Novels Set in the Publishing World: Editors, Agents, & Publishers

Book Summary

While much of the country was experiencing social unrest in 1919, Harlem felt different. This corner of New York was filled with Black pride, as evidenced in the music, theater, fashion, and arts. Positioned right in the heart of this renaissance is a literary editor for a preeminent Negro magazine named Jessie Redmon Fauset.

The magazine’s founder and editor, W.E.B. Du Bois, tasked Jessie with discovering promising young writers whose words could change the world. Jessie wastes no time finding 16-year-old Countee Cullen and 17-year-old Langston Hughes. She also discovers Nella Larsen, who becomes one of Jessie’s best friends.

Subscriptions soar for the already notable magazine, and every Black writer in the country is vying for the opportunity to be published in The Crisis. Jessie’s career is taking off, but her relationship with her married boss, W.E.B., threatens to jeopardize it all. At a time when she faces both overwhelming sexism and racism, Jessie will have to find a way to balance her drive and her desires if she hopes to preserve her legacy and achieve her ambitious dreams.

Book Summary

Camilla has been on maternity leave from her job as a literary agent, but on June 21st, she’s headed back to work for the first time. But that morning, her husband was gone when she woke up and had left a cryptic note behind.

She drops Polly off at daycare for the first time and tries to focus on her work despite lingering thoughts about the note. Then, the police arrive to tell her there is a hostage situation in London, and her normally optimistic husband is not just involved, he’s the gunman.

This page-turner is told from the split perspectives of Cam and Niall, the hostage negotiator.

Book Summary

Despite Lanie’s successful career as a romance editor and a big promotion on the horizon, she has a difficult task to ensure her step up to editorial director. She must get the publisher’s biggest author, Noa Callaway, to turn in their manuscript, which is already 4 months late. That job seems impossible since no one even knows who Noa Callaway is. There is an NDA in place, no photos, and people don’t even know Noa’s gender. 

Because of the secrecy of Noa’s identity, part of the book is written in epistolary format via emails. That also makes it a slow-burn book, especially in the first half before the romance kicks in. 

Book Summary

Agnes and Polly have been best friends for generations. They are also part owners of a land trust for Fellowship Point, a peninsula on the Maine coast.

The two friends have led very different lives. Agnes is a celebrated author of children’s books. Additionally, she wrote a series of novels under a pseudonym. Polly has three adult sons and is married to a professor with an inflated sense of ego.

Now in her eighties, Agnes wants to ensure that Fellowship Point will be permanently protected by donating the land to a trust. However, doing so requires dissolving the generations-old partnership among the shareholders. Polly finds herself torn between the wishes of Anges and those of her sons.

When a young book editor, Maud, arrives and tries to convince Agnes to write her memoirs, long-buried secrets have repercussions for everyone.

Book Summary

After years of struggling to make it as a writer, James has finally sold his first book – a semi-autobiographical novel about his dysfunctional relationship with his mother. He’s shocked to find out that the editor who has purchased his book is none other than Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

After an embarrassing initial meeting, James and Mrs. Onassis, as she’s known around the office, form an unexpected friendship. By the time his book is finally published, his relationship with his editor has changed him as a writer and as a son.

Book Summary

At 45, Lila is starting a new career as an intern at a literary agency after losing her job as a journalist. Being paid to read is her dream! Her new position is more difficult than she expects, with endless piles of query letters and some quirky co-workers.

Then, an aspiring author drops dead in the waiting room. Lila has an unexpected new task of uncovering a murderer after she finds a series of threatening letters. What is really going on at this thriving literary agency?

Book Summary

Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu came up in the literary world at the same time, but Athena was the industry darling while June watched jealously from the sidelines.

When June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she impulsively decides to steal Athena’s recently finished manuscript about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers during WWI. She edits the work and submits it to her agent as her own. Then, her publisher rebrands her as Juniper Song, and they use an ambiguously ethnic author photo.

She convinces herself that all of this is justified because it’s an important historical story that deserves to be told. When she lands on the New York Times bestseller list, June realizes she won’t be able to escape Athena’s shadow. Evidence begins to emerge that could reveal June’s stolen success. How far will she go to protect what she feels she is owed?

Book Summary

Bryony teaches ESL full-time for her grandmother’s financially struggling organization, The Bridge, but she dreams of becoming an author. She heads to her first writers conference with two big goals: selling her manuscript and raising awareness for The Bridge.

