To the outside world, they were the icons of high society - the most glamorous and influential women of their age. To Truman Capote they were his Swans: the ideal heroines, as vulnerable as they were powerful. They trusted him with their most guarded, martini-soaked secrets, each believing she was more special and loved than the next...

Until he betrayed them. 'Writers write. And one can't be surprised if they write what they know.'

'The new Donna Tartt' VOGUE'A dazzlingly assured first novel...

This clever book, with the moreish astringency of a negroni, is a perfect summer cocktail.' SUNDAY TIMES'A whirlwind of a first novel. There is great pathos in the Swans' woundings and in their inevitable decline. And the character of Truman himself shimmers through the novel in a wonderful blaze of eccentricity and excess.