FATIMA'S GOOD FORTUNE

In this airy debut by an expat husband and wife team, an unlucky Tunisian spinster finds life and love in the City of Lights. Fatima Monsour is summoned to Paris when her sister, the Countess Poulais du Roc's maid, is killed in a freak accident. Things get off to a rocky start, as Fatima botches the countess's espresso order; almost loses her employer's beloved dog, Emma; and buys the wrong groceries because she can't read the list. But aided by her quirky neighbors at 34bis Avenue Victor-Hugo, including the flamboyant would-be writer Hadley Hadley III, the motley crew at nearby Café Jean Valjean and her new friends Victorine, a Senegalese housemaid, and Victorine's cousin, Samuel, she endures the comic trials of her new home. When Fatima saves Emma from near death, the lonely countess, who has no one but a kind, unambitious nephew and an estranged, ex-rocker daughter, feels beholden, and their relationship happily improves. Fate alternately smiles and frowns on the good-hearted Fatima. Though her heart was broken back on her Tunisian island home of Djerba, it seems she may even find love with Hippolyte Suget, a shy, divorced ex-robber with an angelic daughter. The plot meanders along a predictable path, and the numerous characters are no more complex than pretty paper dolls, but this Parisian fairy tale, in which an unlikely princess meets her improbable prince, is a frothy charmer. (Sept.)