Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell’s new novel leaked online by celebrity hacker Guccifer

Candice Bushnell's new novel has been leaked online (Getty Images)

The first 38,000 words of an unpublished novel by Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell has been leaked online by a hacker.

The writer, who inspired the successful TV series Sex and the City starring Sarah Jessica Parker, is the latest victim of a celebrity hacker who uses the pseudonym Guccifer.

According to Gawker the hacker tweeted the first 50 pages of Bushnell’s new novel, Killing Monica, from Bushnell’s official Twitter account. This was followed by screenshots of emails showing the author’s frantic emails to her agent trying to get the book taken down (“My husband thinks you can cancel a tweet”).

At 2.12pm yesterday Bushnell’s Twitter account announced: "Here you can read my last book 'Killing Monica' first 50 pages; enjoy as long as you can!" (sic) with a link to a Google Drive containing screenshots of emails between Bushnell and her publisher.

The hacker Guccifer has previously targeted George W Bush, Hillary Clinton’s aide Sidney Blumenthal, Colin Powell and other political figures.

In 2008 Twilight author Stephenie Meyer abandoned plans for a new novel after an unfinished draft was leaked on the internet. “I feel too sad about what has happened to continue working on Midnight Sun, and so it is on hold indefinitely,” she wrote at the time.

Girls creator Lena Dunham had a 64-page book proposal for Not That Kind Of Girl leaked online.