S.Z. Sakall

A food writer who has lied about being the perfect housewife must try to cover her deception when her boss and a returning war hero invite themselves to her home for a traditional family Christmas. Journalist Elizabeth Lane is one of the country's most famous food writers. In her columns, she describes herself as a hard working farm woman, taking care of her children and being an excellent cook. But this is all lies. In reality she is an unmarried New Yorker who can't even boil an egg. The recipes come from her good friend Felix. The owner of the magazine she works for has decided that a heroic sailor will spend his Christmas on *her* farm. Miss Lane knows that her career is over if the truth comes out, but what can she do? —Mattias Thuresson In her Smart Housekeeping column, Elizabeth Lane provides amazing recipes and homemaking hints. However, Elizabeth's got a little secret: SHE needs a recipe to boil water! Elizabeth has no cooking skills, no Connecticut farm, no adoring hubby and no baby-makes-three as suggested in her column. Something her boss, the magazine publisher, doesn't know when he decides to invite himself and a recently returned war hero to her home for a traditional family Christmas. Watch as Elizabeth tries to be a good wife and doting mother, with absolutely NO experience. —Carolyn Weiss The destroyer of Jefferson Jones and his partner Sinkewicz is sunk by the Germans and they float adrift in a raft for eighteen days. When they are rescued, they are sent to a hospital and Jefferson has to follow a stringent diet imposed by the doctors. He seduces his nurse expecting to get solid food and she decides to write to Alexander Yardley, who is the owner of the Smart Housekeeping magazine where the famous journalist Elizabeth Lane writes a column about recipes and food, asking him to allow Jefferson to spend Christmas with Elizabeth and her family in her farm in Connecticut. The prepotent Yardley sees the chance of free promotion of his magazine and forces Elizabeth to invite the hero Jones. However, Elizabeth is single, does not have a baby and lives alone in a small apartment in New York and she made-up a perfect married life for her fans. Further, she does not how to cook and the recipes belong to her Hungarian friend Felix Bassenak, who owns a restaurant in New York. The architect John Sloan, who has been wooing Elizabeth for a long, proposes to marry her in his farm in Connecticut and she brings Felix with her to help to proceed the farce. The things get complicated when Yardley also decides to spend Christmas with Elizabeth while she falls in love with Jones. —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Elizabeth Lane is the perfect homemaker in so many ways. She's an outstanding cook and interior decorator who lives in a beautiful house in the countryside, is happily married and recently had a baby - as her regular column in Smart Housekeeping magazine recounts to her wide readership. There's only one big catch: she isn't any of those things - she can't cook, doesn't know the first thing about decorating and lives in a tiny, dingy apartment. It all begins to unravel when her publisher, Alexander Yardley, arranges for recently rescued sailor Jefferson Jones to spend the weekend at Lane's country home. To top it off, Yardley invites himself to spend the weekend there as well. Elizabeth scrambles, getting her friend Felix Bassenak to cook for her and borrows her friend John Sloan's country house. She even gets a baby from a neighbor. As if she doesn't have enough to deal with, she and Jones become quite attracted to one another. Somehow it all works out in the end. —garykmcd

A jaded nightclub owner in war-torn Casablanca finds his loyalties are put to the test when his old flame reappears to seek his help in escaping from the Nazis.

A tycoon goes undercover to ferret out agitators at a department store, but gets involved in their lives instead. Department store owner J.P. Merrick finds that several of his employees are unionizing to get more money and better working conditions. In order to find out who the organizers are, he gets a job at the store as a shoe salesman. Not realizing his true identity, he's befriended by Mary Jones and Joe O'Brien, the two ringleaders, and Elizabeth Ellis, a charming older woman with whom he develops a romance. —Daniel Bubbeo <dbubbeo@cmp.com> J.P. Merrick, a wealthy department store owner, uses a pseudonym and takes a job at his store in order to find out who organized a union of his employees. —Daniel Bubbeo <dbubbeo@cmp.com> Tycoon John P. Merrick is startled to see an effigy of himself hanging on the front page of the New York Times, courtesy of union organizers at Neeley's Department Store, which Merrick didn't even know he owned. On a sudden impulse, he goes undercover there as a shoe salesman. Soon he's so involved in the lives of his fellow employees (especially one young couple and a delightful single woman his own age) as to forget his original purpose. But his two lives are on a collision course... —Rod Crawford <puffinus@u.washington.edu> The wealthiest man in the world, John P. Merrick, is a private person who likes to stay anonymous. One of his many assets, and a minor one at that, is Neeley's Department Store. There is labor unrest at the store, most of the employees' anger directed at Merrick, who they hang in effigy outside the store despite not knowing what he looks like. Merrick, not happy at what he sees going on, decides to go undercover working at the store to mete out the rabble-rousers. Undercover as Thomas Higgins, Merrick gets assigned as a sales clerk in the shoe department, where he is taken under the caring wing of his colleague Mary Jones, who sees in Higgins a poor man needing the guidance of friends. One of those other friends is Elizabeth Ellis, who Mary sees as a possible "Mrs. Higgins". Mary's boyfriend is Joe O'Brien, the chief organizer of the employees, four hundred of whom are following Joe in the charge against the store and Merrick. At the store, Merrick not only wants the list of the four hundred, but also wants to change those things he doesn't like at the store, chief amongst those being his shoe department section manager, Mr. Hooper. But as Higgins, Merrick also begins to see things a little differently, specifically from an employee's point of view. —Huggo