1913. The most famous hotel in the world. Two managers. One building. No chance of peace.

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William Winfield walks through the front doors of the Waldorf-Astoria the way he does everything — beautifully, recklessly, and on someone else's dime. A society man with an empty bank account and a smile that costs nothing to produce and everything to maintain, he's been hired to manage the Waldorf, the western half of the greatest hotel in New York. He has charm, instinct, and absolutely no idea what he's doing.

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Edmund Byrne enters through the service entrance. The son of a Boston ironworker and an Irish immigrant mother who scrubbed the floors of Beacon Hill, Ned has clawed his way from bellboy to hotel owner on discipline, preparation, and the quiet fury of a man who has spent his life watching wealth from the wrong side of the lobby. He's been hired to manage the Astoria — the eastern half. He has a notebook, a plan, and no patience for men like Will.

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Between them: three hundred feet of Italian marble. Peacock Alley. The hyphen. The corridor connecting two buildings built by feuding Astors, now connecting two men who will spend the next sixteen years locked in a rivalry that will test every room, corridor, and secret the hotel holds.

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A world war sinks their greatest guest to the bottom of the Atlantic. Prohibition shuts down the most powerful bar in New York. A fire threatens to destroy everything. A buried document could tear the building apart. And through it all, Will and Ned discover that the fight between them may be the only thing keeping the Waldorf-Astoria alive — because a hotel built on spite has always needed two people who refuse to agree in order to survive.

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From the Lusitania to Lindbergh, from the age of champagne to the eve of the crash, The Hyphen Wars is a story about the distance between any two people — and what happens when neither one is willing to let that distance win.