Beachfront Bookshop

Fiona Wells, a bestselling mystery novelist short on words and time, takes refuge at Sea Glass Cottage beside the Lockhart Lighthouse so she can finish an overdue manuscript and postpone the troubles waiting for her at home.

The Gulf Coast stay was meant to be a workplace, yet the lighthouse community folds her into evening gatherings and unexpected friendships, and Tides & Tales Bookshop introduces her to Marty Fuller,

a former literature professor who scorns commercial fiction without realizing he is arguing with one of its stars.

Their debates become hard to walk away from, even as Fiona stumbles onto an obscure academic paper that marks the Lockhart Lighthouse as a place of unusual linguistic interest.

When she names one of the paper's authors, lighthouse keeper Winnie shuts the conversation down, and Fiona's curiosity pulls her toward a secretive project that may have assembled brilliant minds at the lighthouse decades earlier.

As her bond with Marty grows stronger, the past she tried to leave behind presses closer and her separate lives begin to overlap.

After Marty discovers her true identity, Fiona has to choose whether she will keep concealing who she is or stake her future on the truth.