Warning: Social Climbing May Be Hazardous to Your Health.

WHO MOVED MY BLACKBERRY?, a U.K. bestseller by FT columnist Lucy Kellaway, traces a tumultuous year in the life of Martin Lukes, a striving and conniving executive in a global enterprise. He's obnoxious, but Martin's delusions are so unmistakably real that they'll make you laugh till your eyes water and your BlackBerry blinks.

"LEAVE THREE ENGLISHMEN in a room, and they will invent a rule that prevents a fourth joining them." So writes Julian Fellowes in Snobs, a tale of a middle-class friend's misguided marriage to a landed aristocrat, just published in paperback. The ensuing calamities bear out the truth about marrying for money: You'll earn every penny.

IN RATTLED, by Debra Galant, a rattlesnake breeding ground threatens to turn a pricey housing development into no-man's land. But who's really the most reptilian here--the snooty suburbanites, the sneaky animal-rights activists, the slick real estate developer, or the status-obsessed heroine, Heather?

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By Anne Fisher