Ghosts of Manhattan: A Novel

Summary

This wryly comic,first-person fiction debut offers a withering view of life on Wall Street fromthe perspective of an unhappy insider who is too hooked on the money to find away out, even as his career is ruining his marriage and corroding his soul.

It’s 2005. NickFarmer is a thirty-five-year-old bond trader with Bear Stearns clearingseven-figures each year. The novelty of a work-related night life centering onliquor, hookers, and cocaine has long since worn thin, but Nick remains keenlyaddicted to his annual bonus. But the lifestyle is taking a toll on his marriage—andon him.

When a nerdyanalyst approaches him with apocalyptic prognostications of where Bear’shigh-flying mortgage-backed securities trading may lead, Nick is presented withthe kind of ethical dilemma he’s spent a lifetime avoiding. Throw in a hotfinancial journalist who seems to be more interested in him than in the percolatingfinancial Armageddon—and the prospect that his own wife may have found a newromantic interest of her own—and you have the recipe for Nick’s personal andprofessional implosion.

By turns hilarious and harrowing, Ghosts of Manhattan takes listenersinto the rarified world of a winning but flawed character as he struggles tofind the right path in a complicated urban heart of darkness.