A fast-paced, juicy debut novel that peeks behind the curtain at the cutthroat world of hip-hop music and the glamorous magazine scene in the late 1990s, written by the ultimate insider.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from If I Rule the World by Amy DuBois Barnett, which releases on January 27th 2026.
It’s 1999, and Nikki Rose is the only Black editor on the staff of a prestigious fashion magazine she once thought would be her ticket to becoming a respected editor in chief. But after being told one too many times by her boss that “Black girls don’t sell magazines,” she quits to take over Sugar, a struggling hip hop music and lifestyle magazine with untapped potential.
Thrown into an entirely new world of wealth, decadence, and debauchery, Nikki has just six months to save Sugar—and her own dreams. As she pulls all-nighters at the office and parties with New York City’s most influential bad boys, Nikki must prove she has what it takes to lead. But her most dangerous challenge is evading Alonzo Griffin, her very married, very powerful ex-lover and former boss, who is determined to destroy both her and Sugar. Along the way, Nikki leans on a circle of loyal friends and navigates unexpected romances that force her to reckon with what—and who—she truly wants.
If I Ruled the World is a smart, utterly immersive journey through one of the most dynamic eras in pop culture history—a story of ambition, friendship, love, and finding your own voice.
PROLOGUE
New York City, Spring 1996
I was a live-for-the-moment twentysomething, like every other twentysomething I knew, until one rainy Friday night in the Krispy Kreme on Twenty-Third Street in Manhattan. I was licking raspberry jelly from the fingers of a very rich, very fine, and very married man, when I looked up to see my parents, shaking rain off their huge umbrella and laughing. I might have been able to salvage the situation if my date—his trademark salt-and-pepper locs unmistakable from any angle—had been a stranger to my parents. No such luck. He was my mother’s childhood friend from suburban Chicago. The bond they’d formed as the stray chocolate chips in their high school’s huge snickerdoodle had lasted decades, with Mom even toasting the brides at both his first and second weddings.
Dad spoke first, an uncharacteristic curse word exploding from his mouth: “What the fuck is this, Al?”
My date, Alonzo Griffin—husband, father, and, until that moment, oblivious finger suckee—had his back to the door. But he whipped around at the sound of my dad’s voice.
“Jesus, what are you two doing here?” he asked, the slight tremor in his voice belying his expressionless face.
“Getting a doughnut, I think,” I whispered, shocked into stupidity.
“No shit, Nikki,” Alonzo said. He looked at Mom and implored, “Ann, please . . .”
Hearing her name thawed my frozen mother, who strode over to our table and poked a finger in Alonzo’s chest. In a furious tone, she said, “How could you, Al? This is my daughter.”
Alonzo winced but clearly thought better of rebutting my enraged mom. “Annie,” he spoke in a low tone, my mother’s name both a question and a warning.
“Don’t call me that,” she snapped, then turned to me. “And you, what were you thinking? Tell me, please, what were you thinking?”
I had no response because I honestly hadn’t been thinking at all— unless having a torrid affair with my married boss who was almost twice my age and just happened to grow up with my mother was evidence of deep consideration.
The situation was made worse by the fact that six months prior Mom had called Alonzo, the publisher of Revolutions—a venerable music magazine owned by the even more venerable Park Avenue Publishing—to ask him for help with her wayward daughter.
“Black folks rarely make it to the top, so you’ll likely get stuck near the bottom where the salaries are dreadful. And most magazines are asinine anyway,” she’d wailed when I first brought up my dream of being an editor in chief. After I graduated from college, my English professor mom had begged me to find a job in a respectable and secure field—in her mind, journalism, even as an EIC, did not qualify. But after watching me quit a job in finance, drop out of law school, then waitress while trying to get someone to pay me for my words, I think she began to fear I’d never move out of their Harlem brownstone.
What Mom and Dad didn’t know was that, during my interview process, Alonzo and I had gone out for drinks, one thing led to another, and I’d found myself in a discreet Midtown hotel watching my mom’s old pal unlace his Ferragamo shoes, peel off his Armani suit, and unbutton his Valentino shirt. I’d made love to a few boyfriends by then, but this was something different. Alonzo Griffin had pulled my hair and grabbed my throat and bent me over every piece of furniture in the hotel room, all while whispering that he was going to enjoy taking care of his “good little bitch.” As we were getting dressed afterward, Alonzo had tilted my head up to look into my eyes. “Babygirl, keep this up and you’ll be the editor in chief in no time,” he’d said with a smirk. “But next time I see you, Daddy wants you to have a Brazilian wax. It looks like you sat on a fucking Chia Pet.”
I was tall, wiry, and bookish—the child of two professors—with a residual penchant for denim and kicks. I hadn’t yet figured out the right products for the wild reddish-brown curls that haloed my narrow shoulders, and my newly acquired contact lenses were still a daily struggle to pop in over backlit brown eyes that matched my hair. I had never even heard of a Brazilian wax, and I didn’t know there would be a next time. But Alonzo’s declaration had left zero room for debate.