Unfortunately, her pitch session is a disaster. But she manages to get work correcting another author’s work for the Foundry Agency. When that project goes well, Jack, the literary agent, gives her an even bigger opportunity—ghostwriting for a popular rom-com novelist. She agrees on one term—Jack will work to sell her book as well.

Book Summary

Just before 1920, American Sylvia Beach opened Shakespeare and Company, an English-language bookstore on a quiet street in Paris. Soon, the bookstore became a second home to prominent writers like Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce.

When Joyce’s controversial novel, Ulysses, is banned, Beach decides to take a huge risk and publish it under the name of her bookstore in 1922. The book became one of the most infamous and influential books of the century, but that success ultimately threatened the future of Shakespeare and Company.

This book is based on the true story and the real people involved in the publication of Ulysses. It contains many interesting historical details, including comparisons between life in Paris and the US during the 1920s and into the 1930s.

Book Summary

Sawyer is a twenty-something trying to make it in New York, working as an assistant for a publishing company. She’s engaged to her college boyfriend but is extremely lonely in the summer of 1999 as her fiancé keeps working longer and longer hours…with a female coworker named Kendra.

Kendra’s boyfriend, Nick, has the same concerns about the endless hours Kendra is spending at work with Sawyer’s fiancé. After a rough first meeting between Sawyer and Nick, they form a friendship via their AOL Instant Messanger chat. Soon, they start spending every Friday afternoon exploring the city together.

Book Summary

Literary Agent Claire is doing her best to become the number one dealmaker for debut novelists. But now, a long-time rival has scored the client she was pursuing. On top of that, she has to go to sleepy coastal Georgia to deal with an issue with her late mom’s estate.

In Gull Island, she finds a new friend in Philip, a grieving widower and antiquarian book dealer. He’s fascinated with Claire’s career, and she doesn’t share the truth behind his romanticized ideas about her job. Eventually, this makes her question her commitment to chasing seven-figure deals. Is it worth the toll on her relationships, her values, and her literary legacy?

Book Summary

What happens when a reclusive legendary author loses her money in a Ponzi scheme? She’s forced to write a book for the first time in decades, but her eccentric nature has the publisher concerned about their investment.

They send an assistant, Alice, to Mimi’s mansion to keep an eye on the writing progress, but Alice soon ends up spending more of her time with Frank, Mimi’s 9-year-old son.

Frank is witty, stylish, and not at all like the other kids in his school. Alice quickly appreciates his unique personality and becomes obsessed with finding out who Frank’s dad is…and whether family friend Xander is more than a friend.

Book Summary

As a thirty-seven-year-old book editor, Julia thought she had a long life ahead of her. But then the unthinkable happens, and she passes away after a cancer diagnosis. While Julie could have followed the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, she instead had the opportunity to observe her family one final summer at their Fire Island home.

She’ll see how her novelist husband Ben and neighbor Shep navigate grieving as new widowers, along with the lives of their other friends and neighbors. You’ll also see the ways her career as a book editor impacted her life.

Book Summary

Book Lovers is about a literary agent named Nora. When Nora’s younger sister, Libby, begs her to take a month-long summer trip to a small town in North Carolina, she envisions all the possible romance novel tropes that could happen in her own life. Why couldn’t she run into a handsome country doctor and find her happily ever after?

Instead, Nora runs into Charlie, a brooding editor she has encountered several times in the city. While neither of them is the ideal heroine or hero, they keep being thrown together in unlikely situations and must confront the stories they’ve told themselves about who they are.

Book Summary

Florence Day is a romance ghostwriter who no longer believes in romance. She has spent her career as the ghostwriter for one of the most well-known romance writers in the industry. But after a recent breakup with a man who took advantage of her trust and destroyed her self-esteem, she no longer believes in love and can’t seem to write about it either.

With a major deadline looming, and her new editor won’t extend her deadline, her career is in serious danger. Then she gets a call from home that shifts her priorities.

She had an unusual, but very happy childhood growing up in a funeral home in a small town in South Carolina. However, a controversy when she was a teen caused her to flee for college and never turn back. However, after the phone call, she has no choice but to return home for the first time in a decade.

On her first night back, she finds a ghost standing on the front porch of her family’s funeral home. Florence was already convinced that romance is dead… but this complicates things further.