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Hot Desk

byLaura Dickerman

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Discover this witty and heartfelt story of romance, friendship and literary mystery set in the New York publishing scene between the 1980s and 2020s that readers are calling moving and laugh-out-loud funny…


‘ROLLICKING AND ENTERTAINING’ People Magazine


‘BY TURNS HILARIOUS, HEART-BREAKING, SATIRICAL, CUTTING AND FUN’ Laura Jane Williams, bestselling author of Our Stop


‘A FUNNY, DEEPLY WISE NOVEL THAT CAPTURES ALL THE THRILLS AND ACHES OF SETTING OUT IN THE WORLD’ Morgan Dick, author of The Favourite Daughter


‘A COMEDY OF MANNERS FOR ANYONE WHO LOVES CURTIS SITTENFELD, NORA EPHRON, ALISON ESPACH, OR, WELL, ANYONE’ Joanna Rakoff, author of MY SALINGER YEAR


'VIVID, HILARIOUS CHARACTERS AND DELICIOUS DRAMA’ Reader review


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 He has left behind an unpublished manuscript, and Ben and Rebecca are soon vying for the career-making opportunity to publish it.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.

So charming and so accomplished, Hot Desk is by turns hilarious, heart-breaking, satirical, cutting and FUN. I absolutely loved it, and got way more than I bargained for in this dual-timeline tale of love and lust in publishing.

Laura Jane Williams, bestselling author of OUR STOP

About Laura Dickerman

Laura Dickerman has an MA in Fiction from NYU and an MA in English from Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English. She has taught high-school English at the Hopkins School, the Collegiate School for Boys, and Germantown Friends. She was an intern at The Paris Review many, many years ago. At her lowest point, she spent a month temping for her younger brother Colin at Grove/Atlantic where he was critical of her photocopying skills. She’s been a bookclub leader, tutor, and recipient of an NEH grant. She has lived in Vermont, New Haven, New York City, Philadelphia, Brussels, and currently in Atlanta with her husband. They have two grown daughters. Hot Desk is her first novel.
Details
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • ISBN: 9781405972543
  • Length: 368 pages
  • Price: £3.99
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