A Hollywood idol. The Virgin Mary. An everyday girl from Hull. Three women, three eras, surprising things in common... On 4 th August 1962, the night she should have died, Marilyn Monroe - the biggest star in the world - receives a visitor who changes the course of her destiny. The Virgin Mary appears in her kitchen with a curious message. Inspired, Marilyn abandons her home, her life, her fame, and disappears into the night... Fifty-four years later, in a Hull kitchen, Flora Baker finds Mary, bathed in light. She has a similar message for the working class woman who is on the poverty line and dreaming of a better life. Flora begins to make changes that impact not only her life but the lives of those around her... Do Marilyn and Flora have more in common than just Mary's visit? Are they somehow linked across time? And is Mary's message for all the women of the world? Wonderful is about the way women are portrayed in both history and the world of celebrity, about women not being quiet, and about women united by the shared stories that shape them. As a child, Louise Beech told everyone she was going to be a world-famous novelist one day. She once bet her mum ten pounds that she'd be published by thirty - her first newspaper column was published when she was thirty-one. She finally got a publishing deal in 2015 with Orenda Books. Her debut, How to be Brave (2015), got to No4 on Amazon and was a Guardian Readers' Pick; Maria in the Moon (2017) was described as 'quirky, darkly comic and heartfelt' by the Sunday Mirror; The Lion Tamer Who Lost (2018) shortlisted for the Popular Romantic Novel of 2019 at the RNA Awards and long listed for the Polari Prize 2019; Call Me Star Girl (2019) long listed for the Guardian's Not The Booker Prize and was Best magazine's Best Book of the Year 2019; and I Am Dust (2020) was a Crime Magazine Monthly pick. This Is How We Are Human was published in June 2021. Louise still hasn't given her mum that tenner though. Louise also writes under the name Louise Swanson, and her first book in that guise, End of Story, was published in March 2023 by Hodder & Stoughton and her second, Lights Out, in September 2024. Her play, How to be Brave, toured in 2024. Wonderful was published June 2026.