Elena Meets the Author

It’s Christmas Eve in Mamaroneck, New York. Ninety-six-year-old Graziella has prepared the Feast of the Seven Fishes, as she does every year, for her daughter Grace and her granddaughter Ella. But Ella, a twenty-something idealist vegan, refuses to eat a bite. So the outspoken four foot two nonna serves her granddaughter a can of cat food instead. Ella throws the tin at a life-size plaster baby Jesus and storms out, promising she won’t be back until there’s a funeral.

That’s the first scene.

Elizabeth Wellington Rollins’s debut novel is about three generations of Italian American women, all named for the Roman myth of the Three Graces, forced to live together under one roof. They’re in each other’s business, they take care of each other, they fight, and they say almost everything through food. Reading it, I felt like I was there.

In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, Elizabeth talks about the Three Graces myth as a cycle of giving, accepting and giving back, and how that idea of reciprocity shaped the whole book. We get into the generosity Elizabeth grew up around, the real neighbourhood behind Pearl Street, and why food carries so much of what these women can’t say out loud.

We also talk craft. Elizabeth describes her draft zero process, writing through a genuinely hard period in her own life, and what changed when she started writing about what she knew and where she wanted to be, which was her nonna’s kitchen. If you’re writing something of your own, that part is worth the listen on its own.

The Three Graces of Pearl Street is blurbed by authors Adriana Trigiani and Annabel Monaghan, who has been a guest on this show.

Books mentioned in this episode

The Three Graces of Pearl Street by Elizabeth Wellington RollinsUS

Links support independent bookshops. As a Bookshop.org affiliate, the show earns a small commission on any sale.

More on www.elenameetstheauthor.com

Eileen O’Malley’s brother Lenny is killed in Vietnam while she’s a sophomore in college. Overnight her life changes. She drops out, moves home to Charleston, and takes a job in the men’s department of a local shop to help pay the bills. Then a handsome naval officer asks her advice about a pair of trousers.

Next thing she knows, she’s a young bride on La Maddalena, a small Mediterranean island off the coast of Sardinia where the US Navy keeps its submarines. When Italian activists, nuclear scientists and a handsome journalist start warning her about contamination in the water, Eileen has to question everything she thought she knew.

Rachel Beanland’s third novel is a coming of age story about a young woman working out who she is inside a marriage, a military community, and a country, all three of which expect her to toe the line.

In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, Rachel talks about the childhood years she spent on La Maddalena, the 2019 return visit that sparked the book, and her mother’s detailed letters home that gave her the 1970s period detail. We talk about the island as a locked room, Eileen’s retrospective second person narration, the dual meaning of the title, and the research she did with Navy veterans and their wives.

Rachel Beanland is also the author of Florence Adler Swims Forever, which won the National Jewish Book Award for Debut Fiction, and The House Is on Fire.

More episodes and writing at elenameetstheauthor.com.

Books mentioned in this episode

The Half Life by Rachel BeanlandUS

Links support independent bookshops. As a Bookshop.org affiliate, the show earns a small commission on any sale.

00:00 Welcome to the Podcast

01:04 Meet Rachel Beanland

02:59 La Maddalena Origins

06:48 Why the 1970s

10:33 Navy Wives Community

13:48 Isolation and Research

17:02 Soap Opera Letter Clubs

22:20 Second Person Narration

26:33 Outlining and True Events

28:20 Bending The Timeline

30:08 Why Historical Fiction

35:07 Balancing Facts And Drama

38:59 Meaning Of The Half Life

40:56 Mary Magdalene Parallels

43:21 Travel Tips La Maddalena

45:07 Wrap Up And Final Pitch

Priya Parmar’s The Original covers eighteen years of Katharine Hepburn’s life, from the age of 13, the year her brother Tom died, to the age of 32. Not the icon in the polo neck, but the young woman before all that. The failures, the self-invention, the loss she never really recovered from. It’s been praised by The New York Times, The Independent, BBC Radio, People and Oprah.

In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, Priya explains why she chose a period defined by self-discovery and failure rather than the years everyone already knows. We talk about Hepburn’s unusually progressive family in Hartford and Fenwick, Connecticut, how the Hollywood studios manufactured star personas before the Production Code came in, and the decade of research behind the novel. Priya also talks about the omniscient Greek chorus structure she built the book around.

Priya Parmar is also the author of Vanessa and Her Sister, a New York Times Notable Book about Virginia Woolf and her sister Vanessa Bell, and Exit the Actress. She co-wrote the musical Sylvia, staged at the Old Vic and nominated for an Olivier Award.

Books mentioned in this episode

The Original by Priya ParmarUK | US

Vanessa and Her Sister by Priya ParmarUS

Exit the Actress by Priya ParmarUS

Links support independent bookshops. As a Bookshop.org affiliate, the show earns a small commission on any sale.

