Friends & Fiction

On this episode, Mary Kay Andrews & Patti Callahan Henry welcome NYT-bestselling author John Searles to discuss his infectious and utterly charming new novel, Single Girls, which is a fictionalization of the iconic Helen Gurley Brown’s early years at the helm of Cosmopolitan, and the intrepid group of women she took under her wing to create one of the most talked about magazines of all time. John is a New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of four atmospheric thrillers including Strange But True which was adapted as a major motion picture starring Amy Ryan, Greg Kinnear, Brian Cox, Blythe Danner, and Margaret Qualley. He appears regularly on the Today show to discuss his favorite book selections and has written for The New York Times, Oprah Daily, and The Washington Post. He spent more than two decades as a top editor at Cosmopolitan. He joins us to chat about Single Girls which has been named a Best Book of Summer by Oprah Daily, Harper’s Bazaar, and The Boston Globe, and been praised as “an irresistibly fun, sparkling novel that you'll want to binge in one night” by Kevin Kwan, and “a poignant and rollicking good time” by Wally Lamb.

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On this episode, Ron Block & Mary Kay Andrews welcome #1 NYT-bestselling author Lisa Jewell to discuss her "deliciously dark, devilishly addictive" (Alice Feeney) new novel It Could Have Been Her, in which two women's lives converge in a house containing devastating secrets that refuse to stay buried. Lisa is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 24 novels, including Don’t Let Him In, None of This Is True, The Family Upstairs, and Then She Was Gone. Her novels have sold more than 15-million copies internationally, and her work has been translated into more than 30 languages. She joins us from her home in London before embarking on her US tour to chat about her new psychological thriller, It Could Have Been Her, which Riley Sager calls “twisty, twisted and oh so dark,” and Publishers Weekly calls a “pitch-black spine-tingler."

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On this episode, Kristin Harmel & Kristy Woodson Harvey welcome beloved New York Times bestselling author Lisa See to discuss her new novel, Daughters of the Sun and Moon, the story of three Chinese women whose unexpected friendship helps them survive and, despite the odds, thrive, in the turmoil of post-Civil War Los Angeles. Lisa is the NYT-bestselling author of a dozen novels including Lady Tan’s Circle of Women, The Island of Sea Women, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. She is also the author of the memoir, On Gold Mountain, which tells the story of her Chinese American family’s settlement in Los Angeles. See was the recipient of the Golden Spike Award from the Chinese Historical Association of Southern California and the Historymaker’s Award from the Chinese American Museum and was named National Woman of the Year by the Organization of Chinese American Women. She joins us to discuss her new book, Daughters of the Sun and Moon, which Library Journal called “a stunning piece of historical fiction based in truth” in a starred review.

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On tis episode, Patti Callahan Henry & Kristin Harmel welcome #1 New York Times bestselling author Ann Patchett to discuss her new Katie Couric and Good Housekeeping Book Club Pick, Whistler, a moving, luminous novel that reminds us of the sweetness and impermanence of life and the power of connection to defy time. Ann Patchett is the author of ten novels, most recently the #1 New York Times bestselling Tom Lake, five works of nonfiction, and three children's books whose work has been translated into more than thirty languages. A winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Women's Prize for Fiction, and the Book Sense Book of the Year, she was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by Time magazine, and was awarded the National Humanities Medal in recognition of her contributions to American culture by President Biden. Her novel The Dutch House was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She joins us from her home in Nashville—where she is the owner of Parnassus Books—to discuss her new novel Whistler, which has earned a trifecta of starred reviews from Booklist (“entrancing, radiant, and heart-seizing”), Publishers Weekly (“beautiful and generous”), and Kirkus (“death-defying, heart-opening”).

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On this episode, Kristy Woodson Harvey & Mary Kay Andrews welcome New York Times bestselling author Annabel Monaghan to discuss her brand-new novel, Dolly All the Time—the GMA Book Club pick for June—in which a hardworking single mom returns to her seaside hometown and stumbles into a fake dating situationship with a wealthy, workaholic scion. Annabel is the NYT-bestselling and Library Reads Hall of Fame author of It’s a Love Story, Summer Romance, Same Time Next Summer, and Nora Goes Off Script, as well as two young adult novels and Does This Volvo Make My Butt Look Big?, a selection of laugh-out-loud columns that appeared in The Huffington Post, The Week, and The Rye Record. After twenty-five years in the suburbs of New York City, she now splits her time between Connecticut and Florida. Her novels have been translated into twenty-three languages. Annabel joins us to discuss Dolly All the Time, which Carley Fortune calls, “a luminous story of love, duty, and the tension between the two” that is “less like a novel and more like a place I never wanted to leave,” and which Elle Kennedy says, “grips you from the very first page and sparkles like the sun.”

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