To go with your recent Josef Von Sternberg film fest (which hasn't arrived in the library yet), I'm watching the beginning of his version of An American Tragedy. A very young Sylvia Sydney is the poor girl who gets on the wrong side of the social climber. Frances Dee is in the role of the rich girl.
I love the story and the remake, A Place in the Sun, but this is the one book that I never finished when we had to read it high school. When I have time for 900 pages, I may go back and finish it.