Wendy Wax - Magnolia Wednesdays

Table of Contents

PRAISE FOR The Accidental Bestseller

A beautiful book about loyalty, courage, and pursuing your dreams with a little help from your friends.

Karen White, author of The Lost Hours

A terrific story brimming with wit, warmth, and good humor. I loved it!Jane Porter, author of Easy on the Eyes

A wry, revealing tell-all about friendship and surviving the world of publishing.

Haywood Smith, New York Times bestselling author

This was a truly enjoyable book... I will be keeping an eye out for future titles by this author.

Night Owl Romance

A definite must for any beach bag this summer... A little bit Sex and the City with a dash of The First Wives Club .

Sacramento Book Review

Funny and wry and tearful; its about womens lives, insecurities, and ambitions, about loyalty and friendship and making mistakes. The Accidental Bestseller is no accident.

LibraryJournal.com

Entertaining... Provides a lot of insight into the book business, collected, no doubt, from Waxs own experiences.

St. Petersburg Times

A warm, triumphant tale of female friendship and the lessons learned when life doesnt turn out as planned... Sure to appeal.

Library Journal

Titles by Wendy Wax

7 DAYS AND 7 NIGHTS
LEAVE IT TO CLEAVAGE
HOSTILE MAKEOVER
SINGLE IN SUBURBIA
THE ACCIDENTAL BESTSELLER
MAGNOLIA WEDNESDAYS

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

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Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Copyright 2010 by Wendy Wax.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

BERKLEY is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

The B design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley trade paperback edition / March 2010

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wax, Wendy.

Magnolia Wednesdays / Wendy Wax.Berkley trade pbk. ed. p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-18570-4

1. Women journalistsFiction. 2. Suburban lifeFiction. 3. Female friendshipFiction. 4. GeorgiaFiction. 5.Domestic fiction. I. Title.

PS3623.A893M34 2010

813.6dc22

2009039878

http://us.penguingroup.com

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It would be nice if a book sprang completely out of the imagination fully formed with all the pertinent details in place. I keep waiting for this to happen, but each time there are countless things that need to be identified and understood to make characters and their environments feel real. The Internet is a great place to start, but for me theres nothing like a live person willing to talk about what they do and know.

This time out, Id like to thank Phyllis DeNeve, owner of Atlanta Dance, and her instructors, especially Vonnie Marie Heard, for introducing me to ballroom dance and for allowing me to observe belly dance. It took me a while to realize I was better off watching than participating. Eight years of ballet should have made me a lot more graceful than I am!

Thanks, too, to Marcia Kublanow and Rita Silverman for sharing their knowledge of New York City and for helping me find a place for Vivien to live. And to Trish Coughlin Higgins for bringing Stone Seymour, senior international correspondent, to life. I also want to thank Rebecca Ritchie, interior designer, who is not only talented but knows how almost everything works, for her input on the interiors of Magnolia Hall and Melanies Magnolia Ballroom.

I owe a big thank-you to Chief J. C. Mosier, precinct one constables office, Harris County, Texas, for giving me the information I needed in a way I could understand.

And as always Im grateful to Karen White, unflagging critique partner and friend, for not allowing me to settle for the things in the box. Im glad were on this road together.

W ELL-BRED GIRLS FROM good southern families are not supposed to get shot.

Vivien Armstrong Grays mother had never come out and actually told her this, but Vivi had no doubt it belonged on the long list of unwritten, yet critically important, rules of conduct on which shed been raised. Dictates like Always address older women and men as maam and sir and Never ask directly for what you want if you can get it with charm, manners, or your family name. And one of Viviens personal favorites, Although its perfectly fine to visit New York City on occasion in order to shop, see shows and ballets, or visit a museum, theres really no good reason to live there.

Vivien had managed to break all of those rules and quite a few others over the last forty-one years, the last fifteen of which shed spent as an investigative reporter in that most Yankee of cities.

The night her life fell apart Vivi wasnt thinking about rules or decorum or anything much but getting the footage she needed to break a story on oil speculation and price manipulation that shed been working on for months.

It was ten P.M. on a muggy September night when Vivien pressed herself into a doorway in a darkened corner of a Wall Street parking garage a few feet away from where a source had told her an FBI financial agent posing as a large institutional investor was going to pay off a debt-ridden commodities trader.

Crouched beside her cameraman, Marty Phelps, in the heat-soaked semidarkness, Vivien tried to ignore the flu symptoms shed been battling all week. Eager to finally document the first in a string of long awaited arrests, shed just noted the timeten fifteen P.M.when a bullet sailed past her cheek with the force of a pointy-tipped locomotive. The part of her brain that didnt freeze up in shock realized that the bullet had come from the wrong direction.

Marty swore, but she couldnt tell if it was in pain or surprise, and his video camera clattered onto the concrete floor. Loudly. Too loudly.

Two pings followed, shattering one of the overhead lights that had illuminated the area.

Heart pounding, Vivien willed her eyes to adjust to the deeper darkness, but she couldnt see Marty, or his camera, or who was shooting at them. Before she could think what to do, more bullets buzzed by like a swarm of mosquitoes after bare flesh at a barbecue. They ricocheted off concrete, pinged off steel and metal just like they do in the movies and on TV. Except that these bullets were real, and it occurred to her then that if one of them found her, she might actually die.