I like my fiction the way I like my reality TV: full of rich people behaving badly, all of whom are one wrong move away from total exposure. Fortunately for me, Rich People Behaving Badly is a whole supergenre—spanning thrillers, romance, literary fiction. I find this a little surprising, given the ultra-rich aren’t enjoying peak popularity (have they ever?). So why do we keep coming back to RPBB?

It’s not the vicarious thrill of peeking into a secret world, because we are only clicks away from access. I can track Taylor Swift’s jet crossing the Atlantic in real time, and if I want a proper look behind the pearly gates of wealth, there’s an entire economy of maybe-centimillionaires on TikTok who apparently have nothing better to do than walk me through their closets. Whatever else is scarce right now, access is not.

Scrolling is contact without consequence; the novel puts you in the room, where a wrong move gets you escorted out. Which raises the real question: what does that kind of wealth cost?

This is why the protagonist is almost never the rich person; it’s the guest. Nick Carraway, renting the small house next door. Rachel Chu. Tom and Cousin Greg. Suspense isn’t caused by the size of the estate; it’s not knowing which fork to use.

That’s the book I wanted to write. The Rally sends an ousted entrepreneur on a two-week trip across Europe with people for whom the entry fee is a rounding error. She has the invitation—not the money. The credentials—not the standing. And every mile is a chance for her to be exposed as someone who doesn’t belong—which, conveniently, is also how it feels to be pushed out of something you built.

These are the books that taught me how that anxiety works on the page, the definitive starter pack of Rich People Behaving Badly.

The Great Gatsby , F. Scott Fitzgerald

The O.G., Tom and Daisy are the original rich people behaving badly (literally: they “smashed up things”). Fitzgerald draws the whole class map into the geography—East Egg, where the old money summers, and West Egg across the bay, where Gatsby’s new fortune buys a mansion but never quite buys in. Fitzgerald gives us both halves of the guest position at once: Nick Carraway, Yale-educated and tolerated, and Gatsby, fabulously wealthy and being investigated. The guests in Gatsby have just enough standing to be in the room and not nearly enough to survive it.