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Award-Winning Television Writer/Producer and Society Insider Publishes a Debut Novel That Dishes on What Happens Behind the Closed Doors Within Manhattan’s Most Desirable Zip Codes
ONE FLIGHT UP: A Novel
By Susan Fales-Hill
New York City is home to some of this country’s most wealthy, powerful and influential players. They seem as if they have it all: exclusive charitable galas, the finest restaurants, clothing only seen in the pages of Vogue, the best schools, and most of all, breathtakingly beautiful homes in the most enviable neighborhoods. It all seems picture-perfect until the veil is lifted. What one finds does not necessarily match all of the luxury trappings. Many writers have taken on the task of writing novels set in the world of the fabulously wealthy, but this velvet-roped universe is not foreign to author Susan Fales-Hill. The veteran writer of such iconic comedies as "The Cosby Show, and "A Different World" is a familiar face on New York's gala circuit and on its society pages. In Fales-Hill’s deliciously irresistible debut novel, ONE FLIGHT UP (Atria; July 2010; 978-1-4391-2490-1; $25.00), she combines great humor and her award-winning talent for weaving a page-turner with her insider’s insight into the world of Manhattan’s elite. ONE FLIGHT UP introduces readers to four long-time girlfriends whose history together goes back to their days in grade school at the prestigious Sibley School for Girls on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
India Chumley, Esq., Esme Sarmiento-Talbot, Abby Rosenfeld Adams, and Dr. Monique Dawkins-Dubois have grown up to be successful women who, on the outside, seem to lead the charmed lives about which many can only dream. Yet, lurking behind their thriving and lucrative careers, multi-level brownstones and dazzling wardrobes is a sea of discontent with their love lives. It is the four women’s quest for the ultimate satisfaction in love and sex that leads them each to go where good girls “fear to tread.”
• India is a smart, beautiful, bi-racial divorce attorney and partner at a New York City law firm. Yet, her family history and the handling of a multitude of nasty divorces have made the 37-year-old wary of romance. Her handsome French chef/restaurateur boyfriend loves her unconditionally, and that seems to be enough, that is, until she is faced with her former fiancé and love of her life, Keith Wentworth II. India is forced to decide between the safety net of Julien’s loyalty and the fiery passion and desire she still has for the wealthy, sexy and untrustworthy Wentworth, who is now set to marry someone else. Which man will win the jaded divorce attorney’s heart?
• Esme, the gorgeous Latina heiress who has “the beauty of an MGM screen goddess of yesteryear”, is no stranger to adultery. Her father’s dalliances with an array of mistresses throughout her life continue to haunt her. As much as she despises her father’s behavior, she’s followed in his footsteps as a serial adulterer in her own marriage. Esme is able to woo just about any man, seducing them both physically and emotional. After a night of fantasy sex, she discards her battle-worn conquests and returns to her waiting husband and children at their mansion in Greenwich…until the next tryst. All seems fine in her world until an obsessive lover refuses to leave their evening of passion in the past and Esme ultimately meets her match in the ǘber-wealthy, hot playboy Michael Alders. Will Esme’s infidelities finally catch up to her and destroy her marriage and family? When will her husband, Tim Talbot, decide enough’s enough?
• Abby, the blonde, blue-eyed Jewish gallery owner, married her college sweetheart, Nathaniel, and supported his work as an artist. She has been a devoted mother and wife throughout their nineteen-year relationship. However, a fateful voice mail which reveals her husband to have been unfaithful causes Abby to finally confront herself with honest questions about her marriage. Her husband’s affair also sets Abby on her own quest for passion, which she finds in the tall, athletically blessed musician and her son’s music teacher, Sage. Abby soon finds herself thrust into her own affair and loving every minute of it, until she lays eyes on her husband and his lover enjoying a tender moment. Does her lust for Sage reconcile the rage she feels at her husband for cheating? Was their love and marriage ever truly “real”? Is the marriage even worth saving?
• Monique is a pull-herself-up-from-the-bootstraps black girl who hailed from a working class family but toiled around the clock to become a prosperous gynecologist. Married to Wayne, a man to whom she was never attracted but who had the same drive as she to inhabit the world of influence and affluence, they live in a magnificent brownstone with their children on Hamilton Terrace, Harlem’s answer to Park Avenue. Monique does not initially acknowledge her own flames of desire but when she does, she unleashes every bit of her sexual yearning on an ambulance driver named Hector, who works at the very hospital where she practices and is highly respected. Hector is Monica’s libido drug of choice until he threatens to tear apart the life she has worked so hard to create. Will the passion that Monica feels for Hector mean the end of her marriage and career? How can she stop him from destroying her?
Despite the fact that India, Esme, Abby and Monica live a lifestyle that seems worlds apart from most, readers will easily identify with each woman as she struggles to come to terms with love, life and the price of passion. Fales-Hill puts infidelity front and center in the story with the women as perpetrators rather than just victims. In so doing, she challenges readers, along with her characters, to ask important questions about their own feelings and desires. Against the backdrop of New York City at its more glamorous, ONE FLIGHT UP is poised to be the must-have summer read that will have women buzzing everywhere, from the Hamptons to Martha’s Vineyard to South Beach to West Hollywood.
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About the Author:
Susan Fales-Hill is an award-winning television writer and producer who has worked on shows ranging from The Cosby Show to Suddenly Susan. The author of the critically acclaimed Always Wear Joy, she is a contributing editor for Essence and has written for Vogue, Town & Country, and Travel & Leisure. A graduate of Harvard, Susan lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.
ONE FLIGHT UP: A Novel
By Susan Fales-Hill
Atria
July 2010
9781439124901
$25.00
400pp
