To Erica Wagner at Allen and Unwin, thank you for being brave enough to be the first editor in the world to acquire rights to Beautiful Malice: I imagine it must be a scary thing to take a chance on an unknown author.
A million thanks also to my sister Wendy James, for her generous and helpful reading of everything I’ve ever written and for being the very first person to tell me I could write.
And to the people who were kind enough to read my book in draft form: Mum and Dad, Prue James, Haidee Hudson, Sam Ackling, and Kath Harris: thank you! Your encouragement was, and is, invaluable.
A special thanks to Jake Smith-Bosanquet for all his hard work selling the book around the world and another special thank you to agent Sally Harding, for her earlier encouragement and faith. Thank you also to my little sister, Emma James, for reading, and for always being so incredibly optimistic.
Of course, a gazillion thanks and a million kisses to the wonderful bloke I live with, Hilary Hudson. He deserves a medal for putting up with my crazy obsessiveness these past few years and for bringing me so many perfectly made cups of tea.
And to our sons, Charlie, Oscar, Jack, and Jimmy—thank you for the happy chaos.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
REBECCA JAMES was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1970.
She has worked as a waitress, a kitchen designer, an English teacher in both Indonesia and Japan, a barmaid, and (most memorably) a mini-cab telephone operator in London.
Rebecca lives in Australia with her partner and their four sons.
Beautiful Malice is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Rebecca James
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BANTAM BOOKS and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
James, Rebecca
Beautiful malice: a novel / Rebecca James.
p. cm.
Summary: To escape the media attention generated by her sister’s murder, a grieving seventeen-year-old girl moves away and meets a vibrant new friend who harbors a dangerous secret.
eISBN: 978-0-553-90784-1
1. Grief—Fiction. 2. Secrets—Fiction.
3. Friendship—Fiction. I. Title.
PZ7.J15432Be 2010
[Fic]—dc22
2010006255
www.bantamdell.com
v3.0
Beautiful Malice Page 24
