{"product_id":"bungalow-2-isbn-9780440242062","title":"Bungalow 2","description":"Danielle Steel takes us beyond the dazzle of Hollywood in her compelling new novel—the    story of one woman’s journey from suburban mom to award-winning screenwriter...and  all the joy, heartbreak, and challenges along the way. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Bungalow 2\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The phone call  came on a hot July day—a day like any other for Marin County mom and freelance writer  Tanya Harris.  But this call—from Tanya’s agent—was anything but ordinary, offering  a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: the chance to write a major Hollywood screenplay,  a dream she had put aside long ago to devote her energies to her family.  This time,  Tanya knows she cannot refuse, even though she’s torn about leaving her husband and  their daughters. From the moment she steps into her lush bungalow at the fabled Beverly  Hills Hotel, Tanya is thrust into an intoxicating new world where she feels reborn—energized  by the creativity swirling around her—yet the pull of her family at home is strong.   \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Suddenly she’s working alongside A-list actors and a Hollywood legend: Oscar-winning  producer Douglas Wayne, a man who always gets what he wants–and who seems to have  his sights set on her. Flying home between shoots, struggling to reconnect with a  family that seems to need her less and less, Tanya watches helplessly as her old  life is pulled out from under her in the most crushing of ways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As her two lives  collide, as one award-winning film leads to another, Tanya begins to wonder if she  can be a wife, a mother, and a writer at the same time.  And just as she confronts  the toughest choice she has faced, she is offered another dazzling opportunity—one  that could recast her story in an amazing new direction, complete with an ending  she never could have written herself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In \u003cb\u003eBungalow 2\u003c\/b\u003e, Danielle Steel takes us into  a world few ever see—a world of fame and fortune, celebrity and genius–daring to  show us the real lives, real dreams, and real struggles hidden beneath the flash  and glitter of Hollywood.“Steel's many loyal readers will be entertained by this story of a dedicated mother  and wife who embarks on a series of life-altering adventures in Hollywood.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePublishers  Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eDanielle Steel\u003c\/b\u003e has been hailed as one of the world’s most popular authors, with over 650 million copies of her novels sold. Her many international bestsellers include \u003ci\u003eCountry, Prodigal Son, Pegasus,\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eA Perfect Life, Power Play, Winners, First Sight, Until the End of Time, The Sins of the Mother, \u003c\/i\u003eand other highly acclaimed novels. She is also the author of \u003ci\u003eHis Bright Light,\u003c\/i\u003e the story of her son Nick Traina’s life and death; \u003ci\u003eA Gift of Hope, \u003c\/i\u003ea memoir of her work with the homeless; \u003ci\u003ePure Joy, \u003c\/i\u003eabout the dogs she and her family have loved; and the children’s book \u003ci\u003ePretty Minnie in Paris.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003ci\u003eChapter One\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was a beautiful hot July day in Marin County, just across the Golden  Gate Bridge from San Francisco, as Tanya Harris bustled around her kitchen, organizing  her life. Her style was one of supreme order. She loved having everything tidy, in  its proper place, and in control. She loved to plan, and therefore she rarely ran  out of anything, or forgot to do anything. She enjoyed a predictably efficient life.  She was small, lithe, in good shape, and didn't look her age, which was forty-two  years old. Her husband, Peter, was forty-six. He was a litigator with a respected  San Francisco law firm, and didn't mind the commute to Ross, across the bridge. Ross  was a prosperous, safe, highly desirable suburban community. They had moved there  from the city sixteen years before because the school system was excellent. It was  said to be the best in Marin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTanya and Peter had three children. Jason was eighteen  and was leaving for college at the end of August. He was going to UC Santa Barbara,  and although he couldn't wait to go, Tanya was going to miss him terribly. And they  had twin daughters, Megan and Molly, who had just turned seventeen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTanya had loved  every moment of the last eighteen years, being a full-time mom to her kids. It suited  her perfectly. She never found it burdensome or boring. The tedium of driving car  pools had never seemed intolerable to her. Unlike mothers who complained of it, she  loved being with her children, dropping them off, picking them up, taking them to  Cub Scouts and Brownies, and she had been head of the parents' association of their  school for several years. She took pride in doing things for them, and loved going  to Jason's Little League and basketball games, and whatever the girls did as well.  