\n<\/p>\n
Smart, funny and compulsively watchable, HBO\u2019s \u201cThe White Lotus<\/a>\u201d is the rare TV satire that strikes a perfect balance between vicious and empathetic, skewering the superrich while also humanizing their often outlandish foibles. The series, which just wrapped up its third season, follows a formula that\u2019s as familiar as it is addictive: A flock of wealthy, ill-mannered tourists descends on a far-flung luxury resort for one week, dreaming of escape \u2014 only to find that the very problems they hoped to flee are swiftly and mercilessly closing in on them, with deadly consequences.<\/p>\n Part of the pleasure of the show is how it manages to make these doomed holidays seem so appealing. Lives implode, relationships crumble and people wind up dead, but you still want to be there regardless. If you\u2019re not quite ready to check out of the White Lotus, we\u2019ve got 10 novels that channel the spirit of the show, from ruthless depictions of moneyed vacationers to murder mysteries set at high-end resorts.<\/p>\n Much like the White Lotus in Thailand, Sedona, Ariz., has a reputation for spirituality that attracts all manner of gurus, yogis and so-called wellness aficionados. Their pretensions are witheringly lampooned in this comic thriller about Ronnie, a Pakistani American who tags along to the desert enclave with her friend turned life coach, Marley. It isn\u2019t long before the dark side of paradise reveals itself, in the form of a dead body \u2014 the first of many that soon turn up in various states of dismemberment. Akhtar has a keen eye for the hypocrisy of the namaste-espousing elite, and no vampire facial, jar of manuka honey or hot yoga session is spared from her mordantly funny wit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Flitting between the past and present, this mystery novel is more than a mere whodunit: Although the story begins with a murder, Foley conceals the identity of the victim, describing the body in vague terms before rewinding to the start of the week. The cast of this locked-room drama comprises nine 30-something friends from Oxford University who have assembled at a remote hunting lodge in the Scottish Highlands for their annual New Year\u2019s Eve party. When a raging blizzard traps the group inside, secrets, lies and betrayals all bubble to the surface, and the question of who will die \u2014 and who will do the killing \u2014 becomes more and more intriguing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In Rosenblum\u2019s Salcombe, a fictional summer getaway for the rich in the heart of Fire Island, the tennis pros steal, the loving wives lie, and everybody bad mouths, screws over and sleeps with everyone else \u2014 sometimes all at the same time. Rosenblum charts the intricate rivalries and obsessions ping-ponging around this cloistered idyll with an anthropologist\u2019s rigor, tracing in sharp detail how this complex web of relationships could escalate from affairs to larceny and all the way to murder.<\/p>\n Read our review<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Carl Fletcher, a second-generation immigrant and the owner of a polystyrene factory, is kidnapped one morning, in broad daylight<\/a>, outside his Long Island home. He\u2019s eventually returned in one piece, but the trauma \u2014 which he steadfastly refuses to acknowledge \u2014 has repercussions that last decades, looming over the lives of his three children as they clumsily transition into adulthood. Like \u201cThe White Lotus,\u201d this novel by Brodesser-Akner, a writer for The New York Times Magazine, is in part about how money doesn\u2019t solve your problems, just reconfigures them \u2014 and about how even the most dogged efforts to preserve a veneer of normality and stave off a breakdown are doomed to fail.<\/p>\n Read our review<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Alex Sable is the kind of 20-something patrician in the making who is attuned to the subtlest gradations of class \u2014 a billionaire\u2019s scion who knows in an instant whose blazer is from J. Crew, and who\u2019d rather be caught dead than in something other than Brunello Cucinelli. As the novel opens, Alex is himself caught dead, found in the bathtub of a New Hampshire mansion with his wrists slashed and his Patek Philippe watch broken. Berman flashes back through the lavish bacchanalia of Alex\u2019s last months, through the eyes of a podcaster trying to unravel the mystery of his death, to reveal the knotty story behind the apparent suicide.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Few writers were as capable of scalpel-sharp dissection of the rich as the Scottish novelist Muriel Spark, whose magisterial social satires remain relevant even half a century later. \u201cMemento Mori,\u201d one of her most assiduous, tells the story of a group of well-to-do Britons who are thrown into an existential crisis by a series of threatening phone calls, which could be a criminal conspiracy, a prank or the literal embodiment of death. (In typical Spark fashion, it\u2019s probably a combination of all three.) The characters are petty, duplicitous, conniving \u2014 and also, somehow, strangely sympathetic. It\u2019s an acidly funny book that\u2019s as smart as they come.<\/p>\n Read our review<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s 1956 in Tangier, Morocco, and Alice Shipley, a housewife struggling to find herself, is sucked into a twisted whirlwind when Lucy Mason, her enigmatic college roommate, unexpectedly shows up at her door. The book\u2019s sun-kissed setting and atmosphere of diaphanous unease are reminiscent of Patricia Highsmith<\/a>, and there\u2019s a trace of \u201cThe Golden Notebook<\/a>\u201d in Mangan\u2019s canny rendering of incipient feminism in the aftermath of World War II. But as the novel gains violent momentum, the tension that takes hold is pure \u201cWhite Lotus.\u201d<\/p>\n Read our review<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The premise seems charming: Maggie Burkhardt, an 81-year-old widow taking up semi-permanent residence at a palatial hotel in Luxor, Egypt, passes her time during the tail end of the Covid lockdowns by attempting to \u201cliberate\u201d unhappy couples with a bit of meddling. Her mischief takes a dark turn, however, when she makes an unlikely nemesis: an 8-year-old boy named Otto, whom she engages in a cat-and-mouse game too irresistibly diabolical to spoil. Bollen\u2019s storytelling more than matches \u201cThe White Lotus\u201d for I-can\u2019t-believe-they-just-went-there nerve, and when it\u2019s not outright shocking, it\u2019s outrageously, scandalously delightful.<\/p>\n Read our review<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Long before Mike White set his murderers loose among the superrich, Agatha Christie made a career of it \u2014 staging one locked-room mystery after another in exotic locales around the globe and rounding out their ensembles with tycoons, socialites and other members of the upper crust. One of her best-known and most beloved novels in this mode, and probably the closest cousin to \u201cThe White Lotus,\u201d is \u201cDeath on the Nile,\u201d which finds the famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot sussing out clues among vacationers on a luxury river cruise that turns deadly.<\/p>\nIf you want to open on a dead body<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
by Amina Akhtar<\/span><\/h3>\n
by Lucy Foley<\/span><\/h3>\n
by Emma Rosenblum<\/span><\/h3>\n
If you like the rich behaving badly<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
by Taffy Brodesser-Akner<\/span><\/h3>\n
by Alice Berman<\/span><\/h3>\n
by Muriel Spark<\/span><\/h3>\n
If you want a far-flung locale<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
by Christine Mangan<\/span><\/h3>\n
by Christopher Bollen<\/span><\/h3>\n
by Agatha Christie<\/span><\/h3>\n