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Join Atlanta History Center and the Friends & Fiction Official Book Club for a celebration of the Book Club’s 5th anniversary!
This exclusive author event will feature five authors: Mary Kay Andrews, Kimberly Brock, Lauren Connolly, Colleen Oakley, and Vanessa Riley in conversation with Friends & Fiction Book Club organizers Brenda Gardner and Lisa Harrison. Join us for a night of bookish conversation followed by the chance to meet the authors and have your book signed. Not a member of the book club? No problem! This event is open to all.
Featured Authors
Mary Kay Andrews, founding co-host of Friends and Fiction, is the New York Times bestselling author of more than 30 novels (including Summers at the Saint, Bright Lights Big Christmas, The Homewreckers, The Santa Suit, and Hissy Fit), and one cookbook, The Beach House Cookbook.
A native of St. Petersburg, Florida, she earned a B.A. in journalism from The University of Georgia. After a 14-year career working as a reporter at newspapers including The Savannah Morning News, The Marietta Journal, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where she spent the final ten years of her career, she left journalism in 1991 to write fiction.
Her first novel, Every Crooked Nanny, was published in 1992 by HarperCollins. She went on to write ten critically acclaimed mysteries under her real name, Kathy Hogan Trocheck. In 2002, she assumed the pen name Mary Kay Andrews with the publication of Savannah Blues. In 2006, Hissy Fit became her first New York Times bestseller, followed by fifteen more New York Times, USA Today and Publisher’s Weekly bestsellers. To date, her novels have been published in German, Italian, Polish, Slovenian, Hungarian, Dutch, Czech and Japanese.
She and her family divide their time between Atlanta and Tybee Island, GA, where they cook up new recipes in three restored beach homes, The Breeze Inn, Ebbtide, and Coquina Cottage—all named after fictional places in Mary Kay’s novels, and all available to rent through Tybee Vacation Rentals. In between cooking, spoiling her grandkids, and plotting her next novel, Mary Kay is an intrepid treasure hunter whose favorite pastime is junking and fixing up old houses.
Kimberly Brock is the award winning author of The Fabled Earth, featured as a Must Read in Fall of 2024 by Town & Country Magazine, and The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare, which spent three weeks on the Southern Independent Booksellers Best Seller List. Both novels have been shortlisted for the prestigious Townsend Prize for Fiction. Her debut novel, The River Witch, was the recipient of the Georgia Author of the Year Award. Kimberly has been featured on the History Channel’s ‘History’s Greatest Mysteries,’ and is the founder of Tinderbox Writers Workshop, a transformative experience for women in the arts. A former actor and special needs educator, she speaks widely on the creative life and southern and historical fiction, serving as a guest lecturer for many regional and national writing workshops including at the Pat Conroy Literary Center. A native of North Georgia, she now lives near Atlanta where she is at work on her fourth novel.
Lauren Connolly is an award-winning author of contemporary and magical romance stories. She’s lived among mountains, next to lakes, and in imaginary worlds. Lauren can never seem to stay in one place for too long, but trust that wherever she’s residing there is a dog who thinks he’s a troll, twin cats hiding in the couch, and bookshelves bursting with stories written by the authors she loves.
Colleen Oakley is the USA Today bestselling author of Jane and Dan at the End of the World, The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise, The Invisible Husband of Frick Island, You Were There Too, Close Enough to Touch, and Before I Go. Her books have been featured on The Today Show and Good Morning America, translated into more than twenty languages around the world and have won multiple awards including Georgia Author of the Year and the French Reader’s Prize. A former magazine editor for Women’s Health & Fitness and Marie Claire, Colleen lives in Atlanta with her husband, four children, three chickens, and a mutt named Baxter.
Vanessa Riley is an award-winning author of over twenty-five novels like Island Queen (a GMA buzz pick), A Duke The Lady and A Baby, and the Lady Worthing mystery series (2024 Georgia Author of the Year for Mystery). Her works spotlight hidden narratives of Black women and women of color, emphasizing power, sisterhoods, and family sagas across historical fiction, romance, and mystery genres. With a doctorate from Stanford University and other engineering degrees from Penn State, Vanessa brings a research-oriented approach to her inclusive storytelling about Caribbean, Georgian, and Regency eras.