Jason had been varsity in high school, and was hoping to make either the basketball  or tennis team at UCSB.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHis two younger sisters, Megan and Molly, were fraternal  twins, and were as different as night and day. Megan was small and blond like her  mother. She had been an Olympic-caliber gymnast in her early teens, and only gave  up national competitions when she found it was interfering with her work at school.  Molly was tall, thin, and looked like Peter, with dark brown hair and endless legs.  She was the only member of the family who had never played competitive sports. She  was musical, artistic, loved taking photographs, and was a whimsical, independent  soul. At seventeen, the twins were going into their senior year. Megan wanted to  go to UC Berkeley like her mother, or maybe UCSB. Molly was thinking about going  east, or to a college in California where she could follow artistic pursuits. She  had been thinking seriously about USC in L.A., if she stayed out west. Although the  twins were very close, they were both adamant about not going to the same school.  They had been in the same school and class all through elementary and high school,  and now they were both ready to go their own ways. Their parents thought it was a  healthy attitude, and Peter was encouraging Molly to consider the Ivy League schools.  Her grades were good enough, and he thought she'd do well in a high-powered academic  atmosphere. She was considering Brown, where she could design her own curriculum  in photography, or maybe film school at USC. All three of the Harris children had  done exceptionally well in school.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTanya was proud of her children, loved her husband,  enjoyed her life, and had thrived in their twenty-year marriage. The years had flown  by like minutes since she'd married Peter as soon as she'd graduated from college.  He had just graduated from Stanford Law School, and joined the law firm where he  still worked. And just about everything in their life had gone according to plan.  There had been no major shocks or surprises, no disappointments in their marriage,  no traumas with their kids as Jason, Megan, and Molly navigated through their teens.  Tanya and Peter enjoyed spending a lot of time with all three of their children.  They had no regrets, and were well aware of how fortunate they were. Tanya worked  in a family homeless shelter in the city one day a week, and she took the girls with  her whenever she could and their schedules allowed. They both had extracurricular  pursuits, and did community service through school. Peter liked to tease Tanya about  how boring they all were, and how predictable in their routines. Tanya took great  pride in keeping it that way, for all of them. Everything about their life felt comfortable  and safe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHer childhood had not been quite as neat and clean, which was why she  liked keeping their life so tidy. Some might have called her life with Peter overly  sterile and controlled, but Tanya loved it that way, and so did he. Peter's own youth  and adolescence had been very similar to the life he and Tanya had created for their  children, a seemingly perfect world. In contrast, Tanya's childhood had been difficult  and lonely, and frightening at times. Her father had been an alcoholic, and her parents  had gotten divorced when she was three. She had only seen her father a few times  after the divorce, and he died when she was fourteen. Her mother had worked hard  as a paralegal to keep her in the best schools. She had died shortly after the twins  were born, and Tanya had no siblings. An only child of only children, her family  consisted of Peter, Jason, and the twins. They were the hub of her world. She cherished  every moment that she spent with them. Even after twenty years of marriage, she couldn't  wait for Peter to come home at night. She loved telling him what she'd done that  day, sharing stories about the children, and hearing about his day. She still found  his cases and courtroom experiences fascinating after twenty years, and she liked  sharing her own work with him as well. He was always enthusiastic and encouraging  about what she did.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTanya had been a freelance writer ever since she'd graduated  from college, and through all the years of their marriage. She loved doing it because  it fulfilled her, added to their income, and she worked at home, without interfering  with their children. She led something of a double life as a result. Devoted mother,  wife, and caregiver by day, and singularly determined freelance writer at night.  Tanya always said that to her, writing was as essential as the air she breathed.  Freelance writing had proven to be the perfect occupation for her, and the articles  and stories she'd written had been well reviewed and warmly received over the years.  