“She held around 200 participants spellbound … with pep, poise, and personality.” — Marsha Toy Engstrom, Friends of Woodland Public Library

New York Times bestseller and book club favorite Meg Waite Clayton is the author of eight novels, most recently the international bestseller The Postmistress of Paris — a Good Morning America Buzz Book, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a Publishers Weekly notable book, and a People Magazine, Indie Next booksellers, LoanStars librarian, Book of the Month, USA Today, and Amazon Editors’ pick which the San Francisco Chronicle calls “‘Casablanca’ if Rick had an artsy bent … powerful.”

Her international bestseller and National Jewish Book Award finalist The Last Train to London is published or forthcoming in 20 languages. Her screenplay for that novel was chosen for the prestigious Meryl Streep- and Nicole Kidman-sponsored The Writers Lab.

Meg’s prior novels include the #1 Amazon fiction bestseller Beautiful Exiles; the Langum Prize honored The Race for ParisThe Wednesday Sisters, named one of Entertainment Weekly’s 25 Essential Best Friend Novels of all time (on a list with The Three Musketeers!); and The Language of Light, a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. She has written more than 100 shorter pieces for the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Runner’s World, and public radio, often on the particular challenges women face. She mentors for the OpEd Project and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and the California bar.

Meg's Featured Titles

The Postmistress Of Paris

Harper |
Novel

AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER* A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ PICK* A GMA BUZZ PICK * AN INDIE NEXT PICK* AN AMAZON BEST OF THE MONTH PICK, LITERATURE AND FICTION*A PEOPLE MAGAZINE PICK

The New York Times bestselling author of The Last Train to London revisits the dark early days of the German occupation in France in this haunting novel—a love story and a tale of high-stakes danger and incomparable courage—about a young American heiress who helps artists hunted by the Nazis escape from war-torn Europe.

Wealthy, beautiful Naneé was born with a spirit of adventure. For her, learning to fly is freedom. When German tanks roll across the border and into Paris, this woman with an adorable dog and a generous heart joins the resistance. Known as the Postmistress because she delivers information to those in hiding, Naneé uses her charms and skill to house the hunted and deliver them to safety.

Photographer Edouard Moss has escaped Germany with his young daughter only to be interned in a French labor camp. His life collides with Nanée’s in this sweeping tale of romance and danger set in a world aflame with personal and political passion.

Inspired by the real life Chicago heiress Mary Jayne Gold, who worked with American journalist Varian Fry to smuggle artists and intellectuals out of France, The Postmistress of Paris is the haunting story of an indomitable woman whose strength, bravery, and love is a beacon of hope in a time of terror.

The Last Train To London

Harper |
Novel

National Bestseller

A Historical Novels Review Editors’ Choice • A Jewish Book Award Finalist

“An absolutely fascinating, beautifully rendered story of love, loss, and heroism in the dark days leading up to World War II. . . . A glowing portrait of women rising up against impossible odds to save children.” —Kristin Hannah, New York Times bestselling author of The Great Alone and The Nightingale

The New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Exiles conjures her best novel yet, a pre-World War II-era story with the emotional resonance of Orphan Train and All the Light We Cannot See, centering on the Kindertransports that carried thousands of children out of Nazi-occupied Europe—and one brave woman who helped them escape to safety.

In 1936, the Nazi are little more than loud, brutish bores to fifteen-year old Stephan Neuman, the son of a wealthy and influential Jewish family and budding playwright whose playground extends from Vienna’s streets to its intricate underground tunnels. Stephan’s best friend and companion is the brilliant Žofie-Helene, a Christian girl whose mother edits a progressive, anti-Nazi newspaper. But the two adolescents’ carefree innocence is shattered when the Nazis’ take control.

There is hope in the darkness, though. Truus Wijsmuller, a member of the Dutch resistance, risks her life smuggling Jewish children out of Nazi Germany to the nations that will take them. It is a mission that becomes even more dangerous after the Anschluss—Hitler’s annexation of Austria—as, across Europe, countries close their borders to the growing number of refugees desperate to escape.

Tante Truus, as she is known, is determined to save as many children as she can. After Britain passes a measure to take in at-risk child refugees from the German Reich, she dares to approach Adolf Eichmann, the man who would later help devise the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” in a race against time to bring children like Stephan, his young brother Walter, and Žofie-Helene on a perilous journey to an uncertain future abroad.

Beautiful Exiles

Lake Union Publishing |
Novel

From New York Times bestselling author Meg Waite Clayton comes a riveting novel based on one of the most volatile and intoxicating real-life love affairs of the twentieth century.

Key West, 1936. Headstrong, accomplished journalist Martha Gellhorn is confident with words but less so with men when she meets disheveled literary titan Ernest Hemingway in a dive bar. Their friendship–forged over writing, talk, and family dinners–flourishes into something undeniable in Madrid while they’re covering the Spanish Civil War.

Martha reveres him. The very married Hemingway is taken with Martha–her beauty, her ambition, and her fearless spirit. And as Hemingway tells her, the most powerful love stories are always set against the fury of war. The risks are so much greater. They’re made for each other.

With their romance unfolding as they travel the globe, Martha establishes herself as one of the world’s foremost war correspondents, and Hemingway begins the novel that will win him the Nobel Prize for Literature. Beautiful Exiles is a stirring story of lovers and rivals, of the breathless attraction to power and fame, and of one woman–ahead of her time–claiming her own identity from the wreckage of love.

The Race for Paris

Harper |
Novel

National Bestseller

David J. Langum, Sr. Prize for American Historical Fiction, Honorary Mention for 2015

The New York Times bestselling author of The Wednesday Sisters returns with a moving and powerfully dynamic World War II novel about two American journalists and an Englishman, who together race the Allies to Occupied Paris for the scoop of their lives.

Normandy, 1944. To cover the fighting in France, Jane, a reporter for the Nashville Banner, and Liv, an Associated Press photographer, have endured enormous danger and frustrating obstacles—including strict military regulations limiting what women correspondents can. Even so, Liv wants more.

Encouraged by her husband, the editor of a New York newspaper, she’s determined to be the first photographer to reach Paris with the Allies, and capture its freedom from the Nazis.

However, her Commanding Officer has other ideas about the role of women in the press corps. To fulfill her ambitions, Liv must go AWOL. She persuades Jane to join her, and the two women find a guardian angel in Fletcher, a British military photographer who reluctantly agrees to escort them. As they race for Paris across the perilous French countryside, Liv, Jane, and Fletcher forge an indelible emotional bond that will transform them and reverberate long after the war is over.

Based on daring, real-life female reporters on the front lines of history like Margaret Bourke-White, Lee Miller, and Martha Gellhorn—and with cameos by other famous faces of the time—The Race for Paris is an absorbing, atmospheric saga full of drama, adventure, and passion. Combining riveting storytelling with expert literary craftsmanship and thorough research, Meg Waite Clayton crafts a compelling, resonant read.

The Wednesday Daughters

Ballantine Books |
Novel
In the tradition of Kristin Hannah and Karen Joy Fowler, Meg Waite Clayton, bestselling author of The Wednesday Sisters, returns with an enthralling new novel of mothers, daughters, and the secrets and dreams passed down through generations.

It is early evening when Hope Tantry arrives at the small cottage in England’s pastoral Lake District where her mother, Ally, spent the last years of her life. Ally—one of a close-knit group of women who called themselves the Wednesday Sisters—had used the cottage as a writer’s retreat while she worked on her unpublished biography of Beatrix Potter, yet Hope knows little about her mother’s time there. Traveling with Hope are friends Anna Page and Julie, first introduced as little girls in The Wednesday Sisters, now grown women grappling with issues of a different era. They’ve come to help Hope sort through her mother’s personal effects, yet what they find is a tangled family history—one steeped in Lake District lore.

Hope finds a stack of Ally’s old notebooks tucked away in a hidden drawer, all written in a mysterious code. As she, Julie, and Anna Page try to decipher Ally’s writings—the reason for their encryption, their possible connection to the Potter manuscript—they are forced to confront their own personal struggles: Hope’s doubts about her marriage, Julie’s grief over losing her twin sister, Anna Page’s fear of commitment in relationships. And as the real reason for Ally’s stay in England comes to light, Hope, Julie, and Anna Page reach a new understanding about the enduring bonds of family, the unwavering strength of love, and the inescapable pull of the past.

Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more.

“The present and the past intertwine beautifully and inevitably in Meg Waite Clayton’s winning follow-up to The Wednesday Sisters. From the beguiling Lake District setting, to a completely charming (and spot-on) portrayal of Beatrix Potter, to the way the Wednesday daughters strive to unpuzzle both their own choices and their mothers’ legacies, every layer of the novel delivers. The Wednesday Daughters is utterly rich and satisfying.”—Paula McLainNew York Times bestselling author of The Paris Wife

“A captivating novel about mothers and daughters, lifelong friendships, love affairs, betrayals, and redemption. Clayton transports us to the English Lake District, an area rich in literary history and romance, where her characters’ secrets unfold in ways both satisfying and surprising.”—J. Courtney SullivanNew York Times bestselling author of Commencement, Maine, and The Engagements

“Beautiful storytelling . . . [Meg Waite Clayton] delves deep into the human heart . . . and [will] keep you hanging on until the very last page is turned.”RT Book Reviews

The Wednesday Daughters is a bewitching escape of a novel. The characters became my beloved companions. I wanted it never to end.”—Elin Hilderbrand, author of Beautiful Day

“Heartwarming . . . filled with memorable characters.”Bookreporter

Selected as Recommended Summer Reading by Chicago Tribune • Fort Worth Star-Telegram • San Jose Mercury News

