Working in the vein of Wharton, Cheever, and Yates, but with a voice and vision wholly her own, Angelica Baker has crafted a timely and powerful exploration of greed and hubris. It's impossible to look away from the family at the heart of this novel, who have acquired all the trappings of wealth - and then some - but are navigating troubled waters with a faulty compass. In clear and commanding prose, Baker exposes the myriad ways these people fail to care for each other and the questionable places they seek refuge as their world upends. Angelica Baker is wildly talented and this debut is her gorgeous opening note. -Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, author of The Nest
Baker’s ambitious debut...switches perspective among five women to create a collage of Greenwich parents, children, and the people paid to manage the parents’ houses and care for their kids. For the Greenwich contingent, there are outsiders and insiders, official and unofficial stories, all teeming with betrayals large and small, accidental and intentional. Baker examines different facets of these betrayals from multiple points of view. As the teenager puzzles out her father’s actions and her mother’s silences, a personal, thought-provoking portrait emerges of the American Dream, complete with a web of visible and invisible cracks in the foundation. -Publishers Weekly
Our Little Racket is a gratifying peek over the hedgerows of Greenwich, laden with delicious anthropological detail. But like a modern day Henry James, Angelica Baker uses the lives of the one percent to explore themes-of love and loyalty, family and friendship-that matter to all of us. -Rumaan Alam, author of Rich & Pretty
A wonderfully rich debut from an incisive and elegant writer. Baker’s women are worlds unto themselves, each with her own center of gravity, and it is a total pleasure to be held captive by them. -Julia Pierpont, author of Among the Ten Thousand Things
Angelica Baker has written a terrific, whip-smart debut. Our Little Racket is a humane and serious window onto the troubling social world of the bankers who wrecked our economy. This is a great first novel. -Stuart Nadler, author of The Inseparables
A golden web of a story hanging in the rubble of a house built by deceit and greed. A magnificent debut. -Ramona Ausubel, author of Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty