Good Reading Podcast
Episodes
Jon Doust on the misadventure of a lifetime in 'Return Ticket'
28 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It’s 1972. When hot-headed, impetuous Jack Muir gets off the ship in Durban, he fails to get back on. Instead, he sails into misadventure, fleeing t...
Fiona Harris & Mike McLeish on tackling schoolyard drama in their parental comedy 'The Drop-Off'
28 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Lizzie, Megan and Sam became accidental friends over good coffee, banter and wrong-world jokes at school drop off. Lizzie is a part-time midwife with ...
Shannon Molloy on 'Fourteen', his memoir of growing up gay in Central Queensland
31 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
[CONTENT WARNING: This podcast features discussions of homophobia, mental health and suicide. Furthermore, the intro contains homophobic slurs/languag...
Lauren Chater on telling the untold story of a classic in 'Gulliver's Wife'
31 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
From the author of 'The Lace Weaver' comes a new historical fiction novel, drawing from the unseen character of a Jonathan Swift's clas...
'Australia saved me': Ayik Chut Deng on life as a Sudanese child soldier in 'The Lost Boy'
31 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
[CONTENT WARNING: This podcast contains descriptions of war and mental illness that may upset listeners. Discretion is advised. In addition, the intro...
'Are some deceptions necessary?': Suzanne Leal on betrayal and family secrets in 'The Deceptions'
31 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Prague, 1943. Taken from her home in Prague, Hana Lederova finds herself imprisoned in the Jewish ghetto of Theresienstadt, where she is forced to end...
Pip Williams on missing words and forgotten women in 'The Dictionary of Lost Words'
30 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1901, the word bondmaid was discovered missing from the Oxford English Dictionary. This is the story of the girl who stole it.Motherless and irrepr...
Laura Jean McKay on crafting a talking animal apocalypse in 'The Animals in That Country'
29 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Hard-drinking, foul-mouthed, and allergic to bullshit, Jean is not your usual grandma. She’s never been good at getting on with other humans, apart ...
Karina Kilmore on merging journalistic drama with docklands crime in 'Where the Truth Lies'
23 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When investigative journalist Chrissie O’Brian lands a senior job at The Argus, she is desperate to escape the nightmares of her past. Her life has ...
'He would wake up screaming': Ariana Neumann on uncovering her father's past in When Time Stopped
02 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 'When Time Stopped: A Memoir of My Father's War and What Remains', Ariana Neumann dives into the secrets of her father’s past: yea...
John Kinsella on dialogue, rapacity and living a rural life in his memoir 'Displaced'
01 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
John Kinsella's memoir of his rural life takes us deep into the heart of what it means to belong and unbelong. The joys and travails of childhood...
Karen Brooks on unearthing forgotten women in her bewitching historical novel 'The Darkest Shore'
23 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
1703: The wild east coast of Scotland.Returning to her home town of Pittenweem, fishwife and widow Sorcha McIntyre knows she faces both censure and mi...
Sophie Hardcastle on the colours of the sea and reclaiming your body 'Below Deck'
18 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Below Deck is the highly anticipated debut contemporary novel from author Sophie Hardcastle. A heartbreakingly poetic and haunting story about the vag...
Tanya Bretherton on the serial murders that gripped Sydney in 'The Killing Streets'
17 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In December 1932, as the Depression tightened its grip, the body of a woman was found in Queens Park, Sydney. It was a popular park. There were houses...
Emily Clements on sex, self and travel in her memoir 'The Lotus Eaters'
30 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When a stand-off with her best friend sees nineteen-year-old Emily Clements stranded in Vietnam, she is alone for the first time and adrift in a new e...
Anita Abriel on the true story of survival and hope in 'The Light After the War'
30 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1946 two young Hungarian refugees arrive in Naples after losing everyone they loved before the war. Vera Frankel and her best friend, Edith Ban, ar...
Genevieve Gannon on the real case of an IVF mixup that inspired her family drama 'The Mothers'
28 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What if the baby you gave birth to belonged to someone else?Grace and Dan are in their forties and have been on the IVF treadmill since the day they g...
How 25 years in the Victorian Police Force shaped D L Hicks' debut crime novel 'The Devil Inside'
07 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In a peaceful coastal town, a young woman is found brutally murdered, a piece of scripture held tightly in her hand. Local detective Charlotte Callagh...
Emma Viskic took a road trip with Jock Serong, Sulari Gentill and Robert Gott
19 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Critically acclaimed and bestselling author of the ‘Caleb Zelic’ series, Emma Viskic, is back with book three: ‘Darkness for Light.’ In this e...
‘It’s not beyond us to achieve this’: Peter Singer's plan to eradicate world poverty
03 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
For the first time in history, it is now within our reach to eradicate extreme poverty on a global scale. In this episode, Peter Singer speaks to both...
'It wasn't pretty': Benjamin Gilmour on his darkest month working as a paramedic in Sydney
28 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Benjamin Gilmour has been a paramedic for the past twenty years. He has seen his fair share of drama. But the summer of 2008 remains etched in his mem...
'Journalists have license to put their nose where it's not wanted': Chris Hammer on ‘Silver’
21 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
For half a lifetime, journalist Martin Scarsden has run from his past. But now there is no escaping.In 'Silver' the follow-up to the bestsel...
'It's a sunny place for shady people': Michael Connelly on returning to LA in 'The Night Fire'
12 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Back when Harry Bosch was just a rookie homicide detective he had an inspiring mentor, John Jack Thompson, who taught him to take the work personally ...
Heather Rose on sand, sunburn and building a bridge to Bruny
06 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Award-winning author of 'The Museum of Modern Love', Heather Rose, is a sixth-generation Tasmanian. In this episode, Emma Harvey sits down w...
'Dude, it was like an exorcism': Holden Sheppard on writing his YA LGBTQI+ novel Invisible Boys
28 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
[CONTENT WARNING: This podcast discusses issues of mental health and suicide]In a small town, everyone thinks they know you: Charlie is a hardcore roc...
'I will always be sad when I read those chapters': Mary Moody on cancer, compost and cracking on
21 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
If you'd told Mary Moody when she was 21 that she was going to grow up writing columns about compost, she would have thrown her hands up in horro...
Katherine Johnson on the hidden history of 19th century human zoos
15 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
'Paris Savages' is a fictional account of events from the late 19th century when human zoos were big business across Europe. It follows the ...
Heather Morris on the woman who survived Auschwitz and a Siberian Gulag
02 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Cilka Klein is just sixteen years old when she is sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Constantly in the shadow of death she quickly learns that survival comes...
Jamil Jivani on why young men are being turned to violence, and what we can do to stop it
19 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The day after the 2015 Paris terror attacks, twenty-eight-year-old Canadian Jamil Jivani opened the newspaper to find that the men responsible were fa...
'We had no idea what life was going to be': Bernadette Agius on raising a son with Down syndrome
16 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
‘It was cathartic, it was sad, it was humbling, it was joyful. I feel very exposed. But I don’t regret it.’ – Bernadette Agius on writing &apo...
Ondine Sherman on Alaskan hunters, bad grammar and a bustling backyard zoo
09 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
When she was a young girl, author and animal rights advocate Ondine Sherman wrote a letter to the editor of Animal Liberation magazine vowing that she...
Philippa Gregory: 'It’s extraordinary how little ordinary women have been recorded in history.'
03 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Join Emma Harvey as she chats with the cover star of our September issue, Philippa Gregory, about her spectacular new series that exchanges the prospe...
Paullina Simons: 'This isn't a romance. It's a love story.'
27 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Paullina Simons fans have been waiting in eager anticipation for another book from the prolific and internationally bestselling author of the Tatiana ...
'This man was broken': Tony Buti on Australia's only successful Stolen Generations claimant
12 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On Christmas Day in 1957, Ngarrindjeri man Joe Trevorrow admitted his 13-month old son, Bruce, to Adelaide Hospital. Within days, Bruce was living wit...
Melbourne co-authors Ali Berg and Michelle Kalus have never had an argument
30 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Last year, Melbourne co-authors Ali Berg and Michelle Kalus enchanted readers everywhere with their hilarious debut rom-com 'The Book Ninja'...
James Dunk on illness, chaos and delusion in Australia's early colonies
02 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What was life really like in the early years of the colony of Botany Bay? Upon arrival, convicts and free settlers faced the perils of an unknown cont...
The death-defying adventures of Katherine Rundell
01 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Katherine Rundell has tiptoed along tightropes, piloted small planes, illegally strutted across the rooftops of Oxford, galloped through herds of zebr...
'We prefer to forget': Armando Lucas Correa on the doomed voyage of the S.S. St. Louis
25 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
When he was ten years old, Armando Lucas Correa’s grandmother told him: ‘Cuba is going to pay very dearly for what they did to the Jewish refugees...
Alli Sinclair on how scaling mountains turned her into a storyteller
20 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1994, location scout Claire Montgomery is trying to secure permission to shoot a TV show at a historic art deco cinema near a country town in North...
Craig Ensor's literary love story set in an Australia ravaged by climate change
10 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Two hundred years from now, people are migrating en masse to the poles to escape soaring temperatures. Fifteen-year-old Finch lives with his father in...
