1st place 2020 Incipere Award, Women’s Fiction - Clean A story about love, family, and the enduring truths we find hidden in our most beloved stories-if we just take the time to look. Marion Flarey may be a student of fairy tales, but she’s seen enough of life to know that pretty stories eventually take a back seat to cold, hard reality. For seven long years, now, she’s been piling up debt and bouncing from one bad job to the next-and don’t even ask about her non-existent love life.

And then she learns about the Tower. No, not a stone tower with a tiny window like the witch built to hide Rapunzel. Much better than that: it’s a gorgeous studio apartment in a beautiful old home in the hippest neighborhood in town.

All Marion has to do is come up with first month’s rent, last month’s rent, and security deposit.

Which would be challenging enough without her crazy family showing up and begging her to come home to little backwater Tibbs, New York, because-after teasing her mercilessly while she was growing up-they’ve suddenly decided she really does have a fairy godmother. Who grants wishes.

She might as well humor them, right?

For one night.

Because what could possibly go wrong?

Except, maybe, Fletcher Beal.

The man she once believed was her Prince …