A Window Opens

Glamour magazine books editor Elisabeth Egan has recommended great reads for years. With A Window Opens, Egan is now sure to become a highly recommended author in her own right.

Alice Pearse has three beautiful children, a sexy husband, a sweet but neurotic family dog and a fulfilling part-time job as an editor at You, a women's magazine. Life is comfortable, sweet and safe. Then her husband, Nicholas, learns his law firm has no intention of offering him a partnership and decides to hang his own shingle. Panicked at the loss of Nick's income and the cost of starting an independent practice, Alice realizes she must quit You and find a full-time job.

After a few dead-end leads, Alice lands a position as a content manager at a hot new startup called Scroll. A subsidiary of giant retail corporation MainStreet, Scroll plans to "reinvent the bookstore experience" by offering physical stores where customers will browse e-books instead of hardbacks, lured in by the promise of cushy reading lounges complete with leather armchairs and foot massages.

Egan offers a gentle but telling look at a time when having it all often means doing too much, and crossing the line between working mother and overworking mother is all too easy. She has given readers a heroine who could be anyone's best friend as well as written a first-rate satire of big retail's attempt to roll books into the pervasive one-stop shopping, one-size-fits-all mentality. Alice's open window will give readers a breath of fresh air. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

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