught in a web of drugs, sex, lies and moisturizer that changes their lives forever.

"After a failed attempt at escape, the princess of a tiny kingdom begins to reevaluate her life. Caroline, a former marathon runner who dropped out of school at fourteen to pursue an Olympic medal, was the perfect candidate for a tiara: shapely, disciplined, accustomed to public attention, and utterly uneducated. After she meets Finn, the handsome prince of a small European kingdom, her fate is sealed, with a collar of pearls locked around her throat and a rope of diamonds leashing her to a balcony, Caroline uses her once-powerful body to smile, wave, and produce children with perfect grace. But once she begins to open her eyes to the world around her - and examine her own reflection - Caroline discovers that she may have entered a bargain that cannot be undone. Barbara Bourland's stunning third novel is her softest, strangest book to date. Inspired by the alleged escape attempts of real-life princesses and set in a grotesque and gaudy prerecession 2000s Europe, The Force of Such Beauty is a heart-wrenching and compulsively readable testament to the way in which real-life power structures around the world ultimately rest on the subjugation of women's bodies"-- Provided by publisher