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

Mary Kay Ash built a $2 billion cosmetics empire out of a 500 square foot Dallas storefront. She was the first woman ever to chair a company on the New York Stock Exchange and the only woman included in Forbes’ Greatest Business Stories of All Time, a pantheon otherwise reserved for Rockefeller, Ford, and Carnegie. And when CBS This Morning introduced Mary Kay to America, they declared there was no more potent role for the self-made woman than Mary Kay Ash.

Her story is scrappier and stranger than the pink Cadillacs and bouffant wigs you might remember.

Born dirt poor in Hot Wells, Texas, she was running a household and nursing an invalid father by the age of 10. She was a mother at 17 and a grandmother at 34. By the time she founded Mary Kay Cosmetics in 1963 at 45, she had already outlasted three divorces and two husbands’ deaths. The later death, of husband George Hallenbeck, the man who was supposed to be her business partner, came via a heart attack while jogging, just one month before the doors to Mary Kay were set to open.

Her 20-year-old son Richard, a budding finance whiz, stepped into the breach. A legend was born.

In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, I’m speaking to Mary Lisa Gavenas about her new biography, Selling Opportunity: The Story of Mary Kay, fifteen years in the making. We get into the restrictive 1960s norms that shaped what was possible for women, how Mary Kay adapted the direct-selling and party-plan models to build something genuinely new, the thinking behind her famous non-cash incentives like the pink Cadillacs, and the culture of encouragement and competition she created around her. We also talk about the criticisms levelled at direct selling, what made Mary Kay’s approach different, and what drew Gavenas to spend so many years researching and writing this particular story.

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.

A grieving young widow receives a phone call on her birthday. Her husband, Joe, died five months earlier. But before he did, he arranged something extraordinary: a year’s worth of books, one for every month, chosen to help her move on with her life.

That’s the premise of Libby Page’s latest novel, This Book Made Me Think of You, a BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick and USA Today bestseller, and the book I’m talking about in this episode of Elena Meets the Author.

Before you think it sounds too sad, it isn’t. There’s a handsome bookseller named Alfie, who Tilly has to visit every month to collect her next book. There’s travel: Bali, Paris, Manhattan, Tuscany. And there’s London, drawn with the kind of warmth that makes you want to head to your nearest international airport. Libby has written something that holds grief and joy in the same hand, which is much harder than it sounds.

In our conversation, Libby talks about the inspirations behind the novel, including You’ve Got Mail and It’s a Wonderful Life, and how she balanced an emotional subject with a genuinely uplifting story. She describes the meticulous planning that went into the book’s 12-month structure, the pinboards, the 80 book references woven throughout, and the themed reading lists that give the novel so much of its warmth. We also talk about what the final gift Joe leaves Tilly actually means, her views on accessible versus literary fiction, her writing habits, the rejections she had before she was published, and how she overcomes writer’s block.

There will be some spoilers, so if you haven’t read This Book Made Me Think of You yet, Libby’s enchanting novel is well worth reading first.

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

Today I’m speaking with Grant Ginder about his latest novel, So Old, So Young. I feel like I really get millennials and their anxiety-driven yet somehow still hopeful character.

The book follows six college friends across five parties and twenty years. A New Year’s Eve, a wedding, a birthday, a kids’ Halloween, and a funeral. From a night where everything felt possible to a morning where they had to reckon with what actually happened in between. It’s about people who met at Penn in the early oughts and spent two decades showing up for each other, making tiny decisions they didn’t notice until those decisions became their lives.

If you love character-driven fiction — which I do — this one is for you. Think Normal People. Or, if you’re a boomer like me, the 1983 film The Big Chill.

Grant grew up in Laguna Beach, worked as a speechwriter in DC, earned his MFA at NYU, and now teaches writing there while living in Brooklyn with his husband Mac and their apparently disastrous dog, Frankie. He’s the bestselling author of six novels. Grant, not Frankie.

In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, we talk about where the book came from- Grant’s own midlife anxiety, waking up in the middle of the night in a deep sweat, like that Talking Heads song, Once in a Lifetime with the phrase this is not my life- but oh yes, it is. - We discuss how the party structure gave Grant a way to write into that feeling. We talk about what long friendships actually give us, the particular tension between millennial hope and the reality of middle age arriving faster than expected, and how New York’s changing landscape can mark time in ways the characters themselves can barely track.

We also get into the craft of it. Grant talks about cutting backstory across eleven drafts with his editor, the link between his speechwriting background and how he thinks about narrative arcs, and his advice on writing dialogue: listen to real speech, avoid exposition, and pay attention to when a character over-explains. In real life when someone over-explains, like one of Grant’s NYU students telling him why a paper is late, that’s usually a sign they’re lying.

