Gilbert Selwyn and Friends Books In Order
- Blue Heaven (1988)
- Putting on the Ritz (1991)
- My Lucky Star (2006)
Gilbert Selwyn and Friends Book Covers
Joe Keenan Books Overview
Blue Heaven
Meet Gilbert and Moira the strangest couple to ever marry for other people’s money. New York; 1991: Gilbert Selwyn, a young man possessed of boundless charm and an allergy to employment, has devised a plan to wring a nice pile of loot from his mother’s newest and obscenely wealthy husband. The scheme, simply put, is to get married for the gifts. But Gilbert, who’s gay, needs a fiancee…
Enter Moira Finch, a demonically conniving young woman whose own mother, having recently married the Duke of Dorsetshire, will contribute richly to the couple’s receipts. Enter, too, Philip Cavanagh, Gilbert’s longtime friend, former lover, and highly strung Best Man. And enter, finally, the Cellinis, Gilbert’s huge internecine stepfamily, whose fortune has not been amassed as innocently as Gilbert first thought, and who conform rather more closely to Italian American stereotypes than Gilbert would like to believe…
As Gilbert, Moira, and Philip struggle to keep their plot under wraps, the scams get bigger and more perilous, deceit multiplies, and a wonderfully calamitous trail leads us toward what could be the wedding of the season.
Putting on the Ritz
A deliciously, maliciously deft comedy of bad manners, high society, financial skulduggery, and romantic infighting. Roll over, Wilde, Wodehouse, and Noel Coward! Joe Keenan is back and so are his ineffable creations, Philip Cavanaugh and Gilbert Selwyn, the hilariously witty duo who’ve turned social climbing into a form of terrorism. In Putting on the Ritz, they invade the entourage of a tasteless New York real estate and media magnate, try to turn his talentless wife a woman so rich she ‘ovulates Faberge eggs’ into a chanteuse, and vie for the affections of a paralyzingly suave magazine editor in a novel whose comic complications, dizzying repartee, and cast of high hat lowlifes are nothing less than irresistible.
My Lucky Star
The luckless writing team of Philip Cavanaugh and Claire Simmons is lured to Hollywood by their shifty pal Gilbert’s offer of an improbably high profile screenwriting gig. The job proves even more ill gotten than they d feared, but just as Claire packs her bags, enter sexy megastar Stephen Donato, the monarch of Philip s fantasies and a man with a Problem. Stephen, secretly gay, has gotten wind of a memoir to be penned by his aunt Lily, a washed up actress with more than enough TNT to blow the hinges off his closet. Philip, smitten, proposes a bargain: if they can write Stephen s next picture, Philip will do double duty as Lily s ghostwriter, providing Stephen a spy and an agent of influence in the enemy camp. What could go wrong?Well, for starters there s the arrival of Moira Finch, the trio s old nemesis and as cunning a wolf as ever donned a sheep suit. Thanks to Moira s machinations, Philip soon finds himself center stage in a rapidly escalating fiasco involving call boys, blackmail, enraged publicists, vengeful DAs, and the single most ill judged sex act a married megastar has ever committed. Written with the manic brilliance and nonstop hilarity Keenan brought to both his previous two Philip and Gilbert books and the dizzy farces he scripted for Frasier, My Lucky Star sends up Hollywood pretense higher than it s ever been sent before.
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