When turbocharged Park Avenue mom Ivy Ames finds she's been downsized from her high-powered corporate job and her marriage, she swiftly realizes that she's going to need a whole new way to support herself and her two private-school daughters. At first she does the obvious thing: she panics. Then she decides to put her years of marketing savvy to work and dreams up a brilliant new business - helping upscale New Yorkers get their little darlings into the most exclusive kindergartens in the city.

Ivy enters a parent-eat-parent world where the egos are directly proportional to their owners' enormous incomes, peopled by her only-in-Manhattan clients, including:

- Lilith Radmore-Stein, a newspaper mogul who is willing risk her entire empire in a demented effort to get her son admitted to Harvard Day

- Omar Kutcher ("Kutcher the Butcher"), a cold-blooded mob boss who seeks Ivy's counsel on whether to bump off or pay off the powers-that-be to get his "little pistol" into the city's best all-girls Catholic school

- Stu Needleman, Ivy's most obnoxious client, who threatens to ruin her if she won't help his four-year-old unibrowed daughter cheat on her kindergarten entrance exam

- Willow Bliss and Tiny Herrera, the biracial lesbian parents of an adopted wheelchair-bound black child who is the "triple crown of diversity" that every school will covet

From the backstabbers of corporate America to the leading toddlers of Fifth Avenue, The Ivy Chronicles is more than an insider's look at this elite and utterly preposterous universe. It is also a tale of midlife reinvention and unexpected romance - for anyone who has ever lost what she holds dear and had to start over again.

"When 39-year-old Ivy Ames loses her corporate job, her big-shot husband, Cadman, cheats on her and she's too poor for her pampered Upper East Side lifestyle, she finds herself creating a new life for herself and her two young daughters on New York's exponentially less tony Lower East Side. Ivy hammers out a living helping the city's elite nab spots in the most exclusive private kindergartens in town, but first-time author Quinn's book isn't a feel-good tale about realizing money isn't everything. Even as Ivy comes to understand that her former life among the ultra-rich was absurd and shallow at best, she continues to hope that she'll snag a new husband so rich that she'll never have to work again. Quinn's characters are unapologetically shallow, two-dimensional cartoons designed to affably lampoon the silliness of New York's elite, giving readers ample opportunity to snicker at people like a newspaper mogul willing to pay off the FDA to get her demon child into a 'baby Ivy' league kindergarten and other wealthy, overly successful parents who use their kids to channel ambition and perpetuate elitism. It's good fun in small doses, but lengthy exposure to the cotton candy plot and caricaturish characters may leave readers with the zombie-like feeling produced by watching too many reality TV makeovers. Agent, Robin Straus. 5-city author tour. (Jan.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information, Inc.)

I laughed delightedly--but also with the wry laugh of a parent who had been there. (Elizabeth Buchan, author of Revenge of the Middle-aged Woman) The brilliant, witty, and ultimately soulful heroine is a perfect tour guide who will leave you laughing up your latte. (Jill Kargman, coauthor of The Right Address) Wicked and delightful...Comparisons to The Nanny Diaries are inevitable, but The Ivy Chronicles is much funnier and darker. (Katharine Weber, author of The Little Women) An entertaining peek into private schools from one who's been there. Fun to read! (Janice Kaplan, coauthor of The Botox Diaries) A delicious glimpse into the sinister world of kindergarten admissions. Prepare yourself for a shocking, funny, and outrageous read. (Amanda Filipacci, author of Vapor and Love Creeps) Hilarious, spirited, and wise. Karen Quinn brilliantly skewers the insanely competitive world of wealth we love to hate. (Leslie Schnur, author of The Dog Walker) I'm still laughing....This exotic journey into private-school mania is fascinating, surprising, a little scary and, in Quinn's hands, very funny. (Bonnie Marston, author of Sleeping with Schubert)

What begins as a business move born of pure financial desperation turns into a woman's quest to reinvent herself, and in the process expose the unbelievably preposterous underbelly of Manhattan's elite private school admissions process for five year olds.

When Ivy Ames, a high-powered Wall Street executive, comes home to find her unemployed husband in bed with the wife of the traitor who's just taken her job, she decides a drastic and swift change is in order, Now jobless, husbandless, apartmentless--and even a bit clueless--she must find a way to put her life back together and take care of herself and her two young daughters. Down on her luck and with surprisingly little money left, she opens a business consulting with parents of toddler-aged children who dream of attending New York City's most prestigious kindergartens. And oh, the misadventures that follow! From the self-important Stu who thinks his pampered kid is the next Einstein to the lesbian mothers raising a talented disabled African-American little boy they adopted ("the triple crown of diversity that every school would covet"), Ivy's clients run the gamut. Her efforts to start this new business, embark on two teetering romances, tend to her own children, and find a new way in the world makes for a hilarious, over-the-top read. What begins as a business move born of pure financial desperation turns into a woman's quest to reinvent herself, and in the process expose the unbelievably preposterous underbelly of Manhattan's elite private school admissions process ...for five year olds.

Author Karen Quinn knows whereof she speaks. After losing her own high- powered corporate job, she, like Ivy, started a business advising well-heeled Manhattanites on private-school admissions. Her hilarious take on this terminally privileged, over-the-top world where even tots carry rsums will have readers snorting with laughter through every delicious page.