Laura Lane McNeal
After receiving two undergraduate degrees from Southern Methodist University (a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Bachelor of Business Administration), she went on to earn an MBA from Tulane University. She spent most of her career in advertising, working for firms in New York and Dallas, before returning to New Orleans where she started her own marketing consulting firm and became a free-lance writer as well as a decorative artist. In 2005, when the devastation of Hurricane Katrina left her with having to rebuild her life, Laura seized the opportunity to fulfill her lifetime dream of becoming a writer. She hasn’t stopped since.
Laura resides in New Orleans and is married with two sons. DOLLBABY is her first published novel. She is presently work
If you like author Laura Lane McNeal here is the list of authors you may also like
Buy books on AmazonTotal similar authors (27)
-
Beth Hoffman
Twelve days after Beth Hoffman’s first novel was published in 2010, she became a New York Times bestselling author with foreign rights selling to prestigious publishers in Italy, Germany, France, Poland, Norway, Hungary, Indonesia, Korea, Israel, and the United Kingdom.
Buy books on Amazon
Following an extensive national tour, Beth returned home to Kentucky and the solace of her writing studio. Drawing from vivid memories of childhood on her grandparents’ farm and her love of animals, nature, and antiques, a surprising story quickly took form. When asked about her second novel, which is titled Looking for Me, Beth says: “This book encompasses my deepest passions—it’s the story that woke me in the night and demanded to be told.”
Before beginning her writing caree -
Wally Lamb
Wally Lamb is the author of six New York Times bestselling novels: I’ll Take You There, We Are Water, Wishin’ and Hopin’, The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much Is True, and She’s Come Undone. His latest novel, The River is Waiting, will be released in May of 2025 through Marysue Rucci Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
Buy books on Amazon
Lamb also edited Couldn’t Keep It to Myself and I’ll Fly Away, two volumes of essays from students in his writing workshop at York Correctional Institution, a women’s prison in Connecticut, where he was a volunteer facilitator for twenty years.
Lamb lives in Connecticut with his wife, Christine, and they have three sons. -
Susan Meissner
Susan Meissner is a USA Today bestselling novelist with more than a million books in the hands of readers, and in eighteen languages. Her critically acclaimed works of historical fiction have been named to numerous lists including Publishers Weekly’s annual roster of 100 best books, Library Reads Top Picks, Real Simple annual tally of best books, Goodreads Readers’ Choice awards, Booklist’s Top Ten, and Book of the Month.
Buy books on Amazon
She attended Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego and is a former managing editor of a weekly newspaper. Susan’s expertise as a storyteller and her thoroughly researched topics make her a favorite author of book clubs everywhere. Her engaging and warm speaking style appeal to all manner of women’s groups, literary o -
Kathy Hepinstall
Kathy Hepinstall grew up in Spring, Texas, near the Louisiana border. Her most recent book is The Book of Polly. Polly is based, in part, on Kathy’s own mother, who has as wicked a tongue as her fictional counterpart. Kathy now lives in Portland, Oregon.
Buy books on Amazon -
Beth Hoffman
Twelve days after Beth Hoffman’s first novel was published in 2010, she became a New York Times bestselling author with foreign rights selling to prestigious publishers in Italy, Germany, France, Poland, Norway, Hungary, Indonesia, Korea, Israel, and the United Kingdom.
Buy books on Amazon
Following an extensive national tour, Beth returned home to Kentucky and the solace of her writing studio. Drawing from vivid memories of childhood on her grandparents’ farm and her love of animals, nature, and antiques, a surprising story quickly took form. When asked about her second novel, which is titled Looking for Me, Beth says: “This book encompasses my deepest passions—it’s the story that woke me in the night and demanded to be told.”
Before beginning her writing caree -
Susan Crandall
Alas, the rumor is true, Susan was a dental hygienist in her previous career. However, she "retired" from that profession many years ago and has been a full-time author ever since--thanks to all of you fabulous readers.
Buy books on Amazon
Susan grew up in a small Indiana town, married a guy from that town, and then moved to Chicago for a while. She is pleased to say that she has been back in her hometown for many years and plans to stay.
She's received a RITA, two National Reader's Choice Awards and a SIBA Award for Fiction. Her books include an Indie Next Pick, Okra Picks, a Target Book Club pick, and are popular with book clubs.
THE MYTH OF PERPETUAL SUMMER will be released June 19, 2018.
