Secrets
Danielle Steel
Language: English
Pages: 442
ISBN: 0440176484
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Danielle Steel, America’s number-one best-selling novelist, has held millions spell-bound with such novels as Family Album, Full Circle, and Changes. But with Secrets she takes her readers beyond the tightly knit world of the family, into the heart of the nation’s most glamorous industry: television.
Here is the drama behind the creation of Manhattan, a first-of-its-kind prime-time television series produced by Melvin Wechsler. Tempered by tragedy, seasoned by success, a man with a Midas touch, Mel Wechsler will assemble a dazzling cast:
Sabina Quarles at forty-five has managed to maintain–by dint of spunk and surgery–the body of an eighteen-year-old. Tough, spirited, and self-sufficient, she has survived twenty years in Hollywood, never marrying, never quite succeeding, never deigning to work in television. Yet Manhattan may bring her both the stardom she craves–and the security her very special needs require.
Jane Adams is an earthy thirty-nine-year-old beauty. Devoted to her children, dominated by her abusive and violent husband, forced to choose between her husband and her acting career, Jane may find that her role in Manhattan has cost her everything that matters most.
Zack Taylor, the leading man, is a paragon of professionalism. Yet beyond the smooth good looks, the easy warmth, and the slick charm of the eligible bachelor, he remains an enigma.
The charming ingenue, Gabrielle Thornton-Smith, seems to have appeared out of the blue. Beautiful, talented and on the brink of success at twenty-five, what can she have to hide?
And Bill Warwick, plucked from the ranks of struggling young actors, is now slated to be the nation’s new heartthrob. But he has lied about one issue in his background. Not only will Bill’s future hang in the balance, but the success of the whole series may be jeopardized when he is forced publicly to confront the consequences of his little white lie.
Set in Los Angeles and New York, Secrets carries the reader behind the scenes into the making of a major television series. Probing even deeper beneath the polished surfaces, Danielle Steel explores the dilemmas both men and women, in and out of the searchlight of the media, confront today. She paints a vivid, compelling picture of a sophisticated world and the surprisingly real problems of the people who inhabit it.
Here Danielle Steel delineates her richest and most complex cast of characters, people forced together by extraordinary circumstances who must perform even when they're torn apart by their deepest secrets.
fancy hospital and get her to clean up. But for the moment that was out of the question. He was thirty-two years old, married to a drug addict, and he was sick and tired of being an unemployed actor. He had been to every audition he’d heard of for months, and lately no one wanted him. He’d done two commercials earlier that year, big ones, thank God, but even that money had finally run out. There would be residuals eventually, but not for a long time, and in the meantime, he was going to have to
him and it made his agent nervous. “Bill … I have to go now….” He could hear voices as she hung up the phone, harsh voices, voices of cops, and suddenly it came home to him, where she was, and what it would be like for her. And he couldn’t stand it. She was so fucking helpless, and he was so tired of rescuing her, but he felt as though he had no choice. He took a drag on his cigarette and dialed his agent. “How’d you do at the last call?” The agent sounded surprised to hear from him at home,
for a last time, never seeing the tears that ran slowly from her eyes as she looked at him. Chapter 5 Jane walked onto the familiar set with a knot in her stomach the size of Boulder Dam. She saw the faces of the carpenters she knew so well, the sound men, the gaffers she had known for years. And all of them were dear to her. She baked cookies for them, brought cakes, knitted for their babies when they came. She cared about everyone, and she needed all of them. Needed them for her
night. There was no one she wanted to talk to. Her life on Our Secret Sorrows was a thing of the past, her career was over at last, just as Jack had wanted so long ago, and life looked bleak to her as it stretched ahead. Bleaker than it ever had before. And mercifully, she was asleep, still wearing her clothes, when Jack came home that night. And having had too much to drink, he passed out before he had a chance to begin the nightly sex ritual with his wife. He left her alone, dressed,
thinking how nice you are … what a good actor, and what a nice man, and that I like you a lot.” His eyes met hers. “I like you too … you’ve become very special to me.” She had the feeling he wanted to say more, but he never did. They started talking about the others instead. Gabby, and Sabina and Mel, and Bill who was still so difficult. “I wish he’d ease up on Gabby. He’s so hard on her.” “Sometimes I think he’s half in love with her.” It was very perceptive of him, but Jane looked shocked.