By Morag Prunty

If only Prunty were a television exec. Then perhaps we'd see the Sex and the City ladies compete on Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? That's the kind of story line the author, an Irish magazine writer and editor, dreams up for her wickedly funny first novel, which chronicles the frenzy among Dublin's stiletto set when an American billionaire arrives in search of a bride. The colleens in Wild Cats promptly pounce. There's the dissolute PR princess with tax troubles, the journalist aiming to document her own turn as the new Darva Conger and a decidedly unsuper model who calls herself Flame.

Though the tidy endings are predictable—each woman gets what she deserves—Prunty's chatty prose glistens when sending up the shallow end of a society that includes an adult-diaper manufacturer named Paddy Wallop, somehow still a hotly pursued bachelor. (HarperCollins, $25)

Bottom Line: Sparkling visit to the Emerald Isle