Wednesday, November 9, 2011

The Best Laid Plans: A Novel

  • ISBN13: 9780345491190
  • Condition: New
  • Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Selected as the 2011 CBC Canada Reads Winner!

This book beat out work by Douglas Coupland and Will Ferguson because it is very, very good â€" a terrific Canadian political satire.

Here’s the set up: A burnt-out politcal aide quits just before an election â€" but is forced to run a hopeless campaign on the way out. He makes a deal with a crusty old Scot, Angus McLintock â€" an engineering professor who will do anything, anything, to avoid teaching English to engineers â€" to let his name stand in the election. No need to campaign, certain to lose, and so on.

Then a great scandal blows away his opponent, and to their horror, Angus is elected. He decides to see what go! od an honest M.P. who doesn’t care about being re-elected can do in Parliament. The results are hilarious â€" and with chess, a hovercraft, and the love of a good woman thrown in, this very funny book has something for everyone.Selected as the 2011 CBC Canada Reads Winner!

This book beat out work by Douglas Coupland and Will Ferguson because it is very, very good â€" a terrific Canadian political satire.

Here’s the set up: A burnt-out politcal aide quits just before an election â€" but is forced to run a hopeless campaign on the way out. He makes a deal with a crusty old Scot, Angus McLintock â€" an engineering professor who will do anything, anything, to avoid teaching English to engineers â€" to let his name stand in the election. No need to campaign, certain to lose, and so on.

Then a great scandal blows away his opponent, and to their horror, Angus is elected. He decides to see what good an honest M.P. who doesn’t car! e about being re-elected can do in Parliament. The results are! hilario us â€" and with chess, a hovercraft, and the love of a good woman thrown in, this very funny book has something for everyone.


From the Trade Paperback edition.Selected as the 2011 CBC Canada Reads Winner!

This book beat out work by Douglas Coupland and Will Ferguson because it is very, very good â€" a terrific Canadian political satire.

Here’s the set up: A burnt-out politcal aide quits just before an election â€" but is forced to run a hopeless campaign on the way out. He makes a deal with a crusty old Scot, Angus McLintock â€" an engineering professor who will do anything, anything, to avoid teaching English to engineers â€" to let his name stand in the election. No need to campaign, certain to lose, and so on.

Then a great scandal blows away his opponent, and to their horror, Angus is elected. He decides to see what good an honest M.P. who doesn’t care about being re-elected can do in Parliament. The results a! re hilarious â€" and with chess, a hovercraft, and the love of a good woman thrown in, this very funny book has something for everyone.


From the Trade Paperback edition.Welcome to Tropico, a gray little town smack dab in the middle of nowhere where nothing ever happens- until a botched robbery leaves Nick (Alessandro Nivola) 48 hours to pay up or die. Desperate, Nick and his girlfriend Lissa (Reese Witherspoon) undertake drastic measures to get their hands on some fast cash. Enter Nick's old college chum Bryce (Josh Brolin), a seemingly easy mark who holds the ticket to the couple's salvation. But before long, all three young people will find themselves entwined in a dangerous web of betrayal and seduction that L.A. Weekly calls "a treasure map of double crosses and hairpin turns."At first, Best Laid Plans comes off like yet another all-flash-no-substance crime thriller, but it's one of those rare films that end better than they start. Nick (Ales! sandro Nivola from Face/Off), broke and desperate to ge! t out of his suffocating small town, agrees to take part in a drug heist. When his partners get caught, he has less than a week to come up with $15,000 or suffer the consequences. When his college buddy Brice (Josh Brolin--Flirting with Disaster) comes back to town, Nick and his girlfriend Lissa (Reese Witherspoon) hatch a plan to bilk Brice out of a rare collectible. Of course, things go wrong--which is where things get entertaining. The plot could use a few more twists to really crackle, but the surprises it does have work, and the ending is both clever and affecting. Along the way, the best scene features a drug dealer who quotes economic theory from the bible of capitalism, The Wealth of Nations. In the past few years, Witherspoon has turned in superb performances in such varied movies as Freeway, Pleasantville, and especially Election; Best Laid Plans doesn't make much use of her talent, but she's always watchable. --Bret FetzerFrom Lynn Schnurnberger, bestselling co-author of Mine Are Spectacular! and The Botox Diaries, comes a novel of big secrets, family ties, and a reminder that sometimes The Best Laid Plans can lead to delightful surprises.

Tru Newman is one of the Upper East Side “M&Ms”â€"the wealthy stay-at-home moms who are into personal Maintenance and Mothering. Having been raised by a beauty queen mother who constantly picked on her, Tru loves looking after her investment banker husband, Peter, and their twin teen daughters. But her perfect world spins off its axis the night Tru throws a charity benefit and discovers that Peter’s been out of work for three months. Even worse, the family’s been living on a house of cardsâ€"specifically, Visa and Amexâ€"that’s about to collapse.

Suze Orman tells Tru to “Get a job!” But doing what? When Tru’s best friend, Sienna Post, loses her position as an anchor on the local nightly news, the two hat! ch a profitable if illegal plan: They’ll open an escort serv! ice with “working girls” all over the age of forty. Modeling themselves on Carla Bruni (“after she married the president of France, not before, when she was dating Mick Jagger”), their smart, sexy, seasoned escorts become a big hit with a roster of thirty-year-old clients.

If only Tru’s legit life could fall so easily into place: Her husband’s new job has him working side by side with a flirtatious neighbor, her fourteen-year-old twins are competing over a two-timing, Clearasil-using Casanova, and after suffering a heart attack in her bodybuilding class, Tru’s hypercritical mother moves in with her. Not to mention that the gossip columns get wind that Tru and Sienna’s “temp agency” isn’t on the up-and-upâ€"and the DA is on their case. 

But for the savvy and spirited Tru, these new obstacles bring unexpected benefitsâ€"from Geisha facials, to massage toys that are “better than chocolate,” to the realization that at midlife, she’s more comf! ortable than ever before in her own skin and more grateful for all that she has. By turns touching and laugh-out-loud funny, this is a must-read for every woman who knows it’s never too late to make a fresh start.

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