Shark Season - Paperback

by Simone Sinisterra (Author)

A fast-moving, satirical and hilariously funny novel about one woman's fish-out-of-water adventures in the glamorous but vicious shark tank of cable TV news. Heather Scalzi wants to reach the top. Firmly concealing her own blue-collar origins, she climbs the ladder in Big Law by carefully imitating the opinions and tastes of the global elites she wants to join. But she's double-crossed by powerful Clemence Rosenthal, who tells her that "Careers are like sharks - they move forward or they die," while also stealing Heather's boyfriend. Out of a job and out of money, Heather is desperate. To her horror she ends up at right-wing cable network Siren News, owned by British media titan Guy Starkadder, his two quarreling sons Rowan and Tom, and their wives -- pretentious Aussie lingerie model Amelia and super woke socialite Jane. Worse, Siren News is operated by legendary CEO Robert Bruce - fat, crude, brilliant - and its biggest onscreen stars, arrogant ladies' man Ryan Cassidy and sexy Catelynne Jones, who always gets her own way. While Heather's embarrassing working-class suburban parents are thrilled with her new job, her lefty Harvard friends - including prickly feminist Allison Smother -- are repulsed. Heather's world at Siren News is a farcical cross between The Tudors and Game of Thrones, unfolding against the raucous backdrop of the 2016 presidential race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the race that everyone who is anyone knows Hillary will win. Sexual harassment charges and political correctness are weapons; ambition and resentment run rampant. Even as Heather claws her way up, she begins to realize that even greater complications lie under the surface. These sharks demand a price. How far is she willing to go?