A young New York woman exchanges her corporate job for a year of books, blokes, and new friends in graduate school in England. Alexandra Brennan is fed up with her dead end New York City job--and even more fed up with running into her smug ex-boyfriend. So when he crosses the line by telling her that shell never get into graduate school in the United Kingdom, thats precisely what she does. Armed with imported cigarettes and extra-strength coffee, Alex crosses the Atlantic to face all that Great Britain and grad school have to offer, including ill-considered romantic interludes, a red-headed nemesis with intellectual pretensions and ulterior motives, and more books than she can possibly read in a year