I think the book is probably Planets for Sale, 1954, by A.E. van Vogt and/or his wife E. Mayne Hull.
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?120781https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?120781
The book is a collection of short stories published from 1943 to 1946 turned into a novel.
The setting is a newly settled star cluster, the Ridge Stars, with a frontier society and Gilded Age robber baron type business practices.
In the first story, "Competition", a woman is travelling to the Ridge stars to the planet where her sister lives, but the liner is going to take the pasengers to anther planet, holding a rigged election to decide where to go, and when she finds out she is held prisoner until the ship lands. After being released from the ship, her troubles begin.
One feature of "Competiton" and Planets for Sale, is that the main planet is a double planet, with the other planet now dead and lifeless, except from a lizard person known as the Skal thing who has a castle that the more ruthless rich men use for their dirty doings. If you remember that, Planets for Sale is the book you are thinking of
