The Accidental Bestseller

Once upon a time four aspiring authors met at their very first writers' conference. Ten years later they're still friends, survivors of the ultra-competitive New York publishing world. Mallory St. James is a workaholic whose bestsellers support a lavish lifestyle. Tanya Mason is a single mother juggling two jobs, two kids, and too many deadlines. Faye Truett is the wife of a famous televangelist and the author of inspirational romances: no one would ever guess her explosive secret. Kendall Aims's once-promising career is on the skids-and so is her marriage. Her sales are dismal, her new editor detests her work-and her husband is cheating. Barely able to think, let alone meet her final deadline, Kendall holes up in a mountain cabin to confront a blank page and a blanker future. But her friends won't let her face this trial alone. Together they collaborate on a novel using their own lives as fodder, assuming no one will ever discover the truth behind their words.

No one is more surprised than they are when the book becomes a runaway bestseller. But with success comes scrutiny and scandal...as these four best friends suddenly realize how little they've truly known each other.

Mallory, Tanya, Faye, and Kendall are best friends-and veterans of the cutthroat world of New York publishing. So when Kendall gets writer's block, they all collaborate on her new novel, using their own lives as fodder. And what a bestseller the truth makes.

Anne M. Miskewitch - Library Journal

Wax (Single in Suburbia) offers a warm, triumphant tale of female friendship and the lessons learned when life doesn't turn out as planned. At age 45, Kendall Aims is seasoned but shadowed in her writing career-counting on the famed Zelda Award to validate her work and her life. When she fails to win the award, she loses her publishing contract, then goes home to realize that she may lose her marriage. In the midst of all this disappointment, Kendall is told that she's contractually obligated to write one more book. Her friends Mallory, Tanya, and Faye, all writers with varying degrees of personal and professional success, rally together and help her complete the novel. Because they all passionately agreed to make this an anonymous endeavor, they cathartically share secrets they wouldn't have under their actual names. Little do they know that this joint venture will be such a success-and such a fiasco. Wax sheds insight on the writer/reader relationship and nurtures this invisible bond throughout. Sure to appeal to fans of women's fiction and aspiring writers.

Wendy Wax is the author of seven previous novels. A former broadcaster, she lives in the Atlanta suburbs with her husband and two teenage sons, who have turned her into the shortest member of their family.