Alex Landragin didn’t write the most daring debut novel in decades – he stole it
03 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Crossings, the novel billed as the most daring debut in decades, is made up of three compelling stories: a letter written by lyric poet Charles Baudel...
How Aboriginal peoples brought Australian animals to the attention of the world
31 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The so-called 'discovery' of Australia's world famous fauna is overwhelmingly associated with European men like John Gould and Joseph B...
‘Majestic, murky, malevolent and magnificent’: Irishman James Delargy on the outback
27 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
When nomadic Irish author James Delargy experienced the Western Australian outback, something about the landscape enthralled and terrified him. He cha...
Finn Brunton on what you need to know about cryptocurrency
05 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
If you’ve ever wondered just what Bitcoin is and why you should care about it then Finn Brunton’s new book, Digital Cash: The Unknown History of t...
Mary-Rose MacColl on a royal derailed and Diana's undoing
30 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The True Story of Maddie Bright by Mary-Rose MacColl follows a young serving girl on Prince Edward’s 1920 tour of Australia, a journalist hunting a ...
Markus Zusak: 'We are all made of stories'
16 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak, there are five Dunbar brothers living a chaotic suburban existence alongside a border collie, a cat, a pigeon, a mu...
Felicity McLean on Australian Gothic, missing children and Jatz Crackers
15 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone is a sharply written literary mystery infused with nostalgia that leaves its readers guessing.Journalist and author Felic...
Susan Hurley on her thriller inspired by a botched medical trial
10 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
As an award-winning writer and a professor working in the realm of pharmacology and medical research, Susan Hurley has been published in both literary...
Matt Howard's accidental life in books
08 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Now the author of four novels who works in one of Australia's biggest publishing houses among blockbuster titles like Eleanor Oliphant is Complet...
Stephen Davis on how we can win the War on Truth
04 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
There's a war on truth, and the liars are winning. So goes the warning of veteran investigative journalist Stephen Davis about the state of our m...
Karen Brooks on how chocolate 'changed the complexion of society'
28 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Chocolate serves as a muse for many a writer, but did you know that the arrival of the delicious elixir in England catalysed a movement towards a more...
Jaclyn Moriarty: 'I think I'm a bit hopeless at life'
26 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In her first book for adults since 2004, 'Gravity is the Thing', treasured children's author Jaclyn Moriarty writes about a mysterious ...
How photography at the Australian Museum aided Darwin's theories
22 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Archivist and curator Vanessa Finney unearths Australia's earliest natural history photographs in Capturing Nature, her new book that reveals how...
Would Jack Heath mind being eaten?
22 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In his first series for adults, Canberra writer Jack Heath has created a compelling character who works as a consultant for the FBI and has a very pec...
Simon Cleary on the artistry of tattoos and Australia's longest war
19 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
As a writer, Simon Cleary brings art and creativity up alongside experiences of war. In his latest novel, The War Artist, a Brigadier called James Phe...
Peggy Frew on the novel she began as a teenager
12 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Peggy Frew's Hope Farm was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Stella Prize. The Melbourne writer and ARIA Award-winning mu...
Jeremy N Smith on befriending a powerful hacker called Alien
18 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
At a local playground where his daughter was playing, writer Jeremy N Smith met a woman who turned out to be a cybersecurity expert and a seasoned hac...
Jennifer Spence on slipping back into your own past
13 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
If given the chance, would you adjust the past to avoid a terrible tragedy in the future? And if you went back in time 20 years and tracked down a you...
Jacqueline Kent on falling in love with the man behind Wake in Fright
07 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jacqueline Kent was working as a book editor when she was assigned a set of humorous short stories by Kenneth Cook, author of the classic horror novel...
Yotam Ottolenghi on why writing Simple was ‘excruciatingly difficult’
03 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Yotam Ottolenghi is universally admired for a cooking style that is complex, layered, and brimming with freshness and colour. Unfortunately that can s...
Dave Warner & Alan Carter on why Aussie & NZ crime fiction is better than Scandi noir
13 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Punk rocker Dave Warner and documentary maker Alan Carter on how writing crime can result in being listed as a suspect for a cold-case murder and why...
Pip Drysdale on using military strategy during breakups
07 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Pip Drysdale grew up in Africa and Australia, moved to New York when she was 20 to act in indie films and theatre, got married in a black dress and di...
John Newton on Australia's 'mongrel cuisine'
10 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Food history in Australia is divided into two eras: BG and AG (Before Garlic and After Garlic). In his new book, The Getting of Garlic, veteran food w...
