The Understudy CEO

A database glitch just made her the CEO. She still doesn't know how to use the espresso machine on the executive floor.

Arabella Fairfax has one professional goal: get through the workday without anyone remembering her name. Six quiet years in accounts payable have suited her perfectly.

Then a botched HR data migration accidentally names her Interim Chief Executive Officer of Wyndham & Sterling Industries - for thirty full days, with the real CEO unreachable on a digital detox retreat and no way to undo it.

What follows is equal parts disaster and revelation: a sycophantic VP who agrees with opinions she hasn't had yet, a board member scheming to install his own candidate, a devoted intern who believes in her more than she believes in herself - and a slowly uncovered financial scandal that nobody with an actual MBA ever bothered to notice.

The Understudy CEO is a whip-smart, big-hearted workplace comedy about competence hiding in plain sight, the specific chaos of accidental power, and what happens when the person who actually reads the numbers finally gets a seat at the table.

• A sharp, funny send-up of corporate politics and executive ego
• A genuinely satisfying financial-mystery subplot with real stakes
• A slow-burn workplace romance that never overshadows the comedy
• Eighteen original illustrations, one per chapter