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Summary
Summary
"The master of the storytelling game."
--People
Author Notes
Born in Chicago on February 11, 1917, Sidney Sheldon entered Northwestern University on a scholarship in 1935, but was soon forced to drop out due to the Depression. He went to Manhattan in hopes of becoming a songwriter, but decided to try the west coast where he was hired as a script reader by Universal Studios. He had managed to break into screenwriting on a modest basis when World War II broke out. After he was discharged from the Air Force for medical reasons, he began to write musicals and comedies for the New York stage. At the age of 25, he had three musicals playing on Broadway-- Merry Widow, Jackpot, and Dream with Music. He went on to win a Tony Award for the musical Redhead.
Sheldon eventually returned to Hollywood and spent 12 years as a successful screenwriter at both MGM Studios and Paramount Pictures. His acclaim as a screenwriter was capped by the Oscar he won for the screenplay of The Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer (1947). He wrote 25 films during his lifetime including Jumbo and Anything Goes. He won a Screen Writers Guild Award for best musical of the year for Easter Parade in 1948 and for Annie Get Your Gun in 1950. He also wrote and produced several successful television series, including The Patty Duke Show, I Dream of Jeannie, and Hart to Hart.
One of the world's best-selling writers, Sheldon decided to try writing a novel when he got an idea that he could not adapt to a play or a screenplay. His first novel, The Naked Face, won an Edgar for the best mystery novel of 1970. He wrote numerous novels during his lifetime including The Other Side of Midnight, Bloodline, Rage of Angels, If Tomorrow Comes, Windmills of the Gods, and Tell Me Your Dreams. He died on January 30, 2007. His title Sidney Sheldon's Angel of the Dark made The New York Times Best Seller List for 2012.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (1)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Gossip Girl meets Dynasty in Bagshawe's compelling sequel to the late Sydney Sheldon's Master of the Game (1982), which chronicled the sticky power struggles of the Maxwells, America's richest family. A new generation of Maxwells includes Eve, an evil temptress brutally scarred by her controlling cosmetic surgeon husband, and her identical twin sister, Alexandra, an angel in comparison. Alexandra dies giving birth to a daughter, Lexi, while Eve survives the birth of her son, Max. Eve plots to take back the family's business empire, rearing Max to hate and, at age 10, kill his father. Lexi's father, Peter, and her big brother, Robbie, surround Lexi with love, but she's traumatized at age eight when she's kidnapped and raped. Years pass as Lexi and Max square off, while across the ocean "the most famous barrister in London" embarks on a quest that will eventually lead him to Lexi, but not without many shocking twists. Bagshawe (Adored) expertly channels Sheldon's lurid, feverish prose. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Excerpts
Excerpts
Sidney Sheldon's Mistress of the Game Chapter One Danny Corretti looked down through the branches at the swirling mass of people below and felt gripped by a wave of vertigo. "What the hell are we doing here?" Closing his eyes, he tightened his grip around the ancient yew tree, making sure both he and his camera remained concealed in the thick green foliage. "Making money," his companion whispered excitedly. "Look, there she is!" "Where?" Following his friend's line of vision, Danny Corretti trained his zoom lens on a figure huddled in the very center of the crowd of mourners. Dressed head to toe in black, with a thick, floor-length lace mantilla covering her immaculately cut Dior suit, it was impossible to make out her face. She could have been anyone. But she Âwasn't anyone. "Are you kidding me?" Danny Corretti frowned. Below him the churchyard seemed to lurch ominously, the ancient graves rising and falling like Âhorses on a ghoulish carousel. "I can't see shit. Are you sure it's her? It could be Johnny Carson under all that lace." His companion grinned. "Not with that ass it couldn't. It's her all right." From the tree to his left, Danny Corretti heard the low whir, whir, click of a rival camera. Refocusing his zoom, he began to shoot. Come on, baby. Give Daddy a smile. A clear shot of Eve Blackwell's face would be worth a cool hundred grand to whichever photographer got there first. Anyone skilled enough to capture her elusive baby bump could expect to earn twice that. Two hundred grand! Not a lot of money to the Blackwells perhaps, heirs to multibillion-dollar Kruger-Brent, Ltd., the diamond empire turned vast, multinational conglomerate that had made them the richest family in America; but a fortune to Danny Corretti. It was the Blackwells who had brought Danny and his fellow paparazzi to St. Stephen's churchyard on this chill February morning. They had come to bury their matriarch, Kate Blackwell, dead at last at the grand old age of