Book excerpt: Alex was a pushover. Alexander pushes back. Alex was a chump. Alexander is a champ. Alex moved in the gutter. Alexander hits the fast lane. Everyone likes Alex Fairfax. He’s dependable, friendly, hardworking. He is also a sucker. A sucker who sits by while his oily coworker maliciously sabotages his advertising career, then steals Alex’s girlfriend from under his very nose. But Alex is a sucker who has finally had enough of “yes sir” and “thank you.” Enough of kowtowing to the powerful. Enough of being polite. So Alex transforms himself into Alexander—avenger of the maligned. Sure, he lost his job and has to share a crummy apartment with a bunch of twentysomething hippies, but nothing will stop Alexander from exacting sweet vengeance on the long list of those who have done him wrong. With the right clothes, the right hair, and the right attitude, Alexander plots to ascend through the ranks of the elite, tear down the company that refused to stand by him, and humiliate his snake of a colleague and disloyal ex-girlfriend. But while pulling off one stealthy stunt after another, wooing away clients and ruining a few choice careers, Alex discovers that being a shark isn’t all glitz and glamour—and that his own heart still beats to a very tender drum. . . . A sharp, edgy, witty novel of delicious revenge, Being Alexander stars the best kind of character—one readers can’t quite decide whether to loathe or to love. But in the end, the fact remains: for Alex to truly find himself, he had to become someone else. The result is an irresistibly wicked comedy of ill-manners.