One Fifth Avenue, By Candace Bushnell

During last year's screenings of Sex and the City, audiences broke into applause not when Carrie got to walk down the aisle, but when she was shown around her soon-to-be marital home, a swanky duplex with walk-in-closets. In her latest book, trend-savvy Candace Bushnell ditches men and Manolos in favour of a slice of romantic real estate.

In Manhattan there are few more enviable addresses than One Fifth Avenue, so when news leaks out that the building's oldest resident has accidently choked to death on her own Hermes scarf, the whole of New York "aches" to get their hands on her spectacular penthouse apartment.

Like so many send-ups of New York high society, Bushnell's novel describes a surprisingly antiquated world populated by grandes dames and snobbish flunkies. The residents might be sporting Brazilians and BlackBerries, but their squabbles over class and money wouldn't be out of place in an Edith Wharton novel. Indeed, while the old guard of One Fifth Avenue bicker among themselves, they fail to keep their eyes on the activities of Texan parvenue, Lola Fabrikant, a 22-year-old "tartlet" with her eyes firmly fixed on some serious square-footage of her own.

In this clued-up and trenchant satire, Bushnell explores both the pleasures and disappointments of entitlement. Though, for a novelist with her finger usually pressed to the Zeitgeist, these tales of conspicuous consumption now have a distinctly historical ring.

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