Peter always said he was immensely proud of her, and appeared to be supportive of  her work, although from time to time, he complained about her long work nights, and  the late hours when she came to bed. But he appreciated the fact that it never interfered  with her mothering or devotion to him. She was one of those rare, talented women  who still put her family first, and always had.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTanya's first book had been a series  of essays, mostly about women's issues. It had been published by a small publisher  in Marin in the late 1980s, and reviewed mostly by obscure feminist reviewers, who  approved of her theories, topics, and ideas. Her book hadn't been rabidly feminist,  but was aware and independent, and the sort of thing one would expect a young woman  to write. Her second book, published on her fortieth birthday, two years earlier,  and eighteen years after her first book, had been an anthology of short stories,  published by a major publisher, and had had an exceptionally good review in The New  York Times Book Review. She had been thrilled.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn between, she had been frequently  published in literary magazines, and often in The New Yorker. She had published essays,  articles, and short stories in a variety of magazines over the years. Her volume  of work was consistent and prolific. When necessary, she slept little, and some nights  not at all. Judging by the sales of her recent book of short stories, she had a loyal  following both among average readers who enjoyed her work and among the literary  elite. Several well-known and highly respected writers had written her letters of  warm praise, and had commented favorably about her book in the press. As she was  in all else, Tanya was meticulously conscientious about her work. She had managed  to have a family, and still keep abreast of her work. For twenty years, she had set  time aside every day to write. She was diligent and highly disciplined and the only  time she took days off from her writing mornings was during school vacations, or  when the children were home sick from school. In that case, they came first. Otherwise,  nothing kept her from her work. In her hours away from Peter and the children, she  was fanatical about her work. She let the phone go to voice mail, turned off her  cell phone, and sat down to write every morning after her second cup of tea, once  the kids had gone off to school.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe also enjoyed writing in a more commercial vein,  which was the profitable side of it for them, something Peter respected as well.  She did occasional articles for the local Marin papers, now and then for the Chronicle,  on an editorial basis. She liked writing funny pieces, and had a knack with comedic  work, in a wry, witty tone, and now and then she wrote pure slapstick when describing  the life of a housewife and mother, and scenes with her kids. Peter thought it was  what she did best, and she enjoyed doing it. She liked writing funny stuff.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe  real money she'd made, compared to what she made on her articles and essays, was  writing occasional scripts for soap operas on national TV. She had done quite a number  of them over the years. They weren't high literary endeavors, and she had no pretensions  about what she did. But they paid extremely well, and the shows she wrote for liked  her work, and called her often. It wasn't work she was proud of, but she liked the  money she made, and so did Peter. She usually wrote a dozen or so scripts a year.  They had paid for her new Mercedes station wagon and a house they rented for a month  at Lake Tahoe every year. Peter was always grateful for her help with tuition for  their children. She had saved a nice little nest egg from her commercial writing  work. She had cowritten a few miniseries, too, mostly before the market for miniseries  and television movies had been impacted by reality TV. These days no one wanted miniseries  or TV movies, and the only regular work she got for TV was on her soaps. Her agent  called her about a script for a soap at least once a month, and sometimes more often.  She knocked them out in a few days, working late at night while the rest of the family  slept. Tanya was lucky that she needed very little sleep, much to her agent's delight.  She had never made gigantic money for her work, but she had produced steadily for  many years. She was in effect a housewife and writer with stamina and talent. It  was a combination that worked well.