New York is Losing Hope

Helen Cho, film producer and CEO of a new production company, knows that achieving her career dreams means making hard decisions. With her latest feature film in crisis, she needs a new director immediately. At the top of the very short list of replacements? The woman responsible for breaking up Helen’s marriage.

Nora Darmody’s dreams of a directing career have not panned out as she hoped. When the offer from up-and-coming Propolis Pictures falls into her lap, there’s no way she can say no, even if that means working with Helen Cho. Because the last time Nora checked, their friendship died the moment Nora moved out of her pool house.

Both their careers hang in the balance. If they’re going to work together, Helen has to ignore her angry feelings of betrayal, and Nora must dim the spotlight of attraction that glows whenever Helen reenters the frame. Can they let go of the past and trust each other again, or will old wounds and unspoken feelings derail them before the final cut?

Chef Stef’s passion for her profession is being severely tested. After a disastrous appearance on a cooking competition show, she has become a meme. The entire Internet now knows her as the Kitchen Bawler. Her ascent through the fine dining kitchens of New York City has been thoroughly derailed, but she has a plan to get her career back on track. She’ll make cooking videos on YouTube to foil the algorithm and overhaul her search engine results. One problem: she knows nothing about creating video content.

Enter Mallory Radowski. She’s a talented filmmaker currently earning a living as a wedding videographer, with complicated reasons of her own for her reluctance to help Stef. Mallory lives with anxiety, and is the pickiest eater imaginable. Food—Stef’s love language—is untranslatable to her. How can she make Stef’s food look delicious if she won’t eat any of it?

Stef has to trust that Mallory’s videos can get her cooking food she’s proud of again, but it’s out of the frying pan and into the fire when she starts to fall for her.

When business turns to pleasure, romance ignites. 

In New York is Losing Hope by Nan Campbell: With thirty-five on the horizon and still single, Hope Mason is abandoning her beloved New York City to try her luck in bright, shiny Los Angeles. One problem. This New Yorker is terrified of driving, an essential skill for Californians. She hires instructor Val Caceres to teach her how to drive off into the sunset, but Val could be the one thing she doesn’t want to leave behind.

In Two Women, Two Weddings by Alaina Erdell: Aarti Singh’s brilliance in cardiology hasn’t diminished her longing to be an event planner, even if familial expectations demand a career in medicine. Meanwhile, Jo Samuels’s love life has taken a back seat to her demanding chef career and her desire to keep her life simple. When Aarti hires Jo to cater a wedding, their attraction is undeniable, but how can they fall in love when they’re struggling to be true to themselves?

In For Love or Money by Jesse J. Thoma: Short-seller Frances “Frankie” Sender has always been good at picking winners, but her skills might make her the ultimate loser when a company she is researching frames her for a crime. Her only chance at staying alive is Dakota “Oz” Osborne, a woman with a million-dollar reason to toss her in jail. They’ll have to trust each other and avoid the easy cash out if they want the stock to rise on a chance at love.

The Dream: rich and famous screenwriter of hilarious sapphic rom coms.

The Reality: pushing out trashy celebrity gossip for cash.

The Grand Plan: advance career by engineering a celebrity takedown. 

Fran Underhill’s adoration for the entertainment industry is in flames, transformed into a loathing of celebrity culture and all those who benefit from it. When a personal assistant gig for one of Hollywood’s most popular actresses falls into her lap, Fran is determined to use the experience to her advantage with a series of tell-all articles. Just enough clickbait to get her next screenplay sold. Now if only she can ignore that ferocious and inconvenient attraction to her new employer.

Chelsea Cartwright—actress, mother, and ex-wife to Hollywood royalty—is struggling. A competent new assistant will do much to ease her burdens, but who could predict the intense and long-buried feelings Fran would awaken. And what will the fallout be when she finds out Fran is a member of the gossip media—with Chelsea’s public destruction in her sights.

Despite being the youngest partner at her firm, corporate attorney Davy Dugan is gunning for a recently vacant name partnership—it would mean finally having the power to make a real change in her conservative workplace. But eighty-hour workweeks don’t allow any time with her much younger half-sister, Tally, who doesn’t seem to need Davy in her life anyway.

Davy aims to get back into Tally’s good graces by throwing her a big birthday party, but that means dealing with Tally’s other half sister, Anna. To say Davy and Anna don’t get along is putting it mildly.

When a misunderstanding leads to her boss’s assumption that she and Anna are headed to the altar, Davy sees a way to leapfrog over the competition straight into one of the top spots at her firm. She just has to convince Anna to be her faux fiancée in order to do it and keep her growing attraction in check, of course.