Join her newsletter for new release announcements. http://susancrandall.n -
Kristin Harmel
Kristin Harmel is the New York Times bestselling, USA Today bestselling, and #1 international bestselling author of The Paris Daughter, The Forest of Vanishing Stars, The Book of Lost Names, The Winemaker’s Wife, and a dozen other novels that have been translated into more than 30 languages and are sold all over the world.
Buy books on Amazon
Kristin has been writing professionally since the age of 16, when she began her career as a sportswriter, covering Major League Baseball and NHL hockey for a local magazine in Tampa Bay, Florida in the late 1990s. In addition to a long magazine writing career, primarily writing and reporting for PEOPLE magazine (as well as articles published in numerous other magazines, including American Baby, Men’s Health, Woman’s Day, a -
Lisa Wingate
Lisa Wingate is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Before We Were Yours, which remained on the bestseller list for over two years. Her award-winning works have been selected for state and community One Book reads, have been published in over forty languages, and have appeared on bestseller lists worldwide. The group Americans for More Civility, a kindness watchdog organization, selected Lisa and six others as recipients of the National Civics Award, which celebrates public figures who work to promote greater kindness and civility in American life. She lives in Texas and Colorado with her family and her deceptively cute little teddy bear of a dog, Huckleberry. Find her at www.lisawingate.com, on Facebook at LisaWingateAuthorPage,
Buy books on Amazon -
Marie Bostwick
Marie Bostwick is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of uplifting historical and contemporary fiction. She lives in the state of Washington and travels frequently to sign books, speak to reading groups, and meet her readers. Keep up with Marie, her travels, new releases and lifestyle blog, Fiercely Marie, at www.mariebostwick.com.
Buy books on Amazon -
Susan Gregg Gilmore
Susan Gregg Gilmore's fourth novel, The Curious Calling of Leonard Bush (Blair), will be released August 25.
Buy books on Amazon
Although her artist mother bought Gilmore her first easel and box of paints when she was five, it was her father's love of family storytelling that captured her attention.
Gilmore knew at an early age that she wanted to write but was first drawn to journalism not fiction. While at the University of Virginia, she wrote for the student paper, The Cavalier Daily.
Later, while raising her three daughters, she joined the staff of The Chattanooga News Free Press as a features writer and columnist. After relocating to Southern California, she regularly freelanced for The Los Angeles Times and Christian Science Monitor.
Her first novel, Looking -
Patricia Harman
Patricia Harman has spent over thirty years caring for women as a midwife, first as a lay-midwife, delivering babies in cabins and on communal farms in West Virginia, and later as a nurse-midwife in teaching hospitals and in a community hospital birthing center.
She spent over a decade in the sixties and seventies in her wild youth living in rural communes in Washington (Tolstoy Farm), Connecticut (The Committee for Non-Violent Action) and Minnesota (Free Folk). During the Vietnam years, she and her husband, Tom Harman, traveled the country, often hitch-hiking, as they looked for a place to settle. In 1974 they purchased a farm with a group of like-minded friends on top of a ridge in Roane County, West Virginia. Here on the commune, they bui
Buy books on Amazon -
Juliette Fay
Juliette Fay is the bestselling author of eight novels, including THE HARVEY GIRLS, THE HALF OF IT, CATCH US WHEN WE FALL, CITY OF FLICKERING LIGHT and THE TUMBLING TURNER SISTERS, a USA Today bestseller and Costco Pennie’s Book Club Pick. Previous novels include THE SHORTEST WAY HOME, one of Library Journal’s Top 5 Best Books of 2012: Women’s Fiction; DEEP DOWN TRUE, short-listed for the 2011Women’s Fiction award by the American Library Association; and SHELTER ME, a 2009 Massachusetts Book Award “Must-Read Book” and an Indie Next pick.
Buy books on Amazon
Juliette is a graduate of Boston College and Harvard University, and lives in Massachusetts with her family. Follow her on Facebook: Juliette Fay author, Instagram: Juliette_Fay, and BookBub: https://www.bo -
Charlotte Whitney
Charlotte Whitney grew up on a Michigan farm and heard her aunts and grandmother tell stories of "hard times," and was surprised to hear that even farmers went to bed hungry.
Buy books on Amazon
That served as the impetus for the settings for her award-winning novels, A TINY PIECE OF BLUE, (winner of American Fiction Awards - Historical Fiction; IIPPY Gold Medal for Historical Fiction; Finalist in Hawthorne Prize for Historical Fiction}; THE UNVEILING OF POLLY FORREST, and THREADS A DEPRESSION ERA TALE.
