Three new novelists join forces to talk about their work and the joys and sorrows of writing fiction, under the watchful eye of seasoned writer Rachel Hore.

Journalist, film-maker and writer Saira Shah has used her experience as the mother of a profoundly brain-damaged five-year-old daughter who can do nothing for herself to write a moving first novel, The Mouse-Proof Kitchen. It tells the story of Anna, a chef, and her husband, Tobias, a composer, who are about to realise their dream to move to France where Anna will work in a cookery school, when they have a daughter, Freya, who is born with ‘brains like scrambled eggs’.

Gill Hornby’s first novel, The Hive, was the subject of a heated auction among publishing houses. It is set at the school gate and is a wickedly funny study of female friendships and group politics. The school is St Ambrose Primary but the story revolves around the friendships, betrayals, power games and lunches of the mothers.

Simon Wroe is a food and culture writer and former chef. His first novel, Chop Chop, follows the fortunes of a young graduate forced to take a lowly chefing job at a gastropub where his fellow workers are crooks and his boss a sadist.

Hore is author of The Dream House, The Memory Garden and The Glass Painter’s Daughter, shortlisted for Romantic Novel of the Year 2010. Her most recent novel is The Silent Tide.