This image is the cover for the book Executive Suite

Executive Suite

Five ambitious executives vie for the top job at a major corporation after the president suddenly drops dead in this classic business novel

Fifty-six-year-old Tredway Corporation president Avery Bullard is getting into a taxi after a business lunch in Manhattan when he collapses from a cerebral hemorrhage. Although his body isn’t immediately identified, the reverberations of his death will soon be felt in the boardrooms of every branch of his company. In the minutes before he died, Bullard had finally decided on whom to appoint as his executive vice president—but he never got the chance to announce his selection. Now, with no successor in place, five corporate VPs—comptroller Loren P. Shaw, treasurer Frederick W. Alderson, design and development director Don Walling, manufacturing chief Jesse Grimm, and head of sales J. Walter Dudley—compete for the top position.

Who will ascend to the executive suite?

From the long-simmering resentments to the startling power plays, insider trading to rapid business decisions and personal dramas, Executive Suite is a riveting novel as well as an authentic and timeless depiction of how a corporation operates and what it takes to succeed in business.

Cameron Hawley

Cameron Hawley (1905–1969) was simultaneously a businessman who rose through the ranks to become a top executive at Armstrong Cork Company and a prolific author of short stories and articles, which frequently appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, Life, and Good Housekeeping. In his midforties, he decided to devote all of his time to writing. The result was Executive Suite, the bestselling, iconic novel about the dynamic men and women who work at the highest levels of corporate America. Executive Suite was produced as a 1954 motion picture that starred William Holden and Barbara Stanwyck, and was nominated for four Academy Awards. Hawley continued to focus on the themes of free enterprise, big-business adventurers, and the pressures of modern life in his later novels: Cash McCall, which was made into a 1960 film starring James Garner and Natalie Wood; The Lincoln Lords; and The Hurricane Years. Hawley lived for many years on a farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where he enjoyed hunting and fly-fishing.

Open Road Integrated Media