Fantasies

Krantz and Collins may have to move over. Ex-model Sassoon, who co-wrote A Year of Health and Beauty , looks as if she'll be jostling them on the bestseller racks with this snappy, sexy, partly autobiographical first novel. Gorgeous California girl Sloane Taylor breaks free of her domineering mother and runs for New York City. There she launches an international modeling career and marries a business tycoon, whose ex-lover Layla Bronz, editor of the outrageous glossy Realto , gnashes her teeth in fury. Layla sets hungry freelance writer Melon Tuft loose on Sloane, and what rich loam she digs up! Sloane has a kinky addiction to sex with strangers--the Bad Girl Game--that escalates dangerously until she winds up in bed with Mexico's hottest matador, who likes his women rich and bruised. The engagingly warped cast brims with rude charm as Sassoon bulls her way though a serious subject and some ridiculous plot twists with a wild verve that keeps the action bubbling. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates . (Feb.)