The episode is out now!

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

What do Taylor Swift, Marilyn Monroe, Madonna and a teenage girl from Pittsburgh in 1900 all have in common? More than you’d think.

In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, I’m talking to New York Times bestselling author Allison Pataki about her eleventh book, It Girl, a gripping, fast-paced historical novel inspired by the true story of Evelyn Nesbit, America’s very first influencer. But this conversation is about a lot more than one book. It’s about what happens to young women when the world decides they’re too beautiful, too talented, and too powerful for their own good. And why that story keeps repeating itself.

Evelyn Nesbit’s life reads like something invented. From a Pittsburgh boarding house, where she lived with her widowed mother and younger brother, she became an artist’s model in Philadelphia at just 13, and by 16 she was taking Broadway by storm. Dubbed America’s Eve, her beauty and talent drew the attention of two very powerful men: Manhattan architect Stanford White and Pittsburgh millionaire Harry Thaw. What followed became known as the murder of the century.

But Allison’s real obsession isn’t the crime. It’s the woman at the centre of it, and the way history chose to tell her story. Eve, Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, Salome. She made him do it. She drove him mad. She’s the cause of it all. Evelyn was just the latest in a very long line.

We also get into Allison’s own story, from her two storytelling grandmothers to writing live TV news at ABC, to becoming a full-time novelist. She talks about how she finds her heroines, why she’s drawn to women that exist only in the footnotes of history, and as a mother of three girls, what it felt like to write the darker parts of Evelyn’s life.

She also reads from the prologue. It’s worth it.

00:00 Welcome and Premise

00:15 Meet Allison Pataki

02:08 Origins and Influences

03:26 Finding Her Heroines

05:26 Discovering Evelyn Nesbit

09:16 High Society vs Showgirls

12:11 Prologue Reading Crime Century

16:42 Agency and Swim Metaphor

21:01 Modern Echoes Taylor Swift

23:56 Writing the Dark Parts

26:26 Fun Research Mythic Tropes

31:25 Mom Life and Book Tours

33:06 Recommendations and Wrap

It all starts with a squabble over an apple cake. When one sister bakes a much better cake than the other, the estrangement that follows ripples across three generations of the Rubinstein family for years.

In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, I’m talking with New York Times bestselling author Allegra Goodman about her latest novel, This Is Not About Us, a national bestseller and a Late Show with Stephen Colbert Book Club Pick. It’s a portrait of a modern American Jewish family on the East Coast, centring around two elderly sisters, Helen and Sylvia. Their sister Jeanne, the family matriarch, dies in the very first chapter, and as the Wall Street Journal puts it, what follows is a story about three generations bound by love, rituals, and guilt trips.

In each chapter, Goodman gives us a different member of the Rubinstein family. From octogenarian Helen, who says exactly what people need to hear (not necessarily what they want to hear), to sixth grader Lily, who wishes she lived in a different century and that her parents hadn’t divorced. It’s funny, sharp, and deeply relatable. The kind of book you recognise yourself in even when you’d rather not.

This is actually the second time I’ve spoken to Allegra in less than a year. Last July we talked about Isola, her historical novel about a French noblewoman who loses everything and is forced to live on a remote island. And now here we are with a sprawling Jewish family constantly gathering for birthdays, bat mitzvahs, and recitals. Same author, two entirely different books, both exceptional.

We talk about how Allegra began writing this book more than ten years ago, the novel’s rotating perspectives and humour, the title’s origins in the bat mitzvah storyline, Jeanne’s phrase “write down the ocean,” the role of music, what drew her to the name Rubinstein, her writing routine, and the books she has loved recently.

If you enjoy the episode and want to go deeper, Behind the Stories is my paid Substack where I share writing craft insights and process tips from each conversation, give early access to upcoming guests, and you can suggest questions before I record. It’s also a way to directly support the podcast and help it grow. You can find it at elenabowes.substack.com.

Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

Today I am speaking to Jason Rosenthal, whose memoir, My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me, is a story of true love, true loss, and how to truly live again after that loss.

It all began with an extraordinary essay written by Jason’s wife, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, a prolific author, public speaker, and filmmaker. In 2017, Amy wrote a piece for the New York Times Modern Love column titled You May Want to Marry My Husband. It was a love letter to Jason, written in the form of a personal ad.

Amy was living with incurable ovarian cancer, and she wanted Jason, her husband and soulmate of 26 years, to experience joy and love again after she was gone. In the essay, she celebrates him in the most intimate and generous way. We learn that Jason is a great dad, a good cook, a lover of live music, handsome, stylish, and full of life. She writes about falling in love with him the day they met, and ends with the hope that the right person might read it.

