At heart, she's Lois Lane, chasing her big scoop, which is just when "Lois feels so utterly like a stud she doesn't need to be sleeping with one." In real life, Spencer's a young reporter leaving New York City and her dysfunctional family for a new life in North Carolina, writing for Raleigh's News And Observer. Assigned to somewhat underwhelming stories, Spencer focuses on finding herself a hunk—"[a] Raleigh cop, forest ranger, tobacco farmer." Researching a piece on clay pigeon shoots, she picks up what she thinks is her first good ol' boy, figuring on some juicy squirrel-eating stories, only to discover he's an overaged grad student in Asian Studies. Spencer's attracted to "inappropriate men" the same way she writes her news stories: fantasizing herself right into their worlds. While the man-hunting theme sustains the narrative, the dissolution of her father and stepmother's marriage and her unresolved relationship with her pal Mark round out the angst. Salvation for our picaresque heroine comes in the form of the "Ten Thousand Angels Committee," a gang of single women with a decidedly bad attitude. The "law of appropriate returns," they explain to Spencer, cautions women to not have sex on a cheap sushi date, or men will start expecting sex after coffee and a bagel or—heaven forbid—a smoothie. Later this law gets revised, since like communism, it sounds good in theory, but "we're all too greedy" for it to work. Spencer's wit is honest and endearing, and women readers will anxiously await her next hot installment. Agent, Elyse Cheney. (May 21)
Forecast:Author appearances in New York, Raleigh, Memphis and other cities will surely help Spencer's book reach 20- and 30-something women—Dixie Chicks fans and Lower East Side habitués alike.