She worked at the University of MIchigan at the Lloyd Scholars for Writing and the Arts Program before leaving to write full-time. Currently she lives in Arizona with her husband and dogs Lucy, a Golden Doodle, and Amanda, a Golden -Labrador mix. She loves hik -
Carolyn Wall
Carolyn D. Wall is the author of the novel Sweeping Up Glass (Poisoned Pen Press; available in bookstores August, 2008). Her short stories, articles and photographs have appeared in over 100 publications. For many years she worked as Senior Staff Writer for Persimmon Hill, the award-winning publication of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, and was chief writer for the museum’s children’s magazine. For six years she served as Fiction Editor and columnist for ByLine magazine.
Buy books on Amazon
A full-time freelance writer and lecturer on university campuses and in conference centers around the country, Wall conducts intense workshops in Fiction, Short Story and Feature Writing, Journaling, and Writing for Children. She is perhaps best known for he -
Sean Dietrich
Sean Dietrich is a columnist, podcaster, speaker, and novelist, known for his commentary on life in the American South. His work has appeared in Southern Living, The Tallahassee Democrat, Good Grit, South Magazine, The Bitter Southerner, Thom Magazine, and The Mobile Press Register, and he has authored ten books.
Buy books on Amazon -
Kathleen Kaufman
Buy books on Amazon
Kathleen Kaufman is an author of magical realism and feminist gothic horror, exploring “the other” from ”the other’s” point of view. Her fiction explores how the horror of the past manifests in the present, and the inescapable intertwining of generational history. Her prose has been praised by Kirkus Reviews as “crisp, elegant” and “genuinely chilling” by Booklist. She is the author of the Diabhal trilogy, The Lairdbalor, soon to be a feature film directed by Nicholas Verso, Hag, and The Tree Museum. Kathleen is a professor at Santa Monica College and lives in Los Angeles with her husband, son, kitten, and hound. -
Julie Kibler
Julie Kibler is the bestselling author of Home for Erring and Outcast Girls and Calling Me Home, which was an IndieNext List pick, Target Club Pick, and Ladies' Home Journal Book Club Pick, published in fifteen languages. She has a bachelor's degree in English and journalism and a master's degree in library science and lives with her family, including four rescued dogs and cats, in Texas.
Buy books on Amazon -
Ellen Marie Wiseman
Ellen Marie Wiseman is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author known for writing novels based on real historical injustices, including THE LIES THEY TOLD, THE ORPHAN COLLECTOR, WHAT SHE LEFT BEHIND, THE PLUM TREE , COAL RIVER, THE LIFE SHE WAS GIVEN, and THE LOST GIRLS OF WILLOWBROOK, which was an Indie Next selection, an Amazon Editor's Pick and the B&N “Our Monthly Pick.” Born and raised in Three Mile Bay, a tiny hamlet in northern New York, Ellen is a first-generation German American who discovered her love of reading and writing while attending first grade in one of the last one-room schoolhouses in New York State. Since then, her novels have been published worldwide, translated into more than twenty languages, and sold nearly
Buy books on Amazon -
Hazel Gaynor
Hazel Gaynor is an award-winning New York Times and internationally bestselling author of historical novels which explore the defining events of the 20th century. A recipient of the 2015 RNA Historical Novel award and the 2024 Audie award for Best Fiction Narrator, she was also shortlisted for the 2019 HWA Gold Crown, and the Irish Book Awards in 2017, 2020 and 2023.
Buy books on Amazon
Hazel’s co-written historical novels with Heather Webb have all been published to critical acclaim, winning or being shortlisted for several international awards.
She is a regular speaker at literary festivals, co-founder of The Inspiration Project, and programmed and hosted a series of Historia Live events in association with Dublin UNESCO City of Literature in 2024. Her work -
Cassie Dandridge Selleck
Born and raised in Central Florida, Cassie now makes her home on the banks of the Suwannee River in North Florida with her husband of twenty-five years and their tiny but terrifying chihuahua. A late-bloomer, Cassie worked in several careers before settling in to the writer's life. These included ten years at Merrill Lynch, several years as an Outreach Coordinator for a tri-county public library system, and several more doing marketing for her brother's company Anderson Crane and Bridge (now Anderson Hydra). An empty-nester after 34 years of raising three daughters, Cassie published her first novel, The Pecan Man in 2012. This work has since sold over 150,000 copies, been produced as an audio book by Blackstone and optioned for film rights
Buy books on Amazon -
Meagan Church
Meagan Church is the author of emotionally-charged, empathy-inducing novels, including The Mad Wife, The Last Carolina Girl, and The Girls We Sent Away, a Southern indie bestseller and North Carolina Reads state-wide book club pick for 2025. After receiving a B.A. in English from Indiana University, Meagan built a career as a freelance writer. She is an adjunct for Drexel University’s MFA in creative writing program, and helps authors tell their own stories through editing, coaching, and workshops. A Midwesterner by birth, she now lives in North Carolina with her high school sweetheart, three children, and a plethora of pets.
