My favorite kind of books center on close-knit groups whose lives become enmeshed and whose secrets and agendas get all bunched up and tangled. That's why the office (remember that place???), where everyone: work wives, frenemies, rivals, crushes, secret hookups, are forced into the same room five days a week? Now that is a crucible for interpersonal drama.
That’s why I set my sophomore thriller, The Herd (out 3/24), in an exclusive all-female co-working space in New York City. The Herd (emphasis on the H-E-R) is upended when Eleanor, its beautiful and enigmatic founder, disappears the night of a glitzy press conference, leaving her three best-friends-slash-coworkers scrambling to find her, before they lose their careers, their friendships... and maybe even their lives.
The bougie startup isn’t just an interesting social milieu; it’s also a hotbed of female ambition, where everyone is walking the line between being a beloved team player and standing out from the pack. And that’s the final reason I love office-drama novels — we’re supposed to present the best versions of ourselves at our 9-to-5, but there’s an inherent tension between the company’s best interest and our own.
Here, eight novels that show you should keep your friends close... but your coworkers even closer.
Giant tech company Cloud looks like your average conglomerate, but there are dark secrets hidden in its open-plan offices and enormous warehouses. When Zinnia, an undercover operative, stages an investigation using Paxton, a new Cloud employee, as a pawn, the two begin to realize the corporation is more terrifyingly complex and control-hungry than either could have imagined.
The Assistantsby Camille Perri After a six-year stint as executive assistant to Titan Corp. CEO Robert Barlow, Tina Fontana is still drowning in student loans. So when a technical error with her boss’s expense reports offers Tina the chance to decimate her debt—and that of her fellow assistants—she faces a dilemma: Play by the rules or trade morals for money.
Twenty-two-year-old Tess is a fresh face in New York City and the recent recruit of a well-known downtown restaurant. In the finery of the front-of-house and dimly lit dive bars after hours, she’ll discover the infinite opportunities the fast-paced food industry offers.
In this sweet and funny rom-com, Annie Higgins’ whole life is devoted to making her marketing firm (run out of a hip co-working space!) successful. When the neighboring ad agency’s jokes about her job turn into a bet about whether she can make a stranger a social media star, she accepts—but has no idea her subject is about to challenge her self-perception and priorities.
Reality TV show Goal Diggers becomes too real when Kelly joins the cast with her sister, Brett, and Brett’s former best friend, Stephanie. Producers planned to film a season about five successful women in New York City—but they never thought that their finale would include murder. This feminist whodunit skewers our sky-high expectations for high-achieving women in the darkest, twistiest ways possible.
Google 2007 and you’ll find a link to this satire of the American workplace. In it, the burst dot-com bubble means less work but more gossip, romance, and pranks at one Chicago advertising agency. One last project distracts the staff from their shenanigans: a pro-bono ad campaign for a mysterious client aiming to help breast cancer patients laugh about their disease. Ahh, the mid-naughts.
Bullying from Wall Street’s elitist boys’ club won’t stop Alex Garrett from succeeding in bond sales at Cromwell Pierce. But as soon as she endures enough practical jokes and absurd office errands to be accepted into her colleagues’ ranks, the 2008 financial crisis hits and Alex must decide whether to stay or abandon ship.
Emily Apell and Aeden Doherty start out as competitors in Justin McKinnon’s research lab, but working together transforms their rivalry into a romantic relationship. When Aeden decides to leave the lab, Emily is faced with a choice of her own—one whose consequences she won’t fully understand for years.
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