IN PRETTY THINGS by Janelle Brown (Weidenfeld, £8.99) Nina is forced by her con artist mother’s medical bills to abandon her attempt to escape the family trade.

She makes a living stealing from ultra-rich hedonists in Los Angeles but rising hospital bills mean she now needs to devise a more ambitious scam, so she returns to the scene of a teenage humiliation, the Lake Tahoe mansion of billionaire heiress Vanessa.

Nina sees her as a perfect target — rich, vapid and untouched by the vicious unfairness of the class system. But this book warns that when you meet your enemies, you are in danger of discovering that they are human after all and that can cause all manner of complications.