Buy books on Amazon -
Martha Hall Kelly
Martha is still pinching herself after her debut novel LILAC GIRLS, about socialite Caroline Ferriday and her fight to help a group of concentration camp survivors, became an Instant NY Times bestseller in 2016 and went on to sell over two million copies. Once the paperback stayed on the NYT list for 54 weeks, and became published in fifty countries she wrote three more novels: LOST ROSES about Caroline's mother, SUNFLOWER SISTERS about her great grandmother, and THE GOLDEN DOVES about two best friends who unite to find a missing Nazi doctor. Martha's next book, which arrives summer 2025, is THE MARTHA'S VINEYARD BEACH AND BOOK CLUB about two sisters who turn the tide of the war with the help of their book club. Martha grew up in Massachuse
Buy books on Amazon -
Donna Everhart
Donna Everhart is a USA Today bestselling author known for vividly evoking the challenges of the heart and the complex heritage of the American South in her acclaimed novels When the Jessamine Grows, The Saints of Swallow Hill, The Moonshiner’s Daughter, The Forgiving Kind, The Road to Bittersweet, and The Education of Dixie Dupree.
Buy books on Amazon
She is the recipient of the prestigious SELA Outstanding Southeastern Author Award from the Southeastern Library Association and her novels have received a SIBA Okra Pick, an Indie Next Pick, and two Publishers Marketplace Buzz Books selections.
Born and raised in Raleigh, she has stayed close to her hometown for much of her life and now lives just an hour away in Dunn, North Carolina. Please visit Donna Everhar -
Leah Weiss
Come visit me at LeahWeiss.com where you can subscribe to my CREEKRISE author news. You'll also find a longer version of my official bio:
Buy books on Amazon
Leah Weiss is a bestselling author born in eastern North Carolina and raised in the foothills of Virginia. She retired in 2015 from a 24-year career as an Executive Assistant at Virginia Episcopal School and published her debut novel, IF THE CREEK DON’T RISE in August, 2017; it has sold over 100,000 copies. ALL THE LITTLE HOPES will be released in July 2021. It is a southern story of friendship forged by books and bees, when the timeless troubles of growing up meet the murky shadows of WWII. Leah writes full time, enjoys meeting with book clubs, and speaking about writing and publishing later in life, afte -
Michelle Shocklee
Michelle Shocklee is the author of several historical novels, including ALL WE THOUGHT WE KNEW, a 2025 Christy Award Finalist; APPALACHIAN SONG, a 2024 Christy Award Finalist; COUNT THE NIGHTS BY STARS, winner of the 2023 Christianity Today Book Award in Fiction; and UNDER THE TULIP TREE, a Christy Award & Selah Award finalist.
Buy books on Amazon
As a woman of mixed heritage--her father's family is Hispanic and her mother's roots go back to Germany--she has always celebrated diversity and feels it's important to see the world through the eyes of one another. Learning from the past and changing the future is why she writes historical fiction.
With both her sons grown and happily married, Michelle and her husband make their home in Tennessee.
Click the "Influen -
Patti Callahan Henry
Patti Callahan Henry is a New York Times, Globe and Mail, and USA Today bestselling author of sixteen novels, including her newest, The Secret Book of Flora Lea. She’s also a podcast host of original content for her novels, Surviving Savannah and Becoming Mrs. Lewis.
Buy books on Amazon
She is the recipient of The Christy Award “Book of the Year”; The Harper Lee Distinguished Writer of the Year and the Alabama Library Association Book of the Year for Becoming Mrs. Lewis. She is the co-host and co-creator of the popular weekly online Friends and Fiction live web show and podcast. Patti also was a contributor to the monthly life lesson essay column for Parade Magazine. She’s published in numerous anthologies, articles, and short story collections, including an A -
Clare Leslie Hall
Clare Leslie Hall is a novelist and journalist who lives in the wilds of Dorset, England, with her family. Under the name Clare Empson, she published two domestic noir thrillers, Him and Mine, that were published in the UK and Germany. She has always loved The Go Between by LP Hartley and Broken Country is a nod to it, featuring a forbidden love affair with catastrophic repercussions. Broken Country is her US debut.
Buy books on Amazon