There are two kinds of women who work, says Shepherd Mead, author of How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying and How to Get Rich in TV without Really Trying. One is the Working Girl, the handmaiden of business: She does what men tell her to do - she types, totes coffee, gripes in her cubicle. The other kind is the Career Girl: She thinks like a man, acts like a woman, and can soon end up in a four-window office making more money than anybody.

Marie Frale, new employee at American Household Products, hadn't put many carbons in backward before she got the point.

No drone, she.

It wasn't long before Marie was conniving and psychologizing her way up, up, up. This book tells the story of her dazzling rise from cubbyhole to conference room. Reading it may make you laugh, but some men will find it a sobering if not actually unnerving experience. Here is a new type of femme fatale. It isn't just her figure that gets her to the top, but the way she figures - and her way makes Machiavelli look like Whistler's mother.

Though Shepherd Mead's new novel may seem at first glance to be all for fun, women will at once perceive its down-to-earth usefulness. To the more innocent male executive we say: Read it instantly and be warned. This book is the definitive work on the Four-Window Girl. It also has some definitive things to say about love. Marie is not above losing her heart to a three-window man.