Workhorse

＂Fierce, funny and unflinching.＂--Coco Mellors, New York Times bestselling author of Blue Sisters

A richly drawn, unsettling, and wickedly funny story of envy and ambition set against the glamor and privilege of media and high society in New York City at its height.

At the turn of the millennium, Editorial Assistant Clodagh ＂Clo＂ Harmon wants nothing more than to rise through the ranks at the world’s most prestigious fashion magazine. There’s just one problem: she doesn’t have the right pedigree. Instead, Clo is a ＂workhorse＂ surrounded by beautiful, wealthy, impossibly well-connected ＂show horses＂ who get ahead without effort, including her beguiling cubicle-mate, Davis Lawrence, the daughter of a beloved but fading Broadway actress. Harry Wood, Davis’s boarding school classmate and a reporter with visions of his own media empire, might be Clo’s ally in gaming the system--or he might be the only thing standing between Clo and her rightful place at the top.

In a career punctuated by moments of high absurdity, sudden windfalls, and devastating reversals of fortune, Clo wades across boundaries, taking ever greater and more dangerous risks to become the important person she wants to be within the confines of a world where female ambition remains cloaked. But who really is Clo underneath all the borrowed designer clothes and studied manners--and who are we if we share her desires?

Hilariously observant and insightful, Workhorse is a brilliant page-turner about what it means to be in thrall to wealth, beauty, and influence, and the outrageous sacrifices women must make for the sake of success.

From 2014 to 2019, Caroline Palmer worked at Amazon Fashion as the Director of Editorial, Video and Social Media. Prior to her tenure at Amazon, she spent seven years as the Editor of Vogue.com. Currently, she is an advisor at XRC Ventures, a venture firm and accelerator in New York and a consultant for fashion, technology, and beauty brands. She sits on the Foundation Board at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York and serves on the Fashion Department Advisory Council at the University of Delaware. She has worked for The New York Times, Seventeen magazine, Vogue (in the features department from 2001-2004) and The Public Theater, and her work has appeared in numerous other publications. She lives in Montclair, New Jersey with her husband and three children.