High Stakes | Steel, Danielle

Lange Beschreibung
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER In this captivating novel from Danielle Steel, five successful women play for high stakes in their careers at a boutique literary and talent agency.

Jane Addison is an ambitious young woman with big dreams of owning her own company someday. At twenty-eight, she arrives in New York to start a job at Fletcher and Benson, a prestigious talent agency. Eager to impress her new colleagues, Jane jumps right in as an assistant to Hailey West, one of the agents in the literary department.

Hailey is dedicated to the authors she represents, but her home life is chaotic and challenging. After her husband s tragic and untimely death, she was left widowed with three children to raise on her own.

Then there s Francine Rivers, the stern and accomplished head of the literary department. Also a single mom after her husband s affair with the nanny, she has overcome the resulting financial hardships, but only with unbearable sacrifice.

Compared to Hailey and Francine, drama agent Allie Moore s life seems much more carefree and uncomplicated. She relishes her success and loves working with the talented actors they represent until a passionate relationship with one of her rising star clients threatens to derail her career.

Merriwether Jones is the CFO for the agency. She appears to have it all beauty, success, and a perfect marriage until her husband's jealousy over her career threatens to blow everything up.

Even though she s a newcomer, Jane quickly realizes that there are damaging secrets hidden behind the doors of Fletcher and Benson.  As one of the youngest employees, she has the least power, but is also the least willing to accept things as they have been for years. When she puts everything on the line to right these wrongs, the consequences will leave no one unscathed.

In this riveting novel, Danielle Steel tells the story of a group of remarkable women navigating the challenges of balancing their families, their personal lives and the high stakes of ambition at the top of their game.

Buchausschnitt

Chapter 1

Jane Addison was rushing around her bright, modern new West Village apartment, getting ready for her first day at a new job. She had gotten her undergraduate degree from UCLA, worked for two years at San Francisco Magazine, and then gone back for her MBA at UC Berkeley, in their entrepreneurial program. She was twenty-­eight years old, born and raised in San Francisco. Her father was one of the most successful venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. Her older sister, Margaret, was thirty-­five, climbing the ladder at a rival venture capital firm. Margaret was married, with two children. Her husband was the CEO of a successful tech start-­up, which was about to go public. Jane s life was very different from Margaret s, and so were her goals. For the moment Jane wasn t interested in marriage, and didn t know if she ever would be. Having babies held no particular lure for her. Margaret and her husband had met in business school at Stanford, and they liked their stable, married life and their demanding careers. They seemed comfortable and efficient managing both. It looked like a hard juggling act to Jane, a lot of responsibility and too much work.

Jane s dream was to own a small magazine one day or, even better, a small publishing house, but she was a long way from achieving her goals. She was just beginning her work life. She had flown to New York to interview for jobs at the major publishing houses in New York, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Little, Brown, but nothing that interested her and paid decently had turned up. The magazines she had sent her resume to hadn t leapt at the chance to hire her. They told her she was overqualified for the openings they had, and figured she probably wouldn t stay long enough to make hiring her worthwhile.

In the end, the only offer she d had that excited her came from a friend of her father s, an old classmate of his at Princeton. Bob Benson owned a literary and entertainment agency, Fletcher and Benson, in New York. They represented actors, producers, directors, and screenwriters on the dramatic side, and writers on the literary side. The position she d been offered was as an assistant to the executive assistant of the number two agent on the literary side, a woman named Hailey West. Jane had met her when she was applying for jobs in New York, and she seemed like an intelligent, pleasant, busy woman, committed to the writers she represented. The agency had some very important clients, and it seemed to Jane like a good interim job until the right opportunity turned up, closer to her goals for the future. She still wanted to work at a major publishing house to learn the ropes, but an entry-­level job in publishing didn t appeal to her much, and at least a job in a literary and talent agency sounded like fun. Meeting important writers and movie stars would be exciting. The agency was very successful. She d interviewed with her father s old friend and the heads of both sides of the agency, Francine Rivers for literary and Allie Moore, head of talent. They were both interesting women, and Bob Benson said that if she did well, she could be a literary agent one day.

Jane s mother came from San Francisco to help her find the apartment in a big, modern, efficient building in the West Village, with a view of the Hudson, in what seemed like a friendly neighborhood. The building had a gym, a pool, and a roof garden for the tenants use. There was good security and plenty of staff, and her parents liked the fact that she d be safe there. Her mother had been an interior decorator until Margaret was born, and she still enjoyed decorating their homes and doing whatever she could for her girls.

She helped Jane get her apartment organized and furnished in record time. Jane was thoroughly enjoying it and grateful to her parents