00:20 Podcast Intro and Guest

01:37 Why These Years

03:07 Hepburn Family Roots

04:47 Epigraph and Persona

06:54 Hollywood Image Machine

09:12 Cary Grant Parallels

10:37 Defining Hepburn Boldness

13:34 Opening Pages Reading

15:46 Ten Years Research

19:22 Hidden Discoveries and Letters

23:09 Finding the Narrative Voice

26:41 Los Angeles as Character

27:35 Hepburn Home Base

28:18 Los Angeles Greek Chorus

28:53 Box Office Poison Escape

29:17 Dick Cavett Tape Gold

30:20 Crafting the Hepburn Persona

33:48 Favorite Films Shift

35:24 Wardrobe and Chanel Clash

38:38 Howard Hughes and Deafness

40:13 Cut Scenes and Europe

43:26 Next Book and Homesick

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Alan Anderson is a visionary ad man. That is, up until the morning he isn’t.

He blows the biggest account of his career, comes apart, and moves out to live off the land, the land being his backyard in suburban Greenwich, Connecticut. He sets up in the children’s playhouse. He goes barefoot. He uses the woods as a bathroom.

His timing couldn’t be worse. His wife Vivian is in the middle of a campaign to join the Queen Anne’s, Greenwich’s most selective women’s social group. Their two daughters are similarly going off the rails. One prefers drama to sports, which is not done in Greenwich. The other has started talking to animals. And Alan is emerging unshowered from the playhouse just as Vivian’s trying to make the best possible impression.

Alan Opts Out is a comedy about what it costs to keep up, and what’s left of a man and a family when they stop trying. It’s a New York Times best book of the summer, blurbed by Elizabeth Gilbert and Carl Hiaasen, and currently in development as an HBO series.

In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, Courtney talks about the luxury playhouse that sparked the whole idea, her frustration with overconsumption and the Stanley cup trend, and what it was like growing up around extreme wealth in Greenwich. We get into her past life as a brand strategist, how she developed compassion for Vivian over eleven drafts, and the unexpected joy of Alan’s lobster sidekick Lenny. She also talks about the Werner Herzog epigraph, taken from his 1982 film Fitzcarraldo, and what she wanted it to signal about the book’s tone. And she mentions Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer as a book she returned to just before publication, and why Christopher McCandless was on her mind throughout the writing.

Courtney’s previous novel Touch also comes up in conversation. She describes it as the book she would have written next, except it’s already written, and thinks it will resonate just as much now as Alan Opts Out. She’s also the author of the publishing guidebook Before and After the Book Deal and runs writing classes and resources at courtneymaum.com.

Behind the Stories on Substack is where the conversation goes deeper. Subscribers get writing insights from each episode, early access to upcoming guests, and the chance to help shape the show. Find it at elenabowes.substack.com.

Twenty-two rib eye steaks go missing from Aunt Orsa’s, an upscale Italian restaurant in a fictional Midwestern college town. They vanish on the same day that celebrity author John Grisham is due to dine there. Someone on the staff took them. But who?

That’s the whodunit. What Rebecca Kauffman’s sixth novel actually is, is something deeper and more complex than that. A who are they? The table of contents is renamed Menu, and each chapter, each course, dips into the life of one of the suspects. No one at Aunt Orsa’s is above suspicion. And as it turns out, no one’s life is boring.

Kauffman has a real talent for believable dialogue and for telling us just enough about a person that we feel like we know them and want to know more. Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review, Emma Straub named it one of the standout books of 2026, and it’s been described as a pitch-perfect mash-up of Clue and The Bear.

In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, Rebecca talks about drawing on years of working in restaurants, how John Grisham ended up in the book, the menu-style chapter structure, and her approach to revision by subtraction. We also talk about leaving some mysteries unresolved, how motherhood changed her writing, and why noticing is at the core of everything she does.

Behind the Stories on Substack is where the conversation goes deeper. Subscribers get writing insights from each episode, early access to upcoming guests, and the chance to help shape the show. Find it at elenabowes.substack.com.

https://pods.to/4zv3l7o.ODL

John Lanchester, Booker Prize-nominated author and regular contributor to The New Yorker, is my latest guest on Elena Meets the Author, the literary podcast that goes behind the book and into the mind of the author.

His latest novel Look What You Made Me Do is full of twists and turns, so pay attention.

Two women, both Londoners from different generations. Kate, 57, recently widowed, quietly devastated. Phoebe, a millennial TV writer whose Netflix megahit Cheating has become the show everyone’s talking about. When Kate starts watching, she realises something that stops her cold. The show contains secrets, inside jokes, a private language from her marriage to architect husband Jack that only she and Jack should know.

