Proof of Progress: A Novel

From the author of the Good Morning America Book Club pick Save What's Left comes a witty and sharp-tongued novel about an actress whose manuscript is thirty-seven years overdueand the life moments that led to its delay.

Maria Astorini, once popular character actress and late-night talk show darling, is having a moment. The B-list actress has survived deaths, divorces, a famous mother, a Hollywood blacklist, a string of public embarrassments, an aging face, financial ruin, an empty nest, a difficult best friend, and a worldwide pandemic. Now, she's back and bigger than ever. A small, unexpected role has heightened her celebrity status and propelled her, at age sixty-five, into the limelight. And then, along comes the call Maria has spent decades avoiding. It's her publisher asking, ';Where is that book?'

Maria knows the world doesn't need another celebrity memoir. To finally fulfill her contract, Maria writes, or attempts to write, or, at the very least, sends a pile of pages meant to vaguely resemble the book she promised to deliver nearly four decades earlier.

In a series of bite-sized anecdotes, she candidly recalls her past, chronicling the significant, and insignificant moments of her full, funny, and extraordinarily unpredictable life.

Maria hasn't been able to write a book about her lifeshe's been too busy living it.

• Publication date: 15 September 2026
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Format: Hardback
• Language: English
• ISBN-13: 9780063490277