The lost summers of Newport : a novel

Summary: From the New York Times bestselling team of Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White: a beachy historical novel of romance and intrigue set among the famous summer mansions of Newport, Rhode Island, spanning over a century from the Gilded Age to present-day. 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, the beach town of the ultra-wealthy, famous for the historic, over-the-top "summer cottages" of Vanderbilts and Rockefellers. But Andie runs into trouble: the reclusive heiress who still lives in the mansion, Lucia Sprague, will only allow the show to go forward on two conditions: One: that no one speaks to her. Two: that no one go near the mansion's ruined boathouse. 1899: Ellen O'Donnell has been hired to give singing lessons to Maybelle Sprague, a naive young heiress from out West whose brother 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 demure-seeming Ellen has her own checkered past, and she's hiding in plain sight at Sprague Hall. 1958: Lucia di Conti has always felt like an outsider at Sprague Hall. When her family fled Mussolini, it seemed natural to go back to the imposing Newport house her grandmother owned but hadn't seen since her marriage in 1899. Over the years, she's lost her Italian accent and found a place for herself among the yachting set, even acquiring a suitably blue-blooded husband, but one fateful night in the mansion's old boathouse will roil the waters...and change everything. As the cameras roll on Mansion Makeover, the house begins to yield up the dark secrets the Spragues thought would stay hidden forever….

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