Unsuitable Company — Judith Green

The glamour of high society, the power of the boardroom, behind-the-scenes gossip, blackmail and steamy sex--all these are dramatized by a good mix of characters and with flashes of humor. John "J.K." Kaplan, an Englishman who's clawed his way to the upper crust of society and the top of the business world, aims to take over an American company, Wheaton Industries. J.K. plans to augment his trappings--which include his glitzy, aristocratic wife, Zara--by purchasing an $11-million New York City penthouse. But Wheaton founder George Wheaton and his outspoken, all-American wife, Erica, want the same apartment, as an alternative to their Nebraska home. J.K.'s old friend and business partner, Archer Blair, happens to live in the same building; when his affair with Zara is discovered, a blackmailer forces him to push the co-op board to choose the Wheatons despite their Midwestern gaucheries. An anticlimactic bidding war for Wheaton shares pits the Wheatons' homespun virtues against J.K.'s lust for money and power, with predictable results. 1991 Erica Wheaton, ex-Miss Nebraska, second wife of George Wheaton of Wheaton Industries, is in love with the Carnegie penthouse at 823 Park Avenue. So is Lady Zara, high-society second wife of J.K. Kaplan, self-made British magnate. J.K. lusts after Wheaton Industries. And George has hired gigolo Gary Dellos to spy on J.K. by bedding the daughter of Archie Blair, J.K.'s best friend, Zara's lover, and the head of the co-op board. Thus begins another romp through the boardrooms and bedrooms of the new and old rich, with the emphasis on the new.