Agency » (Unabridged)

Ally O’Brien is the pseudonym for a writing duo that includes an international bestselling author of suspense novels and a successful, well-known international entertainment agent based in London. Visit them at www.allyobrien.com.

Meet Tess Drake. She’s earned everything she has. Now it’s time to get what she deserves…

Sexy super-agent Tess Drake has worked hard to make a name for herself in the glamorous yet cut-throat entertainment industry. Tess works at an international agency, where she skillfully manages some of the world's biggest egos—her company, Bardwell International operates in the thrilling, fast-paced worlds of Rights, wrongs and revenge. Tess has been an agent there for longer than she cares to remember and now she's in trouble. Real trouble. After the mysterious death of the agency's senior partner, Lowell Bardwright, Tess's sworn enemy, Cosima Tate, has taken over and would do anything to send Tess's career down in flames. And Cosima is only one of the rogue’s gallery of agents in London and New York who want Tess to take a fall.

Tess has another little complication, too. She’s sleeping with men on both sides of the Atlantic who are in bed with the women who are trying to sink her.

Can Tess jump ship without losing her clients and breaking her heart? Or will she lose everything before finding out if she really has what it takes to do what she’s always wanted?

There’s risk and reward in this wickedly funny novel that turns the world of agenting inside out and lays bare all the ambition, sex, adrenaline, bad luck, and good luck at the center of one young woman’s success.

Publishers Weekly

In this disconnected debut from O'Brien (collaborative pseudonym for a media agent and a suspense novelist), driven London literary agent Tess Drake is an antihero so aggressive and egocentric that she repels friends (and perhaps readers). Steely Tess has the lonely top agent's spot at the Bartwright mega-agency, but pines for her own agency. When the head of Bartwright dies in a compromising position, the Miranda Priestly/Anna Wintour/Cruella DeVille-type who steps in is Cosima Tate, whose husband happens to be one of the men Tess is sleeping with. This spurs Tess's solo plans into action, but it's not long before her gravy train-a bestselling talking-panda children's book author-is derailed by plagiarism accusations. Tess's long shot is an underselling debut novel by 29-year-old Oliver Howard that may net a film deal with Tom Cruise (whose agent Tess has, of course, already burned). The whirlwind drama delves with vigor into reliably stimulating big-city pursuits-sex, power, scene-making, celebrity-but the sadly familiar media-world trappings and distant main character make caring about any of it a difficult proposal. (Feb.)

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