The Language of Light

Ballantine Books |
Novel

FINALIST FOR THE BELLWETHER PRIZE

Nelly Grace is starting over. With her two young sons, Nelly has fled to the simple stone house built by her great-grandfather in the moneyed horse country of Maryland in order to escape the grief of her husband’s death—and perhaps find a way back to her first love: photography. Easing her transition into this strange, mannered world is Emma Crofton, the grand matriarch of the foxhunting community, and Emma’s son, Dac, a handsome yet distant horse trainer. As Nelly slowly makes her way back to the camera, she must come to terms with her troubled relationship with her father, a photojournalist who chose fame over family. But when she finally sees him again, Nelly’s fragile new beginning is threatened by revelations of a secret past, and the fears that kept it hidden.

The Wednesday Sisters

Ballantine Books |
Novel

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Friendship, loyalty, and love lie at the heart of this beautifully written, poignant, and sweeping novel of five women who, over the course of four decades, come to redefine what it means to be family.

“This generous and inventive book is a delight to read, an evocation of the power of friendship to sustain, encourage, and embolden us. Join the sisterhood!”—Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club

For thirty-five years, Frankie, Linda, Kath, Brett, and Ally have met every Wednesday at the park near their homes in Palo Alto, California. Defined when they first meet by what their husbands do, the young homemakers and mothers are far removed from the Summer of Love that has enveloped most of the Bay Area in 1967. These “Wednesday Sisters” seem to have little in common: Frankie is a timid transplant from Chicago, brutally blunt Linda is a remarkable athlete, Kath is a Kentucky debutante, quiet Ally has a secret, and quirky, ultra-intelligent Brett wears little white gloves with her miniskirts. But they are bonded by a shared love of both literature—Fitzgerald, Eliot, Austen, du Maurier, Plath, and Dickens–and the Miss America Pageant, which they watch together every year.

As the years roll on and their children grow, the quintet forms a writers circle to express their hopes and dreams through poems, stories, and, eventually, books. Along the way, they experience history in the making: Vietnam, the race for the moon, and a women’s movement that challenges everything they have ever thought about themselves, while at the same time supporting one another through changes in their personal lives brought on by infidelity, longing, illness, failure, and success.

Humorous and moving, The Wednesday Sisters is a literary feast for book lovers that earns a place among those popular works that honor the joyful, mysterious, unbreakable bonds between friends.

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Inspiring Women

In this multi-media presentation, Meg talks about bringing stories of the courage of real women, often forgotten by history, to readers, through fact-based historical fiction. Her The Postmistress of Paris is inspired by a real Chicago heiress who helped rescue artists and intellectuals from occupied France. The Last Train to London is based on the real kindertransport effort which rescued 10,000 children from the Nazis, and one corageous woman who led the effort. The Race for Paris draws on the actions of women who, in reporting the liberation of Paris, opened the way for generations of female journalists, and Beautiful Exiles focuses on one of those women, Martha Gellhorn, and her relationship with Ernest Hemingway.

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A Writer's Journey

In this multi-media presentation, Meg shares her journey from a library reader who imagined writers were people who could leap tall literary buildings in single bounds (i.e. not her!) to becoming a critically-acclaimed international bestselling novelist.

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Living while Female

In this multi-media presentation, Meg talks about the challenges women have faced in the last century and the progress we’ve made, drawing on her research in areas ranging from the depiction of women in film and on tv to women in the professional and business worlds, as well as her own experience as a lawyer in the early days of women in the business world.

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Saving the Children

A Multi-Media Presentation Exploring the Kindertransport Effort to Rescue Children from Nazi Germany, and Truss Wijmuller, Who Saved 10,000 Children

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Women Journalists of World War II: Clearing the Path for the Future of Women

In this multi-media presentation Meg will talk about the real female journalists and photojournalists  whose courage and talent inspired The Race for Paris — women who broke the rules and risked their lives to cover WWII and, in doing so, opened the way for new generations of women journalists.

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Writers. Muses. Rivals. Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway

Multi-Media Presentation – Beautiful Exiles

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Courting Women: The Progress of Women on the Supreme Court and in the Law

Multi-Media Presentation – The Four Ms. Bradwells

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Stealth Feminism: Eight Little Ways to Make a Big Difference

Multi-Media Presentation – The Wednesday Sisters

Meg’s News and Links

Author Videos

Resources for Book Clubs

Meg’s Writing Tips

Honors, Awards & Recognition

New York Times Bestseller
International Bestseller
IndieNext Pick
Good Morning America Book Club Pick
USA Today Bestseller
Langum Prize Honorable Mention
Jewish Book Award Finalist
New York Times Book Review Editors Choice
Good Morning America Buzz Book
Costco Book Club Pick
Target Book Club Pick
Publishers Weekly Notable Book
Published in 23 languages

Media Kit

By clicking the link below you will be directed to a Google Docs Folder
where you can download author photos and cover images.

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