ninety-two. Look at them. Like bloated blackflies, swarming around the old lady's corpse. Revolting. Danny Corretti felt his nausea return, but tried not to think about it, or about the excruciating pain in his back from being stuck up a tree for six straight hours. He longed to stretch out, but didn't dare move a muscle, in case he alerted the Kruger-Brent security guards to his presence. Watching the dour, black-clad figures pace the perimeter of the churchyard, pistols clutched like security blankets to their ex-Marine Corps chests, Danny Corretti felt a stab of fear. He doubted Kate Blackwell had hired any of them for their sense of humor. You'll be okay. Just get the shot and get out of here. Come on, Eve, baby. Say cheese. Danny Corretti wasn't really cut out for this sort of covert work. A tall, skinny man with preternaturally long legs and an unexpected shock of white-blond hair above his Italian olive complexion, there weren't too many hiding places in the Maine churchyard that could accommodate his lanky, six-foot-two frame. The yew tree had been his best option, but he'd had to arrive ludicrously early this morning to beat his rivals to such a coveted vantage point. As he clung to the upper branches now, every sinew of his body felt like it was on fire, despite the numbing cold of the day. He gritted his teeth, cursing his long legs to the heavens. Just think of the money. Ironically, if it Âweren't for his long legs, Danny wouldn't have been on this crazy job in the first place. If it hadn't been for Danny's long legs, his mistress's husband would never have noticed his size-twelve feet sticking out from under the marital bed. Ah, Carla. God, she was beautiful! Those breasts, as soft and succulent as two ripe peaches. No man could resist her. If only that neanderthal she married hadn't punched out early?.?.?.? It was Danny's long legs that had gotten him beaten to a pulp and landed him (uninsured) in the local hospital. Thanks to his long legs, his wife, Loretta, had discovered his affair, divorced him, and taken the house. Now, thanks to his long legs, Loretta's rat-faced lawyer was demanding that Danny pay alimony to the tune of a thousand bucks a month. A thousand bucks? Who did they think he was, Donald friggin' Trump? Yes, Danny blamed his long legs entirely for his current predicament. Why else would he be spending his Sunday morning bent double and freezing his ass off in a four-hundred-year-old tree above a graveyard, risking his neck for one lousy picture of the woman the tabloids had dubbed "The Beast of the Blackwells"? Danny Corretti's long legs had a lot to answer for. He was gonna get that shot of Eve Blackwell if it killed him. The priest's voice rang out through the February chill, deep and strong and powerful. "Merciful God, you know the anguish of the sorrowful?.?.?." Behind her thick veil, Eve Blackwell sneered. Sorrowful? To see that old witch dead and buried? Please. If I Âwere ten years younger I'd be doing cartwheels. Today Eve was burying one of her enemies. But she would not rest until she had buried them all. One down, three to go. "You are attentive to the prayers of the humble?.?.?." Eve Blackwell glanced around at the small group of family and friends who had come to bid her grandmother Kate farewell and wondered if any of them could be described as humble. There was her identical twin sister, Alexandra. At thirty-four, Alexandra was still a great beauty with her high cheekbones, mane of buttermilk hair and the striking gray eyes she had inherited from her great-grandfather, Kruger-Brent's foundÂer, Jamie McGregor. Eve's eyes narrowed with hatred. The same hatred she had felt for her twin since the day they emerged from the womb. How dare she! How dare my sister still look beautiful. Alexandra was weeping openly, clutching tightly to her son Robert's hand. Blond, delicate and sweet-natured, ten-year-old Robert was a carbon copy of his mother. A gifted pianist, he had been Kate Blackwell's favorite, and Kruger-Brent's heir apparent. Not for much longer, thought Eve. Let's see how long the boy lasts without Kate around to protect him. Eve Blackwell felt her chest tighten. How she loathed the pair of them, mother and son and their crocodile tears! If only it Âwere Alexandra's body being lowered into the gaping, frozen earth today. Then Eve's happiness would truly be complete. Beside Alexandra hovered her husband, the eminent psychiatrist Peter Templeton. Tall, dark, handsome and blue-eyed, Peter Templeton looked more like a quarterback than a psychiatrist. He and Alex made a handsome couple. Peter had once been arrogant enough to think he understood Eve. He believed he'd seen through her, through to the molten core of hatred that bubbled deep within. Alexandra, in her goodness, had never been able to see how much her twin sister hated her. But her husband knew better. Sidney Sheldon's Mistress of the Game . Copyright © by Sidney Sheldon . Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Mistress of the Game by Sidney Sheldon, Tilly Bagshawe All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.