Hot Desk
Two rival editors, one shared desk - the hilarious new novel for fans of Nora Ephron and Katherine Heiny
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
This isn't the office romance you expected... Perfect for fans of You've Got Mail, Attachments and Good Material
'Hilarious, heartbreaking, satirical, cutting and FUN'
Laura Jane Williams
'For anyone who loves Curtis Sittenfeld, Nora Ephron, Alison Espach'
Joanna Rackoff
'Super smart and assured . . . Fans of Tom Lake and The Flatshare will love it'
Sarra Manning
'Rollicking and entertaining'
People Magazine
'Captures all the thrills and aches of setting out in the world'
Morgan Dick
1982
Jane Kinloch arrives at the legendary townhouse offices of the East River Review as a wide-eyed intern with big dreams. When she strikes up a friendship with glamorous fellow intern Rose, the two soon become inseparable. But Rose’s attraction to their married boss, literary titan Edward David Adams, threatens to drive a wedge between them.
2022
Once upon a time in publishing, editors had their own offices. But now, to her great chagrin, Rebecca Blume of Avenue Publishing must share custody of a ‘hot desk’ with Ben Heath, editor at rival imprint Hawk Mills.
What starts as a battle of passive-aggressive Post-it notes about an unwatered cactus notes escalates after the death of renowned writer Edward David Adams. He has left behind an unpublished manuscript, and Ben and Rebecca are soon vying for the career-making opportunity to publish it.
But when Rebecca discovers that the manuscript contains a decades-old secret about her mother, Jane, she is determined to stop it from seeing the light of day.
Can she persuade her infuriating (and annoyingly handsome) rival deskmate to let it go?
A funny, sexy, unexpectedly moving novel that weaves a contemporary workplace romance with a gripping historical narrative set in the 1980s New York publishing industry.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Dickerman's uneven debut, two editors compete to acquire the posthumous work of a literary legend. Rebecca Blume, 28, has been at Avenue Publishing for five years. After its parent company forces her imprint to move to an open concept layout, she's required to give up her office and share a desk with Ben Heath, an editor from another imprint. When Edward "the Lion" Adams dies without an agent, word spreads quickly about unpublished stories and a possible novel from the "muscular" writer who, in Ben's view, was better than Philip Roth. Ben attempts to leverage his friendship with the Lion's son to land the deal, while Rebecca becomes a contender when she hears from the Lion's widow, Rose, who was once a fellow intern with her mother, Jane, at the Lion's literary magazine in the 1980s. As Ben and Rebecca's battle gives way to a charming romance, revelations come to light about the Lion's troubling behavior when Rose and Jane were interns, threatening his reputation and the viability of his unpublished work. The enemies-to-lovers story line is appealing, as is the office intrigue, but it feels at odds with the heavier material. The result is a dishy but discordant tale of the literary world.