Look What You Made Me Do is a novel about love, loss, calculating minds, family dysfunction, and revenge. It takes on popular culture’s intrusion into our personal lives, the private language of a long marriage, and generational warfare between boomers and millennials along the way. As one critic put it, it’s good, mean fun. And revenge here is less a dish best served cold than a whole buffet of chilled platters.

In this episode of the Elena Meets the Author podcast, John Lanchester tells me that the entire plot of Look What You Made Me Do arrived in two minutes while he was brushing his teeth. We talk about how he built the thriller mechanics from there, the art of surprise versus suspense, how he shifts reader sympathy between Kate and Phoebe, the real-life Soho Farmhouse scene that made it into the book, and the generational resentments simmering underneath it all.

If you enjoy Elena Meets the Author, Behind the Stories on Substack is where the conversation goes deeper. Subscribers get writing insights from each episode, early access to upcoming guests, and the chance to help shape the show. Find it at elenabowes.substack.com.

Annabel Monaghan is a return guest on Elena Meets the Author, and for good reason. The internet has crowned her the queen of the summer romance, and as one fan put it, it’s not summer until Annabel Monaghan has come out with a book.

Her latest, Dolly All the Time, is a number one New York Times bestseller and a Good Morning America book club pick. It’s the story of Dolly Brick, a single mum, a champion caretaker, the person on everyone’s emergency contact list, who goes home to a fictional town next door to Newport, Rhode Island, and ends up fake dating the town’s handsome heir. It’s funny, it’s warm, the setting is dreamy, and it snuck up on me and broke my heart a little.

In this episode Annabel tells the real story behind the name Dolly, a smiling fan she met on tour who later reconnected through Good Morning America. She explains why she loves the fake-dating trope for its forced intimacy and emotional honesty, and how she draws from her own life in this charming tale. We also get into Annabel’s unplotted drafting process, how her editor helped shape the humour, and why she was determined to rewrite the rescue narrative so Dolly is never a damsel.

Annabel is one of my favourite guests. She’s smart, funny, and self-deprecating, and her characters mirror those traits. The dialogue, the sensual summer settings, the big life questions she weaves through every book. And by the way, Annabel’s first book came out when she was 50, which should give every aspiring writer a lot of hope. Dolly All the Time has spent five weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer author. If you’d like to hear more from Annabel, she’s also in episodes four and 24.

Behind the Stories on Substack is where the conversation goes deeper. Subscribers get writing insights from each episode, early access to upcoming guests, and the chance to help shape the show. If you want more than the podcast, you can find it at elenabowes.substack.com.

This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro

02:08 The Real Dolly Story

04:20 Why Fake Dating Works

06:49 Writing From Personal Life

08:42 Research and Writing Process

12:34 Caretakers and Family Roles

17:14 Parenting and Letting Go

18:37 Building Whitfield and Newport Vibes

21:40 Romance Heroines and Age

23:05 Writing Older Heroines

24:11 Rewriting Rescue Tropes

25:42 Pretty Woman Escargot Rant

28:14 Specificity Makes Love Real

29:54 Banter and Finding Humor

33:03 Dream Casting the Movie

35:17 Queen of Summer Romance

36:28 PG Yet Evocative Intimacy

38:18 Editor Notes and Revisions

40:07 Letting Love In

41:21 Teasing the 2027 Novel

43:43 Wrap Up and Bestseller Buzz

Ayelet Waldman’s latest novel is unlike anything else out there right now. A Perfect Hand is set in Victorian England and it’s a marriage plot with a twist. Alice Lockey, a lady’s maid, has fallen for Charlie Wells, a lord’s valet. The only way these two servants can be together is if Alice’s Lady Jemima falls for Charlie’s Lord Wynstowe. Which would be straightforward enough, except the lord and the lady despise each other.

The novel has been described as Jane Austen meets Nora Ephron, and that feels exactly right. It’s funny, original, and the voice is captivating from the very first page. Amidst the crinolines, fancy French hairstyles, chamber pots, and stolen kisses, Waldman weaves in some modern-day thinking and feminist ideology that gives the whole thing a sharp, contemporary edge.

In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, Ayelet and I get into how the idea came from her daughter’s advice after years of abandoned drafts, the captivating direct-to-reader Victorian lady-novelist narrator voice she developed, and the obsessive research that went into getting the period right, from the reality of servant life to toxic Victorian cosmetics to hiring a Victorian scholar and British graduate students to catch every anachronism. We also talk about the title’s three meanings, the suffrage era threads woven through the story, and what drew her to escapism with a feminist conscience.

Behind the Stories on Substack is where the conversation goes deeper. Subscribers get writing craft insights from each episode, early access to upcoming guests, and the chance to help shape the show. If you want more than the podcast, you can find it at elenabowes.substack.com.

