9 Wicked Beach Reads about Friend-Fatales

Even in middle-age, Elaine Risley obsesses about the lingering trauma wrought by a trio of childhood mean girls in what's considered to be the Canadian Twitter-doyenne's most autobiographical work.

Pick an Austen, any Austen, and you'll see at least one friend-fatale, but this is my favorite, thanks to Lady Russell's treatment of Anne Elliot, whom she convinced to break up with the love of her life.

Judy Blume may have you at Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, but this novel isn't for the Tween set. With plenty of sex to prove it, the story deftly plumbs the psyche of an adult female, earning it more than 1,000 glowing customer reviews on Amazon.

Lovers of this author's bestselling oeuvre say her debut, about the meaning and value of friendship, set the bar high. She cast her heroine in a less-than-flattering light, surrounded her with a constellation of likable characters and told the tale with wit.

Nothing like a war — or a love triangle — to keep a plot moving. Melanie may have been the ancestral godmother of Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood, but we love this Southern classic for naughty, done-her-wrong Scarlett.

Who needs friends when you've got bad guys with sawed-off shot guns and a fresh batch of cannoli? If you've seen only the movie trilogy, my invitation to read the novel is an offer you can't refuse.

In this 19th century Brit-lit classic, Becky Sharp is a calculating adventuress not above using friends to satisfy her greed and ambition — which she balances with sufficient charm to make you really, really like her.

When Addie and Valerie reunite a decade past graduation, they repair what had ripped them asunder, once upon a time, in a plot handled with finesse by an author who's now American chick-lit royalty.

Dashing the idea that females are the worst snarks, each chum with whom Newland Archer ever clipped a cigar piles on to quietly make sure this uber-WASP doesn't leave his dull, conniving May for the infinitely more ravishing, star-crossed Countess Ellen Olenska.