Jennifer Vido: What inspired your new release, THE GIRL FROM THE PAPERS? Jennifer L. Wright: When writing my first novel, If It Rains, I did a lot of research on the Great Depression era – so much so, in fact, that I couldn’t possibly fit all the information I had into the book. Unwilling to let the fascinating details I was collecting fall to the wayside, I started sharing various tidbits on my blog, including a short article about Bonnie and Clyde, which unknowingly caught the attention of my editor at Tyndale. She mentioned how their story would make a fascinating book but admitted she wasn’t sure if I could put a redemptive arc on such a tragic tale. Never one to back away from a challenge, I decided to try it anyway. What struck me the most as I dove deeper in the lives of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow was their strong faith background: both were raised in Christian homes, and Clyde was even baptized in late childhood. Member of their gang reported seeing the pair praying together nightly during their life on the run. These little nuggets of information started my mind spinning with “what if” questions….and…

Jennifer Vido: What inspired your new release, SUN DAMAGE? Sabine: Durrant: I came up with the idea during the pandemic and I guess it was sub-conscious wish-fulfilment. I was due to go on family holiday in the South of France, but I had to cancel it and, as I sat in south London, the villa we’d booked took up residence in my head. Sun Damage is about a grifter who takes on someone else’s life, and I guess my main character was in many ways taking mine.   Jen: Who are Ali and Sean, and why are they in the South of France? Sabine: Ali and Sean are con artists. Ali, a damaged woman in her early twenties, had been living the life of a petty criminal until she met Sean, an older man, with more sophisticated tastes and skills. He taught her everything he knows and, having cut a swathe through India and Morocco, they moved on to Europe in search of new marks to work on, fresh scams to pull. The South of France, playground of the wealthy and the bored, has so far provided rich pickings.   Jen: How does Lulu fit in? Sabine: Lulu looks like…

Jennifer Vido: What inspired your latest release, THE KEEPER OF HIDDEN BOOKS? Madeline Martin: I found some incredible journals by Warsaw’s public librarians about their efforts through the Nazi occupation during WWII. While the looting and pulping of Polish books was rampant, the librarians were secreting books away – hiding them in boxes and under debris and even storing them in a secret warehouse. When Nazis closed the libraries, the librarians opened a secret one under their noses, ensuring there were still ways for their patrons to read books when they needed them most. But subterfuge around secreting books to readers was also happening within the Warsaw ghetto walls. People hauled their own personal collection of books in suitcases to share with one another. And a librarian of the Warsaw Public Library opened something called CENTOS, which was a secret library for children disguised under the auspices of being a care facility for orphans. CENTOS was truly ingenious with secret shelves that flipped around to hide the books within. Those amazing effort were so inspiring!   Jen: How does Zofia’s love of reading bring her comfort in war-torn Poland? Madeline: When I create my characters, I delve into the country’s…

Jennifer Vido: What inspired your new release, HER, TOO? Bonnie Kistler: I usually can’t reconstruct where my ideas come from, but in the case of Her, Too, it was literally “ripped from the headlines.” Like much of the world, I was riveted by the trials of those prominent entertainment figures (you know who they are) who were accused and ultimately convicted of sex crimes. What struck me in each of those cases was that the defendant was represented by a woman attorney. There was an obvious strategy in his choice. A woman could very aggressively cross-examine the female victim without offending the jurors to the same extent that a male lawyer would have. A female attorney could also soften her client’s image in subtle ways, like leaning close to speak to him, touching his shoulder, etc. Non-verbal cues that send a subliminal message to the jury that he can’t be the monster the prosecutor is claiming. But what fascinated me wasn’t the defendant’s choice of counsel. Rather, it was the lawyer’s choice to take his case. It made me wonder if she felt any inner conflict and how she might have rationalized her decision. I wondered if she was the…

Jennifer Vido: What inspired your new release, THE SUMMER OF SONGBIRDS? Kristy Woodson Harvey: For starters, I started writing this book during the pandemic, and I just wanted to go somewhere fun! And outside! So I knew I was going to write a book about summer camp. But my family actually ended up going to a family camp during that time, and, while we were there reminiscing with friends about our own camp experiences, this story really started to take shape.   Jen: Who is June Moore, and what’s her connection to Camp Holly Springs? Kristy: June Moore is the owner and director of Camp Holly Springs—and protagonist Daphne’s aunt. Daphne and June have been through a lot together, namely losing Daphne’s mom and June’s sister. Throughout the course of this book, Daphne really begins to realize how Camp Holly Springs brought her back to life after that loss. And June begins to realize that maybe she’s used camp as an excuse to hide from the real world. But this place is incredibly special to both women, and they have a hugely vested interest in saving it.   Jen: Who are Daphne, Lanier, and Mary Stuart, and how are they…

