Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination

Helen Fielding, the author of BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY and the reigning queen of chick lit, embarks upon a new genre with this wacky spy thriller. Inventiveness has been the heroine's salvation. It has transformed lonely orphan Rachel Pixley into glamorous journalist Olivia Joules. On the other hand, it has also gotten her into serious trouble, when she is dumped from the international pages of the London Times for her too-florid coverage of a minor locust problem in Africa. While reporting on a star-studded cosmetics launch party in Miami, she meets an enigmatic, sexy playboy named Pierre Feramo, who, to Olivia's eyes, bears a suspicious resemblance to Osama bin Laden. This encounter kicks off a series of events that leads to Olivia's recruitment by British Intelligence. Is Pierre really a terrorist, or is this simply another one of Olivia's free-falling fantasies?