Great Big Beautiful Life

Alice Scott is a relentless optimist still chasing her long-awaited writing breakthrough. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize–winning storm cloud in human form. And yet here they both are on sun-soaked Little Crescent Island, summoned for the same purpose: to write the biography of a woman who vanished from public life decades ago—or at least meet the octogenarian claiming to be Margaret Ives, the tragic heiress and tabloid darling of one of the twentieth century’s most infamous families.

Margaret offers them a one-month trial, after which she’ll choose the writer worthy of telling her tale. Alice keeps her nerves in check with three comforting truths:

One: She actually likes people—and people tend to like her. A month is plenty of time to charm a legend.
Two: She’s ready to prove to her perennially unimpressed family that she can produce a Serious Work.
Three: Hayden Anderson, who should be above such petty anxieties, is glaring at her like she’s a genuine threat.

But there’s a catch. Margaret shares only fragments of her past, and thanks to an airtight NDA—and the inconvenient spark that flares whenever Alice and Hayden are alone—they’re forbidden from comparing notes.

And as the month unfolds, it becomes harder to tell whether the story they’re uncovering—or the one they’re writing with each stolen glance—is destined to be a mystery, a tragedy, or a love song…all depending on who gets to tell it.