00:00 Elena meets Ayelet

00:02 Welcome to the Podcast

00:17 Meet Ayelet and the Novel

01:21 Reading a Funny Excerpt

03:39 Finding the Narrator Voice

04:55 Daughter Inspired the Premise

06:19 Twists and Writing Timeline

08:24 Microdosing and Genre Swerves

10:42 Chasing Victorian Language

11:36 Why Shift to Suffrage Era

15:08 Servant Life Research Details

17:57 Bustles and Modern Beauty

19:37 Plastic Surgery and Hollywood

23:13 Meet the Main Characters

28:59 Meet Nigel Winstow

29:28 Calipers and Vanity Science

35:09 Experts Catch Anachronisms

37:14 Audiobook Accent Choices

38:01 Meaning of Perfect Hand

40:03 Stealing Victorian Voices

43:15 Escapism and Suffrage Echoes

47:13 Swiss Army Knife Career

49:08 Next Projects and WWI

51:25 Farewell and Wrap Up

Three close friends. One dark secret they are each ashamed of. And a series of murders they are uniquely qualified to solve.

The Secret Lives of Murderers’ Wives by Elizabeth Arnott is set during a sweltering summer in Los Angeles in 1966. Young women are being killed. And the three women investigating the crimes, Margot, Elsie, and Beverly, have something in common that gives them an edge: all three were married to serial killers. Not the men doing the killing, but the women who lived with them, slept next to them night after night, and had no idea what their husbands were up to.

Have I got your attention? The title and premise certainly got mine. I read this book on a flight from California to New York and was completely engrossed.

In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, Elizabeth and I talk about her long-standing fascination with true crime, why she set the novel in pre-profiling 1960s California, and the challenge of writing about killers before the term “serial killer” even existed. We get into how killers compartmentalise, why spouses so often don’t suspect, and how Elizabeth crafted three very distinct women while balancing dark subject matter with some welcome levity. We also talk about the “ticking clock” chapters written from a captive’s perspective, what those scenes are really saying about women’s everyday safety, and what it’s like writing freely versus under contract.

If you enjoy the show, the best thing you can do is leave a rating and review on whichever listening platform you use and consider subscribing to Behind the Stories on Substack. It’s the paid tier that keeps Elena Meets the Author going, and subscribers get insights from each episode, early access to upcoming guests, and the chance to help shape the show. You can find it at elenabowes.substack.com.

This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Five is not like any other novel I’ve read. It’s a fast-paced, urgent, entertaining psychological thriller with fascinating flawed characters. Funny at times, sad at others, thoughtful and surprising throughout.

Here’s the premise: Five strangers are waiting on a suburban London train platform. In five minutes, one of them will be hit by an oncoming train and die. They don’t know this. But you do.

Ilona Bannister has broken down the fourth wall, so we the reader know a lot about these characters’ thoughts that they wouldn’t necessarily want us to know. At first, we see them superficially, the way you might clock a stranger on your commute. A mother trying to control her energetic six-year-old. A handsome, smug businessman. An unfriendly older woman. A young man in a burgundy pinstripe suit with a red wine and orange knit scarf that somehow works. We make snap judgements, as one does. And then the author takes us directly into the lives of each of them. We see disability, abuse, addiction, narcissism, and trauma. Then we return to the platform, minutes ticking into seconds. Who will it be?

In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, I speak to Ilona about how a lightning bolt idea combining people-watching on a London bus with a local cycling death inspired her novel Five, a national bestseller. We talk about her no-outline writing process, how she developed the novel’s snarky omniscient narrator, the research she did into train platforms and forensic pathology, and the moral dilemmas she wanted the reader to sit with long after the last page.

If you enjoy the show, the best thing you can do is leave a rating and review on whichever listening platform you use and consider subscribing to Behind the Stories on Substack. It’s a newsletter where subscribers get insights from each episode, early access to upcoming guests, and the chance to help shape the show. You can find it at elenabowes.substack.com.

This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

00:00 Elena meets Ilona

00:00 Welcome to the Podcast

00:15 Meet the Novel Five

00:42 Platform Countdown Premise

01:41 Moral Dilemmas and No Spoilers

02:00 Author Joins the Show

04:25 Shift to Thriller Writing

06:21 Building the Five Strangers

08:44 Reading the Opening Scene

11:55 Writing Without an Outline

15:21 Creating the Omniscient Narrator

23:11 Research Process and Accuracy

24:33 Obsessive Train Research

25:24 Reading Mrs Worth

26:41 Emma and Motherhood Judgment

29:50 Luna Defends Neurodiverse Kids

33:31 Lawyer Mindset in Fiction

34:54 Next Book and Character Voices