THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
"An engrossing and sumptuous tale, this novel is a fantastic spring
read." -- Good Morning America
From the New York Times bestselling team of Beatriz Williams, Lauren
Willig, and Karen White--a novel of money and secrets set among the
famous summer mansions of Newport, Rhode Island, spanning over a century
from the Gilded Age to the present day.
"Three stories elegantly intertwine in this clever and stylish tale of
murder and family lies...This crackerjack novel offers three mysteries
for the price of one." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)
2019: Andie Figuero has just landed her dream job as a producer of
Mansion Makeover, a popular reality show about restoring America's
most lavish historic houses. Andie has high hopes for her latest
project: the once glorious but gently crumbling Sprague Hall in Newport,
Rhode Island, summer resort of America's gilded class--famous for the
lavish "summer cottages" of Vanderbilts and Belmonts. But Andie runs
into trouble: the reclusive heiress who still lives in the mansion,
Lucia "Lucky" Sprague, will only allow the show to go forward on two
conditions: One, nobody speaks to her. Two, nobody touches the mansion's
ruined boathouse.
1899: Ellen Daniels has been hired to give singing lessons to Miss
Maybelle Sprague, a naive young Colorado mining heiress whose
stepbrother John has poured their new money into buying a place among
Newport's elite. John is determined to see Maybelle married off to a
fortune-hunting Italian prince, and Ellen is supposed to polish up the
girl for her launch into society. But the deceptively demure Ellen has
her own checkered past, and she's hiding in plain sight at Sprague Hall.
1958: Lucia "Lucky" Sprague has always felt like an outsider at Sprague
Hall. When she and her grandmother--the American-born Princess di
Conti--fled Mussolini's Italy, it seemed natural to go back to the
imposing Newport house Nana owned but hadn't seen since her marriage in
1899. Over the years, Lucky's lost her Italian accent and found a place
for herself among the yachting set by marrying Stuyvesant Sprague, the
alcoholic scion of her Sprague stepfamily. But one fateful night in the
mansion's old boathouse will uncover a devastating truth...and change
everything she thought she knew about her past.
As the cameras roll on Mansion Makeover, the house begins to yield up
the dark secrets the Spragues thought would stay hidden forever....
