Bridget Jones's Baby

The fourth installment of Fielding's wildly popular Bridget Jones franchise is a blessed event. Fielding heads back in time from the setting of Mad About the Boy to chronicle the quirky, body-obsessed heroine as a professional producer in her late 30s embracing an unplanned pregnancy. The father is either her first love, Mark Darcy, or her former boyfriend, TV celebrity Daniel Cleaver%E2%80%94she rules out an amniocentesis for a quick DNA analysis. Readers witness Bridget's sonograms, childbirth classes, and cravings for cheesy potatoes, . "The thing is, just as there is a big gap between how people think they are supposed to be and how they actually are, there's also a gap between how people expect their lives to turn out and how they actually do," Bridget writes. No surprises here: Bridget falls in love with her baby-on-the-way at first scan and bumbles into the romantic ending everyone but her saw coming all along. Though it's likely her fans will have already seen the movie about her bumpy baby ride, they'll still appreciate reading about a Bridget who, though less agitated, is still entertainingly erratic and entirely endearing. (Oct.)