Excerpt from The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Not bad, I thought, looking in one of the omnipresent full-length mirrors. You might not even know that mere minutes before I was hovering precariously close to murdering myself and everyone around me. I strolled confidently into the assistants' suite outside Miranda's office and quietly took my seat, looking forward to a few free minutes before she returned from lunch.

"And-re-ah," she called from her starkly furnished, deliberately cold office. "Where are the car and the puppy?"

I leaped out of my seat and ran as fast as was possible on plush carpeting while wearing five-inch heels and stood before her desk. "I left the car with the garage attendant and Madelaine with your doorman, Miranda," I said, proud to have completed both tasks without killing the car, the dog, or myself.

"And why would you do something like that?" she snarled, looking up from her copy of Women's Wear Daily for the first time since I'd walked in. "I specifically requested that you bring both of them to the office, since the girls will be here momentarily and we need to leave."

"Oh, well, actually, I thought you said that you wanted them to--"

"Enough. The details of your incompetence interest me very little. Go get the car and the puppy and bring them here. I'm expecting we'll be all ready to leave in fifteen minutes. Understood?"

Excerpted from The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger Copyright© 2003 by Lauren Weisberger. Excerpted by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.