In this episode of The Jane Healey Happy Hour, Jane Healey talks with award-winning author Laura Jensen Walker about The Pilgrimage of Primrose Honeychurch, the story of a solitary 70-year-old book lover who sets out for the legendary Welsh book town of Hay-on-Wye. Walker shares how discovering she was neurodivergent at 67 inspired Primrose and her journey, and why the character’s unexpected bond with her young neurodivergent great-niece became such an important part of the story. She also talks about writing later-in-life reinvention, her love of English bookshops, and a career that has taken her across more than 25 books and several genres.

In this episode of The Jane Healey Happy Hour, Jane Healey talks with bestselling author Rachel Beanland about The Half Life, set on the Mediterranean island of La Maddalena in the 1970s, when an American naval presence brought Navy families into a close and sometimes contentious relationship with the local community. Beanland shares her personal connection to the island, where she lived as a child, and how interviews with former residents helped her recreate everything from Navy-wife culture to the isolation of island life. She also discusses writing about young marriage, deciding when historical fiction can bend the timeline, and why finishing a first draft is so important.

In this episode of The Jane Healey Happy Hour, Jane Healey talks with USA Today bestselling author Meg Shaffer about The Book Witch, a love letter to reading built around witches who can step inside books, repair damaged stories, and track down fictional characters who escape their pages. Shaffer shares how Alice in Wonderland, Nancy Drew, Pride and Prejudice, and other classics found their way into the novel, as well as the fascinating history she uncovered behind the original Nancy Drew books. She also talks about creating the rules of book magic, writing a complicated twist-filled story, and why learning to delete and rewrite remains some of the best advice she has received.

In this episode of The Jane Healey Happy Hour, Jane Healey talks with author Lori Gold about Kiss, Marry, Kill, a book club novel about three best friends who wake up in an alternate universe where the choices they made during a party game have become reality. Gold discusses how the pandemic helped shape the novel’s questions about choice, regret, and whether the grass really is greener, along with the research she did into quantum mechanics and multiverse theory to ground the speculative premise. She also shares her approach to developing characters, plotting a complicated three-POV story, and treating publishing as both a creative pursuit and a business.

In this episode of The Jane Healey Happy Hour, Jane Healey talks with #1 New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Lim about Fishbone Cinderella, her adult debut inspired by her grandmother’s experiences in wartime China and postwar Hong Kong. Lim shares how a Chinese Cinderella tale—with magical fish bones instead of a fairy godmother—helped shape this mother-daughter story and its elements of magical realism. She also discusses the surprising history of soy milk in occupied Hong Kong, weaving family history into fiction, and why this deeply personal novel took more than a decade to write.

In this episode of The Jane Healey Happy Hour, Jane Healey talks with bestselling historical fiction author Louise Fein about The Book of Forbidden Words, a dual-timeline novel spanning the 1500s and 1950s. Fein shares the history behind real-life Parisian printer Charlotte Goulard, the inspiration she found in the still-undeciphered Voynich manuscript, and the extensive research required to bring two very different eras to life. They also discuss historical accuracy, censorship and banned books, and Fein’s approach to writing stories about women whose voices have been overlooked.

In this episode of The Jane Healey Happy Hour, Jane Healey talks with #1 New York Times bestselling author Lyla Sage about Free Falling, the second novel in her Sweetwater Peak duology. Sage shares how her love of rural communities, antiques, Western ghost-town lore, and haunted-house stories shaped the atmospheric town of Sweetwater Peak and the romance between Clark and Laith. She also talks about writing intuitively, why she thrives during revision rather than drafting, and what her brief move from self-publishing to traditional publishing taught her about the business of books.

Jane Healey talks with Vanessa Riley about Fire, Sword and Sea, her historical novel inspired by Jacquotte Delahaye, a Black woman who rose from a tavern keeper’s daughter to become a pirate captain in the 1600s Caribbean. Riley shares how a visit to Port Royal sparked the novel and why reconstructing Jacquotte’s life required extensive research and careful triangulation from the records of better-documented contemporaries. They also dig into the surprising diversity of Caribbean pirate crews, the brutal role of enslavement in the region’s economy, and Riley’s commitment to portraying history with both honesty and humanity.