Jennifer Vido: What inspired your new release, HOTEL LAGUNA? Nicola Harrison: The first time I started thinking about this novel was in the height of the pandemic. We were still living on the East Coast, staying home, and everything felt so uncertain. I couldn’t travel to do physical research so I thought to myself, where do I want to travel in my mind and live in my imagination for the next year and a half or two years or however long it takes me to write this novel. I kept coming back to the idea of Laguna Beach, a place that I know very well and have a lot of fond memories. I lived there after college and both my parents are artists and have exhibited in art galleries and the festivals in Laguna. I wanted to dream up scenes and adventures and quirky characters all living their lives in this beautiful, bohemian town that is a haven for artists. Once I settled on the time period of the 1940s and learned about the women who worked on the Homefront during the war, taking on jobs previously reserved for men, building airplanes and ammunition and tanks, I started to merge…

Jennifer Vido: For readers unfamiliar with the Cape Sanctuary series, please give us a brief overview. What makes it such a special place? RaeAnne Thayne: Cape Sanctuary is a fictitious town in northern California, roughly based around Trinidad. It’s a community made up of sometimes quirky, always caring people who consider themselves fortunate to live in a place of beauty and peace, where neighbors help each other. I call Utah my home, eight hundred miles from the nearest beach, but I absolutely adore beach towns. I took two of my favorites, Cannon Beach, OR and Pacific Grove/Carmel, CA, and combined them to come up with Cape Sanctuary, a place beloved equally by artists, writers and those who love the outdoors. Each of the five books in the series (THE CLIFF HOUSE, THE SEA GLASS COTTAGE, THE PATH TO SUNSHINE COVE, SUMMER AT THE CAPE and now THE CAFÉ AT BEACH END) is a standalone title, connected to the other books in the title only by geography. It doesn’t matter which book readers start with!   Jen: What inspired THE CAFE AT BEACH END? RaeAnne: I love reading about characters who have reached rock bottom, with nowhere else to go, so…

Jennifer Vido: What inspired you to write a novel about Radio City Music Hall in its mid-century heyday? Fiona Davis: I got an email from a former Rockette who was in her 80s and suggested the building as a location. We got on the phone and she had so many wonderful stories, I knew I had to do it.   Jen: What was your research process like for this novel? And, what’s something fascinating you uncovered along the way? Fiona: I interviewed a number of Rockettes, some who danced there in the 50s and 60s, some later. I got a terrific backstage tour of Radio City Music Hall, and read as much as I could about the era. I was surprised to learn that in the 50s, Radio City was a movie house, and the Rockettes performed four times a day in a stage show that was based on the movie’s theme, doing up to 600 kicks per day.    Jen: What’s happening in nineteen-year-old Marion Brooks’ life, causing her angst? Fiona: Marion wants to be a professional dancer, something her father is absolutely against. Marion’s mother, who wanted to be an actress, died when Marion was a little girl,…

Jennifer Vido: You’re back with another fabulous beach read! What inspired your new release, THE COMEBACK SUMMER? Ali Brady: We each have a younger sister (coincidentally, both are named Elizabeth!) and one day, we were discussing how in a family, you seem to get slated into a specific role during childhood and it can be difficult to break out of those roles as adults. We wanted to write about the beautiful, complex, and challenging relationship of sisterhood—and how those roles we play in childhood shape us for the rest of our lives. From there, we created the characters of Hannah and Libby, two sisters who are best friends, roommates, and business partners. They love each other, but they’re perhaps a little too codependent and enmeshed in their roles, and in THE COMEBACK SUMMER, they learn to break out of those roles and follow their own paths.   Jen: What’s happening in the sisters’ lives, throwing them into a tailspin? Ali: Hannah and Libby are running their late grandmother’s PR agency, which has been losing clients since she passed away. As the story opens, they’ve just lost their last big client, and are worried that they might have to close the…

Jennifer Vido: What’s the inspiration behind your latest release, BETWEEN TWO STRANGERS? Kate White: I get germs for book ideas from all sorts of places – news headlines, snippets of overheard conversation, memories, and so forth. But with BETWEEN TWO STRANGERS, the germ originated from a really crazy experience I had. After my mother died, the brother of mine who was her executor learned from the bank that a fairly substantial check from her small estate was sent to a woman whose name we didn’t recognize. My brothers and I were stunned. Who was this person? Did our mother have a secret we never knew about? After a family discussion, one of my other brothers recalled that the last name of this woman was the former married name of a much-married relative of ours. When approached, she admitted she’d received the check and had assumed my mother simply wanted to leave her something, which was a stretch for sure. Further exploration revealed that the whole thing was a terrible bank error. A new check was issued to my brothers and me, and though the bank had the right to ask for the money back from this woman, they never did….