The three Heller girls are sensational looking. Ranging from 14 to 19, they've been blessed with the most gorgeous red hair imaginable.

And they have great genes: Their mother is a former Miss Tennessee and their paternal grandfather was the famous New York literary critic Leo Heller.

So it's no wonder that the New Yorker magazine commissions Herb Lang, a famous photographer -- a cross between Richard Avedon and Bruce Weber -- to photograph these hothouse flowers.

Let's not forget their brother Philip, 16. No one's really interested in him, but he gets swept up in all the fuss. He's a fairly typical dude, needing a haircut, growing every day and watching TV reruns of "Star Trek" and "Battlestar Galactica."

The novel is narrated by the four children, starting with Philip and then the youngest, Amelia, a sharp 14-year-old who aspires to be a pianist. She and Philip are tight.

Afterward come Polly, 18, and Daria, 19, vapid party girls who are really hot!

		"Three Girls and Their Brother" Theresa Rebeck Shaye Areheart Boooks ($23.95)

Philip kicks it off, describing how his sisters became instant celebrities. As their fortunes rise, their home life falls apart. Their mother is a liar, abuser and boozer who provides no positive role model for her children.

As Philip tells her, toward the end of the book, "You're the devil's pimp, you'd pimp your daughters out to Satan himself if you thought you could get a good price ..."

Philip's character and diction owe a lot to J.D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield. Both boys discover that the world is full of phonies, that they can't even count on family members to be honest, and it's the rare person who might even care.

As Philip gets more outraged, he becomes even more protective of Amelia. Like Holden and "Harriet the Spy" (Rebeck is one of two credited screenwriters on the movie adaptation), Philip gloms on to the one person who's trustworthy and who sees through all the B.S., a hairdresser named La Aura.

Amelia continues the story, telling how she's offered the role in an Off-Broadway play. Her description of life in the theater is the strongest and most convincing part of the book, which is no surprise, since Rebeck is a talented and well-known playwright (her play, "Omnium Gatherum," was a Pulitzer-Prize finalist).

Polly and Daria then tell their sides of the story, moving it along to its fateful conclusion, involving a hotel, a handsome movie star and a gun.

Along the way, the kids find out how corrupt the world is and how it's best to rely on those you trust, or failing that, your siblings, for support, but never ever your mom or dad!

Not deep lessons. But this is not a deep book, and neither its plot nor its characters can bear prolonged critical scrutiny. It will make a pretty good beach read and an even better movie, starring Miley Cyrus, Amanda Bynes and Lindsey Lohan.