Belle in the Big Apple

Parkhurst, former blogger and media gossip staple turned Web-and-TV culinary personality, brings considerable Southern charm and sass (plus some mouth-watering recipes) to her chick lit debut, but there's no mistaking the revenge fantasy at the heart of this tale of struggle and success. The former Fox News Channel correspondent plunks her Mobile, Ala., debutante narrator, Belle Lee, at a smarmy news network, where she begins her rise to the media heap from the very bottom. Determined not to be trampled, Belle turns supersleuth and discovers the sticky political web woven by her American News Channel bosses and uses the goods as leverage to get her own pieces on air. “Even if I had to work for horn dogs and thieves... I would produce a piece that would get me a job as a 'real' journalist,” Belle vows in a “never go hungry again” moment. Predictably, Belle breaks out from under the bad guys and shifts her professional focus to something more heartfelt. There aren't any surprises, but the tartly told story is a genuine guilty pleasure. (Sept.)