Jackie Fraser, Milly Johnson & Eva Verde on Feel-Good Fiction

Three wonderful and best-selling authors - Jackie Fraser, Milly Johnson and Eva Verde - discuss their latest feel-good novels, and their writing careers so far with Simon & Schuster's Sara-Jade Virtue.

About Our Authors

Jackie Fraser is a freelance editor and writer. She's worked for AA Publishing, Watkins, the Good Food Guide, and various self-published writers of fiction, travel and food guides, recipe books and self-help books since 2012. Prior to that, she worked as an editor of food and accommodation guides for the AA, including the B&B Guide, Restaurant Guide, and Pub Guide for nearly twenty years, eventually running the Lifestyle Guides department. She's interested in all kind of things, particularly history, (and prehistory) art, food, popular culture and music. She reads a lot, (no, really) in multiple genres, and is fascinated by the Bronze Age. She likes vintage clothes, antique fairs, and photography. She used to be a bit of a goth. She likes cats.

Jackie's New Book: The Beginning of Everything

Beautiful, heartbreaking, often very funny and entirely unforgettable, The Beginning of Everything is the irresistible new novel from the bestselling author of The Bookshop of Second Chances.

The Beginning of Everything is the story of Jess and Gethin, whose paths cross in the most unexpected way. Jess is running, leaving all she knows and everyone she loves behind her, with just a few treasured belongings in her rucksack. She’s escaping from the pain and trauma of a bad relationship with a bad man, gone very badly wrong. Gethin’s kindness and care takes her breath away. They become friends. But with so much hurt in her past, can Jess learn to love and live again?

Milly Johnson was born, raised, and still lives in Barnsley, South Yorkshire. A Sunday Times (London) bestseller, millions of copies of her books have sold across the world. Milly writes from the heart about what and where she knows and highlights the importance of community spirit. Her books champion women, their strength and resilience, and celebrate love, friendship ,and the possibility of second chances. She is an exceptional writer who puts her heart and soul into every book she writes and every character she creates.

Milly's Latest Book: Together Again

Together again after years apart, can they find a new beginning? Sisters Jolene, Marsha and Annis have convened at their beautiful family home, Fox House, following the death of their mother, the tricky Eleanor Vamplew. Born seven years apart, the women are more strangers than sisters.  Jolene, the eldest, is a successful romantic novelist who writes about beautiful relationships even though her own marriage to the handsome and charming Warren is complicated. Marsha, the neglected middle child, has put all of her energy into her work, hoping money will plug the gap in her life left by the man who broke her young heart. Annis is the renegade, who left home aged sixteen and never returned, not even for the death of their beloved father Julian. Until now.  So when the sisters discover that their mother has left everything to Annis in her will, it undermines everything they thought they knew. Can saying their final goodbyes to Eleanor bring them together again?  Together, Again is the story of truths uncovered and lies exposed, of secrets told – and kept. It is a novel about sister helping sister to heal from childhood scars and finding in each other support, forgiveness, courage and love.

Eva Verde is a writer from East London. Identity, class and female rage are recurring themes throughout her work. Eva's love song to libraries, I Am Not Your Tituba forms part of Kit De Waal's Common People: An Anthology of Working-Class Writers. Her words have featured in Marie Claire, Grazia, Elle and The Big Issue, also penning the new foreword for the international bestselling author Jackie Collins Goddess of Vengeance. Eva lives in Essex with her husband, children and dog.

Eva's Latest Book: In Bloom

A deeply affecting novel, In Blooms tells of strength, survival, forgiveness, resilience and determination, and the fierce love and unbreakable bonds between mothers and daughters.  Ever since Sol’s untimely death left her pregnant and alone at twenty-four, Delph’s kept herself small as a form of self-protection. Now, over a decade later, she lives with their daughter Roche and her new partner Itsy, a kind and protective cabbie, on the fourteenth floor of Esplanade Point on the Essex coast.  But Delph’s protective bubble bursts when Roche moves in with her estranged nan, Moon. Feeling on the outside of the bond between her fierce-yet-flaky tarot-reading mother and volatile martial-arts-champion daughter, Delph begins questioning her own freedom. And when Roche’s snooping into her grandmother’s past unearths a familial line of downtrodden women; a worrying pattern emerges. Has keeping small and safe truly been Delph’s choice all these years…?