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOver the years Tanya's freelance writing had  been a steady, satisfying, and lucrative career, and as the kids got older, she had  plans to write more. The only dream she had that hadn't been fulfilled yet was to  write the screenplay for a feature film. She had persisted in pushing her agent about  it, but to some extent her work in TV made her ineligible. There was very little,  if any, crossover between television and feature films. It irritated her because  she knew she had the skills to do movies, but so far nothing in that vein had come  her way, and she was no longer sure it ever would. It was an opportunity she'd been  waiting for, for twenty years. In the meantime, she was happy with the writing she  did. And the system and schedule she juggled so successfully worked well for all  of them. She'd had a steady flow of work during her entire career. It was something  she did with her left hand, while she tended to her family with her right and met  all their needs. Peter always said that she was an amazing woman, and a wonderful  mother and wife. That meant far more to her than favorable literary reviews. Her  family had been her first priority during all her years of marriage and motherhood.  And as far as Tanya was concerned, she had done the right thing, even if it meant  turning down an assignment now and then, although that was rare for her. Most of  the time, she found a way to fit it in, and was proud of having done that for twenty  years. She had never let Peter or her kids down, nor her work, or the people who  paid her to do it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe had just sat down at her computer with a cup of tea, and  was looking over the draft for a short story she'd started the day before, when the  phone rang, and she heard the answering machine pick it up. Jason had spent the night  in San Francisco, the girls were out with friends, and Peter had long since left  for work. He was preparing for a trial the following week. So she had a nice, peaceful  morning to work, which was rare when the kids were out of school. She wrote far less  in the summer than she did in the winter months. It was too distracting trying to  write when the children were home on vacation, and around all the time. But she'd  had an idea for a new short story that had been bugging her for days. She was wrestling  with it, when she heard her agent leave a message on the phone, and strode rapidly  across the kitchen to pick it up. She knew that all the soaps she wrote for were  on hiatus, so it wasn't likely to be a request for a script for a soap. Maybe an  article for a magazine, or a request from The New Yorker.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe answered the phone  just before her agent hung up. The message he'd left was a request for her to call  him. He was a long-established literary agent in New York, who had represented her  for the past fifteen years. The agency also had an office in Hollywood, where they  generated a very respectable amount of work for her, as much as in New York, sometimes  more. She loved all the different aspects of her work, and had been dogged and persistent  about pursuing her career through all the kids' years of growing up. They were proud  of her, and once in a while watched her soaps, although they teased her a lot, and  told her how \"cheesy\" they were. But they bragged about her to their friends. It  was immensely important to her that Peter and her children respected what she did.  And she liked knowing she did it well, without sacrificing her time with them. There  was a sign on her office wall that said \"What hath night to do with sleep?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I thought  you might be writing,\" her agent said as she picked up. His name was Walter Drucker,  and he went by Walt.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I was,\" she said, hopping onto a high stool near the phone.  The kitchen was the nerve center of the house, and she used it as an office. Her  computer was set up in the corner, next to two file cabinets bulging with her work.  \"What's up? I'm working on a new short story. I think it may turn out to be part  of a trilogy when it grows up.\" He admired her, and the fact that she was unfailingly  professional and conscientious about everything she did. He knew how important her  children were to her, but she still stayed on track with everything she wrote. She  was very serious about her work, and everything she touched. It was a pleasure to  deal with her. He never had to apologize for her missing a deadline, forgetting a  story, going into rehab, or blowing a script. She was a writer to the core, and a  good one. Tanya was a true professional. She had talent, energy, and drive. He liked  her work, although usually he wasn't a short-story fan, but hers were good. They  always had an interesting twist, a surprise. There was something very quirky and  unusual about her work. Just when the reader expected it least, she came up with  a stunning twist, turn, or ending. And he liked her funny stuff best. Sometimes she  made him laugh till he cried.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I've got work,\" he said, sounding vague and somewhat  cryptic. She was still thinking about her story, and not entirely focused on what  he'd said.","brand":"Dell","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305164722405,"sku":"NP9780440242062","price":9.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780440242062.jpg?v=1767723183","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/bungalow-2-isbn-9780440242062","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}