MAKING HER DEBUT
Ashley Prentice Norton's debut, The Chocolate Money, is a dark comedy set in 1980s Chicago about a poor little rich girl dealing with her narcissistic mother. The synopsis says: "Bettina Ballentyne is a chocolate heiress only by name; it is her glamorous and narcissistic mother, Babs, who lives up to the billing and plays by no one's rules. Navigating a simultaneously treacherous and alluring landscape of wealth, sex, and decadence - first in her privileged childhood in Chicago and later at a top-tier east coast boarding school - Bettina must figure out how to reconcile her yearning for maternal affection with her mother's take-no-prisoners-style parenting." The Chocolate Money is out in September. You can check out an excerpt at the author's website. She is a descendant of John D. Rockefeller.