The Little Friend

FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, OCTOBER 2003

Copyright © 2002 by Donna Tartt

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2002.

Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Contemporaries and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Marlowe & Company for permission to reprint excerpts from A Treasury of African Folklore by Harold Courlander. Copyright © 1996 by Harold Courlander. Reprinted by permission of Marlowe & Company.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:

Tartt, Donna.

The little friend / Donna Tartt.—1st ed.

p. cm.

eISBN: 978-0-307-87348-4

1. Murder victims’ families—Fiction. 2. Brothers—Death—Fiction. 3. Mississippi—Fiction.

4. Sisters—Fiction. 5. Revenge—Fiction. 6. Girls—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3570.A657 L58 2002

813′.54—dc21 2002066878

www.vintagebooks.com

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