Flirting With Fire

Porter’s adorable third Modern Love romance (after Flirting with the Beast) opens on 49-year-old actor Margot Hughes abandoning her theatrical dreams, trading the bright lights and precarity of Broadway for a stable office job in her picturesque hometown on California’s Central Coast. She believes she’s given all she can to the theater, and now she wants to rest. But when her boss and friend Sally Collins, the champion of (and money behind) the local community theater, has a health scare, Margot must step in to save the upcoming production. Luckily, she has some help. Life has been in hyperdrive for 45-year-old television star Max Russo, and he owes all his success to Sally, his surrogate mother. If repaying her means starring in a dinky community production of Barefoot in the Park, so be it. As Margot and Max rediscover their passion for stagecraft, they also find unexpected love after lifetimes of heartbreak. Porter conjures all the charm and chaos of mounting a theater production and makes Margot and Max easy to root for as they navigate the bumpy road to happily ever after. Readers are sure to be charmed. Agent: Holly Root, Root Literary. (July)