The Invention of Clay Mckenzie

When junior editor Stephanie Masters stumbles upon a literary gem in her employer's slush pile she envisions a rose-strewn path to becoming the youngest publisher at Icon. When she learns that she has hitched her hopes to an author who is unable to promote his own book she joins with her movie agent friend Beverly to concoct a scheme to create a fiction of her own - a marketable author who will appease her employer and charm the reading public. Hitting the bestseller charts from the beginning, the money she expects doesn't seem to be materializing. She learns that her ex-boyfriend, a seedy lawyer she hired to front the company, he has been siphoning off cash to pay his gambling debts and repay startup money he borrowed from a loan shark. Hungry for cash, he undervalues the movie rights but every day they fall further behind and more into debt. Using his control over the company, he has plunged them into a shadowy world of intrigue, deception and lies. In the midst of this chaos, with the author, Beverly and the publishing house looking for answers, Stephanie struggles to find a way to keep her job, retrieve the company from imminent ruin and keep the public from finding out they have been duped