Saul Karoo, ein reicher, übergewichtiger, kettenrauchender Alkoholiker, ist einer der gesuchtesten scriptdoctors in Hollywood. Er flickt und schreibt missglückte Filmskripts um. Privat quälen ihn genau die Probleme, die er hartherzig aus den langweiligen Drehbüchern herausstreicht. Doch als er einen neuen Auftrag annimmt, verändert eine zufällige Begegnung sein Leben. Karoo, wie verwandelt, versucht zu neuem Glück zu finden und beginnt nicht nur, am Film herum zu schnipseln, sondern wie ein Skriptflicker – gleichsam gottähnlich – ins wahre Leben einzugreifen.
A colorful cast of Miami residents and visitors navigates their daily lives, both legal and illegal. Officer Nestor Camacho patrols Biscayne Bay as the police confront the city's unique cultural landscape, where diverse communities have taken charge at the ballot box. This melting pot is filled with hard cases who refuse to blend in. Among them are the Cuban mayor, the black police chief, a young journalist with a muckraking ambition, and his Yale-educated editor from the Miami Herald. There's also an Anglo sex-addiction psychiatrist and his beautiful Latina nurse, Magdalena, alongside his star patient, a porn-addicted billionaire. A status-obsessed Haitian professor, who wishes his daughter Ghislaine could "pass" for white, complicates matters further; she is the love of Nestor's life, while her younger brother embodies a different reality. The narrative includes crack dealers in the neighborhoods, clueless art collectors spending millions at the Miami Art Basel Fair, and the chaotic interactions between black drug dealers and Cuban cops. Spectators at the Columbus Day Biscayne Bay Regatta seek only the night’s orgy, while ex-New Yorkers at an "Active Adult" condo and a group of shady Russians add to the vibrant tapestry of this dynamic city.
One Fifth Avenue, the Art Deco beauty towering over one of Manhattan's oldest and most historically hip neighborhoods, is a one-of-a-kind address, the sort of building you have to earn your way into - one way or another. For the women in Candace Bushnell's new novel, One Fifth Avenue is at the heart of the lives they've carefully established, or hope to establish. Schiffer Diamond, a forty-something actress, is busily proving that women of style are truly ageless; spoiled, self-assured Lola is determined to claw a way into the building; Annalisa is a reluctant socialite; while bitter Mindy, married to an under-published writer, has been the family breadwinner for too long. And then there is Enid, the glamorous grande dame and gossip columnist, who has lived at One Fifth Avenue for decades, and sees everything there is to see from her penthouse view.