Frauke Bolten-Boshammer on pink diamonds and red dust
26 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 1981 Frauke Bolten-Boshammer left her beloved Germany to begin a farm with her husband, Frederich, in the isolated town of Kununurra in the Kimberl...
Paul Ham on the grisly death of Christendom’s most defiant sect
22 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, 'New Jerusalem', historian Paul Ham casts his research net back some 500 years, to examine, in graphic detail, events in ea...
Lee Child on Jack Reacher's fork in the road
20 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Lee Child sells one of his Jack Reacher thriller novels once every 20 seconds. There are at least 100 million copies of his books in print.The legenda...
Karen Foxlee on the world-broadening magic of encyclopedias
19 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
'Our mother had a dark heart feeling'. So begins Karen Foxlee's new children's novel, Lenny's Book of Everything, a story of ...
Chloe Hooper on the Black Saturday bushfires: ‘It was like lighting a bomb’
15 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
On 7 February, 2009, hundreds of bushfires tore across Victoria, taking 173 lives and destroying over 300 000 hectares of bushland and private propert...
Minette Walters on the silver lining of the Black Death
14 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What do you get when you put the story of history's greatest pandemic in the hands of the Queen of Crime? Something truly un-put-downable.Minette...
The deadly sins of Mikey Robins
01 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
'Seven Deadly Sins (And one very naughty fruit)' is an irreverent romp through gastronomical history. Comedian and presenter Mikey Robins se...
Three young fans quiz YA author Lynette Noni
29 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Lynette Noni is the author of the fantasy YA series 'The Medoran Chronicles' and 'Whisper', a novel about a girl called Jane Doe w...
Stephanie Alexander on how to attack a pomegranate
22 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Stephanie Alexander, who has sold half a million copies of her book The Cook's Companion, introduces the young and the uninitiated to good food w...
Ben Quilty on the book that should be in every school, lounge room and library
22 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 2016, Archibald Prize-winning artist Ben Quilty travelled with Richard Flanagan to places where the Syrian refugee crisis was peaking. He had no id...
Laura Tingle on political chaos and YA fiction
07 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As ABC political correspondent Laura Tingle put the finishing touches on her latest Quarterly Essay, 'Follow the Leader: Democracy and the rise o...
John Purcell: 'I always thought books were deadly, deadly boring'
04 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
For a guy who once thought that books were excruciatingly tedious, John Purcell has made quite the career from selling, reading, and writing them. He ...
Holly Throsby on why a book tour trumps a music tour
01 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Singer-songwriter Holly Throsby took Aussie fiction lovers by storm in 2016 with her debut novel, Goodwood. Her latest book, Cedar Valley, came to for...
Wanda Wiltshire on creating the perfect love triangle
03 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
For this episode of the Good Reading Podcast, we hand over the mic to three Year 9 students of Brigidine College in Sydney. Together they quiz YA fant...
Meg Gatland-Veness: 'It all started when a kid died'
23 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
‘It all started when a kid died.’ Meg Gatland-Veness is the author of the new Young Adult novel ‘I Had Such Friends’, a bold and heartfelt deb...
Gus & Steve Worland on tackling men's mental health with dad jokes
13 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Whether you're in need of a solid knock-knock joke, a cringeworthy pun, a hilarious yarn or a weird factoid you can whip out at a family barbecue...
Bri Lee, author of Eggshell Skull, is furious about the Australian legal system (and chickpeas)
01 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Please note: This podcast contains discussions of sexual abuse. Bri Lee is the author of ‘Eggshell Skull’, a bestselling memoir about Bri's t...
Kate Rossmanith on investigating remorse, bias in the legal system and 'animating the soup'
30 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Australia, judges are legally obliged to take a person’s apparent remorse into account when formulating their sentence, and yet how remorse is me...
Chris Hammer on Scrublands, reporting from Texas and Gaza, and tough love from Peter Temple
25 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
'Scrublands' by Chris Hammer begins with a young priest, Byron Swift, shouldering a high-powered hunting rifle and opening fire on his congr...
Australia has pokies the way America has guns: Drew Rooke's investigation into the gambling industry
10 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Besides gambling destinations like Macau or Monaco, Australia has the highest amount of poker machines per capita in the world. New South Wales was th...
Crime on Display: Sarah Bailey on a movie set murder and her divisive detective, Gemma Woodstock
24 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when a burgeoning movie star is killed on the set of a blockbuster zombie flick? Melbourne crime writer Sarah Bailey is back with her unf...
Sulari Gentill on the Pyjama Girl Murder, Australia's Fascist New Guard, and stories in the stars
22 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
For the launch of Good Reading's new podcast, sponsored by Pantera Press, we're joined by author of the Rowland Sinclair mystery novels, Sul...