Amy died just ten days after the article was published.

The piece went viral, read by millions, and it changed Jason’s life overnight. A private person, a lawyer, and a devoted family man, he suddenly found himself in the public spotlight.

A year later, Jason wrote his own response in the New York Times Modern Love column. His essay, My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me, shares the same title as his memoir, and begins with the line, “I am that guy.”

In this conversation, we explore what came next.

Jason reflects on grief not as something linear, but as something that moves in waves over time. He shares what it meant to be given permission by Amy to move forward, and how that has shaped his life in the years since her death.

We talk about Amy’s creativity and love of language, including their “marriage goals” list, and how her spirit continues to influence the way he sees the world.

We also explore how Jason has chosen to fill the blank space after loss. He stepped away from his career in law, retrained as a social worker, and now works as a grief therapist. He has commissioned public art in Amy’s honour and co-founded a foundation supporting ovarian cancer research and book giving.

This episode is both deeply moving and quietly practical. Jason shares thoughtful advice on how to support someone who is grieving, why honest end of life conversations matter, and how it’s possible to find moments of joy again, even in the hardest circumstances.

It’s a conversation about love that doesn’t end, and what it means to keep living alongside grief.

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

Timestamps

00:00 Welcome to the Podcast00:28 Amy’s Viral Love Letter02:17 Nine Years of Grief03:33 Permission to Move On04:58 Why Jason Wrote the Memoir06:54 Talking About Death Honestly07:54 Honeymoon Marriage Goals List10:22 Wordplay and Creative Spark11:32 “More Time Here” Message15:22 Filling the Blank Space16:11 New Calling as a Therapist18:26 Foundation and Book Giving19:11 Ovarian Cancer Progress20:04 How to Support Grievers22:14 Sudden vs Expected Loss25:02 End of Life Conversations30:47 Love and Grief Reflections31:41 Closing and Tech Reset

In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, I speak with critically acclaimed New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Amazon bestselling author Robert Dugoni, whose books have sold more than 12 million copies worldwide, primarily across his police, espionage, and legal thriller series.

Today we focus on Robert’s standalone literary novel, The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell, published in 2018. The book has sold over a million copies and has become a word-of-mouth favourite among readers.

Newsweek once called it “the best book of all time.” I must admit, I felt as if I’d been sleeping under a rock, because I hadn’t heard of Sam Hell until a few months ago when I was interviewing Lisa Scully, the owner of Locust Valley Bookstore in Long Island.

Lisa told me that the store sells about 15,000 books a year, and The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell is the only book they sell with a money-back guarantee.

If you don’t like it, you get your $14.95 back.

She said to me, “We tell people: trust me on this one.” According to Lisa, readers have gone “Bonko nuts” for the book. Men and women love it equally.

I absolutely adored it. It grabs you right away and doesn’t let go of your heartstrings until the tearful and hopeful final page.

The novel tells the story of a man looking back on his life. It’s a coming-of-age story about a boy who was different from everyone else, and how that shapes his relationships with his family, other people, and most importantly with himself.

Maternal love, bullying, resilience, deep friendship, romance, humour, forgiveness, and faith all feature in this poignant, page-turning story.

In our conversation, Robert shares the journey behind the book, how the story developed over many years, and why the novel explores faith rather than religion. We also talk about his writing process, character creation, and the long path that led him from journalism and law into a full-time writing career.

Topics we cover in this episode

00:00 Welcome to the Podcast00:16 Why The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell Matters00:34 Why Sam Hell Stands Out02:18 Moving from Series Thrillers to a Standalone Novel02:24 Early Reading and Classic Influences03:34 From Journalism to Law School04:27 Leaving Law to Pursue Writing05:04 The Breakthrough of The Cyanide Canary05:35 Writing Sam Hell: Five Weeks to Draft07:22 Finding Sam’s Emotional Throughline09:19 Publishing the Book and Its Slow-Burn Success10:54 Religion Versus Faith in the Story13:24 Accepting Imperfection in Writing14:15 Where Great Lines Come From16:19 An Organic Writing Process and Character Development19:39 Thrillers Versus Literary Craft22:21 Using Humour as Relief in Difficult Stories23:36 Humour in War Stories25:00 Teaching the Craft of Writing25:19 Avoiding the Information Dump26:41 Writing with All Five Senses27:42 Ambiguity Versus Tension in Storytelling29:29 Finding the Right Agent, Editor, and Publishing Team32:23 From Rejection to Amazon Publishing36:04 Ideas for the Next Literary Novel40:18 Wrap Up and Outro