Melville House Books

What it's all about

Tatiana Boncompagni Hoover, the wife of an heir to the Hoover vacuum cleaner fortune, has sued her own sister for stealing the manuscript of a novel off her computer, claiming co-authorship, copyrighting it and posting excerpts. The novel, Hedge Fund Wives, was slated for publication by HarperCollins in May, 2009. and an exclusive copyright for Hoover had already been obtained. A Reuters wire story reports that “according to Hoover, the two women were never co-authors,” and her sister, Natasha Boncompagni, “learned about the book during family gatherings,” and soon after “misrepresented herself as the novel’s co-author after stealing a copy of the manuscript from Hoover’s personal computer while visiting her New York apartment.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.