BABY, BABY

An executive woman's craving for motherhood drives this silly urban fantasy by Nickles herself a former advertising executive vice-president turned mom, author of Hype (1989) and coauthor of Girls in High Places (1987). Kate Harrison-Weil, ambitious 39-year-old creator of the awesomely successful magazine Childstyle and veteran of a high- powered New York editor's lifestyle (Fifth Avenue apartment, Chanel suits, famous doctor husband, the Concorde and so on) has grown weary of the childless life and set her heart on that perfect upmarket accessory item for the 1990's—a baby. Despite her husband's reluctance (he already has two sufficiently bratty offspring by a previous wife), Kate charges ahead with terrifying single-mindedness—enlisting the aid of a host of fertility specialists, battling ovulation kits in cramped airplane lavatories, and arranging precisely timed marital trysts at the Waldorf during lunch. But months of repeated failure prove so discouraging that Kate abruptly resigns herself to childlessness, dumps her husband, and takes over a stodgy old financial magazine run by ranks of cigar-smoking men—only to find out that she's pregnant after all. Kate now looks forward to morning sickness in a largely unsympathetic office, contract negotiations with her outraged stepchildren, Lamaze classes attended by both her new sportscaster-boyfriend and a suddenly proprietary spouse, and, even worse, a hiatus on the Chanel suits. But never fear—Kate pulls off the next eight months with extraordinary aplomb and greets the domestic 90's triumphantly ``at home.'' Light. Tangy. Leaves no aftertaste.