To apprehend a terrorist set on detonating a nuclear weapon during an off-the-books summit between two warring nations being brokered by Vice President Lee Chiffray at his hilltop estate, Donna and Jack Craig must be the welcoming committee to Hilldale's four newest couples, all of whom have ulterior motives for ingratiating themselves with the vice president:
* Tandy Taylor, whose husband, Ted, will soon be President Libby Kentfield's new Secretary of State, is nosy to a fault-and is trying too hard to make Donna her BFF.
* The dirty little secrets of Congresswoman Stephanie Burkel and her husband, Stephen, a thriller writer, put them high on Acme's list of traitors.
* Kosma Kramer, whose husband, Keith, is being considered for the position of Director of Homeland Security, may come off as ditzy, but her survival skills prove she's also deadly.
* And finally, there's D'Arcy Carsey, the well-born, old-monied wife of the Deputy Director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, David. Both think borrowing the wrong kind of "sugar" from the neighboring Craigs will put them in the Veep's inner circle of friends-with benefits.
As the minutes to the summit tick down, it's only a matter of time before Donna defaults to her Bad Neighbor Policy: "Shoot first, and ask questions later."
Josie Brown has published 42 novels. In The Guardian, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jane Smiley called the first novel in her twenty-six Housewife Assassin’s Handbook series the funniest book she read that year and teaches it in a course. It was previously optioned for television, as was Secret Lives of Husbands and Wives.