Elena Meets the Author

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 th...

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....

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 n...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 Wan...

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, publis...

Today I’m speaking to the remarkable author and journalist Haley Cohen Gilliland, whose nonfiction book A Flower Traveled in My Blood reads like a novel, but is entirely true. Haley’s book - which The New York Times and The Washington Post among others named one of the best books of 2025 - tells the story of the Argentine grandmothers who fought to find a stolen generation of grandchildren. Haley’...

Today, I’m speaking to Brigitte Dale about her debut novel, The Good Daughters. It is a powerful, beautifully written story that takes us back to early 20th-century England, when women from all social classes united to fight for the right to vote. Brigitte’s suspenseful and fast-paced novel weaves historical fact with gripping fiction, centring on four young suffragettes from vastly different back...

In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, I’m joined by the talented Samantha Greene Woodruff to talk about her gripping historical novel The Trade-Off. Set against the backdrop of the 1929 Wall Street crash, the novel follows Bea Abramovitz, a mathematically gifted and young jewish woman who foresees the financial collapse but struggles to be taken seriously in a world dominated by men. We explo...

In this new episode of Elena Meets the Author , I’m joined by debut American novelist Emily Everett to talk about her novel All That Life Can Afford . We talk about how Emily’s own experiences shaped the story, and explore themes of social class, ambition, friendship, and belonging. We also discuss the influence of Pride and Prejudice on the novel, and what it was like for Emily to write while bal...

In this special holiday episode of Elena Meets the Author , I’m joined by Lisa Scully, the owner of the wonderful Locust Valley Bookstore on Long Island. Lisa shares her journey into independent bookstore ownership and speaks openly about the challenges and rewards of running a local bookshop today. We talk about competing with Amazon, the importance of community support, and what keeps independen...

New episode out now! In episode 37 of Elena Meets the Author , I speak with award-winning journalist and debut biographer Chris Sweeney about his fascinating new book, The Feather Detective: Mystery, Mayhem, and the Magnificent Life of Roxie Laybourne . Chris’s book introduced me to a woman I had never heard of but now can’t stop thinking about: Roxie Collie Laybourne , the trailblazing scientist...

In this episode of Elena Meets the Author , I talk to the brilliant and bestselling author Fiona Davis about her new novel The Stolen Queen , a dual-timeline mystery that moves between 1936 Egypt and 1978 New York City . Fiona shares the real inspirations behind the story (thank you Kim Kardashian), as well as her fascination with antiquities and the stories behind them. She looks at the ways hist...

In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, I had such a fun and fascinating chat with Katie Yee , the debut author of Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar. Her novel has been compared to Nora Ephron’s Heartburn , it’s witty, warm, and full of heart, finding humour even in the hardest moments. We talk about where the story came from, how Katie created her wonderfully observant narrator, an...

In this episode, I sit down with Annie Hartnett , the bestselling author of The Road to Tender Hearts , to talk about finding humour in heartbreak and the power of storytelling to carry us through difficult times. Annie shares how moments of adversity have shaped her voice as a writer and how she balances grief, chaos, and laughter in her latest novel, a darkly funny, deeply tender story about fam...

This week I’m joined by the wonderful Virginia Evans, whose debut novel The Correspondent captured my heart. And I don’t say that lightly. Her main character 73-year-old Sybil Van Antwerp is the best! We dive into the joy of epistolary storytelling, explore the wide world of the smart, snappy and funny Sybil, and talk about how letters can hold so much power in today’s digital world. Virginia shar...

I am so excited to share this episode of Elena Meets the Author with you! I had the absolute pleasure of sitting down with Gretchen Young , a powerhouse in publishing and the inspiring founder of Regalo Press . Gretchen’s journey is incredible, from her early days in television production, to decades at major publishing houses, and now running her own indie press with a beautiful philanthropic mis...

In this episode of Elena Meets the Author , I sit down with debut novelist Vanessa Beaumont to talk about her evocative and richly layered novel, The Other Side of Paradise . Set in post–World War I Britain, the story follows Jean Buckman , a young American newspaper heiress navigating societal pressures, marital dysfunction, grief, personal desire and deep maternal love in 1920s Britain and the s...

In this special episode of Elena Meets the Author , I step away from my usual author interviews to chat with Diane Garrett, the warm and wonderful owner of Diane’s Books in Greenwich, Connecticut. Diane tells me how she went from growing up in Northern Ontario, Canada, to opening her beloved bookshop in the heart of Greenwich. We talk about how the book industry has changed with Amazon and e-reade...

In this episode of Elena Meets the Author , I sit down with the incredible Marjan Kamali to discuss her bestselling novel The Lion Women of Tehran . 🌍✨ The novel follows the intertwined lives of two childhood friends, Homa and Ellie , as they grow from girls in 1950s Tehran into women navigating the complexities of adulthood. We dive into the inspiration behind this captivating story, the rich d...

In this week’s episode of Elena Meets the Author, I’m joined by the brilliant Louisa Treger to talk about her captivating new novel The Paris Muse, which delves into the life of Dora Maar, Picasso’s muse behind the iconic Weeping Woman. We dive into Dora’s incredible journey beyond her relationship with Picasso, exploring her life as a surrealist photographer, poet, and political activist. From th...

In this episode of Elena Meets the Author , I speak with the brilliant author Allegra Goodman about her historical novel Isola . This captivating conversation delves into the story's inspiration, centered on Marguerite de la Rocque de Roberval, a French noblewoman marooned on an island in the Gulf of St in 1542. Goodman shares her writing process, research adventures, and the themes of solitude an...