Buckley, Christopher

When First Lady Beth MacMann is charged with killing her philandering husband, the President of the United States, during a bedroom argument, she turns for help to notorious defense attorney Boyce "Shameless" Baylor, her former flame.

Angry after hearing her father paid for her brother to attend Yale University, an opportunity she missed because he made a bad investment at the same time she was applying, Washington spin doctor Cassandra Devine suggests baby boomers euthanize themselves by the age of seventy-five for an incentive, an idea that catches the nation's attention.

Starting a rumor about an assassination plot targeting the Dalai Lama as part of an effort to gain support for a secret weapons system, Bird McIntyre and Angel Templeton provoke Washington crises that bring the United States and China to the brink of war.

Nick Naylor, chief spokesman for the Academy of Tobacco Studies, is accustomed to being harassed, heckled, and vilified by antismoking zealots, but things turn really ugly when he is forced to step up his efforts on behalf of smoking in order to keep his job.