The Cave Dwellers — Christina McDowell

A compulsively readable novel in the vein of The Bonfire of the Vanities -- by way of The Nest -- about what Washington, DC's high society members do away from the Capitol building and behind the closed doors of their suburban mansions.

They are the families considered worthy of a listing in the exclusive Green Book -- a discriminative diary created by the niece of Eleanor Roosevelt's social secretary. Their aristocratic bloodlines are woven into the very fabric of Washington -- generation after generation. Their old money and manner lurk through the cobblestone streets of Georgetown, Kalorama and Capitol Hill. They only socialize within their inner circle, turning a blind eye to those who come and go on the political merry-go-round. Parents and their children living life free of consequences in a gilded existence of power and privilege.

But what they have failed to understand is that the world is changing. And when the family of one of their own is held hostage and brutally murdered, everything about their legacy is called into question.

They are The Cave Dwellers.