From the author of Double Indemnity, a tale of an ambitious young waitress whose fairy-tale romance may have an unhappy ending . . . Carrie Selden is not at all like the woman you've read about in the papers. Though she spent time in an orphanage, she isn't an orphan. She didn't finish high school until she was nineteen, not because she struggled to make the grade but because she was waitressing tomake the money she needed. . And though Carrie is very cunning, well, she's no femme fatale. But her beauty . . . oh yes, her beauty is everything you've heard. At twenty-one, Carrie takes her savings and moves to New York City, landing a job at a diner called Karb's, at the bottom rung of the restaurant chain's tall corporate ladder. Though she makes minimum wage, Carrie is smart, and it isn't long before she starts to climb. When her coworkers unionize, they choose her as president, and from there, the sky is the limit. But just as the union gets underway, she meets a mysterious intellectual named Grant—who will either help her rise to the top, or drag her straight down to hell. "James M. Cain is one novelist who has something to teach just about any writer, and delight just about any reader." —Anne Rice, #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Interview with a Vampire