Publication Date: August 13, 2024
Mad Men meets the world of publishing in international bestselling author Gill Paul’s new novel about Jackie Collins and Jacqueline Susann, two dynamic, groundbreaking writers renowned for their scandalous and controversial novels, and the beleaguered young editorial assistant who introduces them.
1966, NYC: Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls hits the bookstores and she is desperate for a bestseller. It’s steamy, it’s a page-turner, but will it make the big money she needs? In London, Jackie Collins’s racy The World Is Full of Married Men launches her career. But neither author is prepared for the price they will pay for being women who dare to write about sex.
Jacqueline and Jackie are lambasted by the literary establishment, deluged with hate mail, and even condemned by feminists. In public, both women shoulder the outcry with dignity; in private, they are crumbling—particularly since they have secrets they don’t want splashed across the front pages.
1965, NYC: College graduate Nancy White is excited to take up her dream job at a Manhattan publishing house, but she could never be prepared for the rampant sexism she will encounter. While working on Valley of the Dolls, she becomes friends with Jacqueline Susann, and, after reaching out to Jackie Collins about a US deal, she is responsible for the two authors meeting.
Will the two Jackies clash as they race to top the charts? Will Nancy achieve her ambition of becoming an editor, despite all the men determined to hold her back? Three women struggle to succeed in a man’s world, while desperately trying to protect those they love the most.
If you cut your teeth on the bodice-ripping romances popular during the 1980s, chances are you have come across titles by Jackie Collins and Jacqueline Susann.
Both powerhouse writers, Collins and Susann, served as trailblazers for the romance industry in the late 20th century by creating reading experiences full of glitz, glamour, and plenty of smut. These books were a far cry from the tame Harlequin romances of the time.
With Scandalous Women, author Gill Paul sets the stage for a fascinating story in which the lives of the two writers intersect. While the dialog, thoughts, feelings, and events are fictional, the end result is an absolute success.
Tying the book together is fictional feminist publisher Nancy White who makes her first television appearance in 1975 alongside Truman Capote in discussing the value of novels like those written by Jacqueline and Jackie.
The author aptly captures Capote’s outrage amid Nancy’s defense of the strong female characters appearing in the novels. Nancy’s role develops throughout the story as the sole female voice often ignored by the men in the room.
From 1965 and the draft of Valley of the Dolls to Jackie’s debut novel, The World Is Full of Married Men, two years later, a transformation took place as female readers clamored for more in spite of critics rejecting the books.
Scandalous Women delivers a delicious adventure exploring the lives of these literary pioneers, underscoring how their efforts gave birth to the stories of today.
Gill Paul is an author of historical fiction, specialising in relatively recent history. She has written two novels about the last Russian royal family: The Secret Wife, published in 2016, which tells the story of cavalry officer Dmitri Malama and Grand Duchess Tatiana, the second daughter of Russia’s last tsar; and The Lost Daughter, published in October 2018, that tells of the attachment Grand Duchess Maria formed with a guard in the house in Ekaterinburg where the family was held from April to July 1918.
Gill’s other novels include Another Woman’s Husband, about links you may not have been aware of between Wallis Simpson, later Duchess of Windsor, and Diana, Princess of Wales; Women and Children First, about a young steward who works on the Titanic; The Affair, set in Rome in 1961–62 as Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton fall in love while making Cleopatra; and No Place for a Lady, about two Victorian sisters who travel out to the Crimean War of 1854–56 and face challenges beyond anything they could have imagined.
