The Bookshelf
Episodes
The Bookshelf Special
03 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
We review the latest in fiction for dedicated readers and for those who wish they read more.
The Bookshelf Festival Special: Irish Writer Colum McCann
03 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to write using an 'ethical imagination'? Colum McCann onstage with Kate Evans at the 2025 Melbourne Writers Festival, on his novels...
Fiona Kelly McGregor: The Trap + Debra Adelaide: When I Am Sixty-Four + Yann Martel: Son of Nobody (REVIEWERS: Hannah Kent and Tom Wright)
03 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This week The Bookshelf revisits the Trojan War from the ground up in Yann Martel’s Son of Nobody, moves through friendship and loss in Debra Adela...
Michael Winkler: Griefdogg + Louise Erdrich: Python's Kiss + Alex Miller: Journey to the End of Time + Mark Haddon: Leaving Home (REVIEWERS: Tony Birch and Shannon Burns)
27 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
A rich mix of voices and stories in short fiction from acclaimed Native American writer Louise Erdrich; essays and memories from two‑time Miles Fra...
John Lanchester: Look What You Made Me Do + Lauren Groff: Brawler + Mary Costello: A Beautiful Loan (Reviewers: Hannah Kent and Tim Rogers)
20 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What if the most talked‑about streaming show of the moment was a mirror reflecting your most private fears and failures? That unnerving question si...
Festival Special: Bringing the past to life with Emily Maguire and Jock Serong
13 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
A Bookshelf festival special with Kate Evans onstage with writers Jock Serong and Emily Maguire on historical fiction, from the 2025 Sydney Writers F...
Siblings, secrets and shame in regional Australia in M L Stedman's A Far Flung Life and Eva Hornung's The Minstrels (REVIEWERS Michael Robotham and Roanna Gonsalves)
06 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Statues come alive and London is re-imagined in Francis Spufford's Nonesuch, and surprising parallels in two Australian novels of secrets, shame, lan...
Gabriel Tallent: Crux + Claire Thomas: On Not Climbing Mountains + Helle Helle: They (REVIEWERS: Hannah Kent and Tom Wright)
27 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we travel from the Swiss Alps to the quiet strangeness of Danish suburbia and the fierce edges of American literary drama. We begin ...
Does Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights adaptation do justice to the original novel?
25 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Emerald Fennell's film adaptation of Wuthering Heights has been marketed as "the greatest love story ever told", which is not typically the descripti...
Tayari Jones: Kin + Nadia Davids: Cape Fever + two bloody rom-coms (REVIEWERS: Tony Birch and Beejay Silcox)
20 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Kate and Cassie read Kin, the latest novel from Tayari Jones — the acclaimed American novelist behind An American Marriage, a book that resonated w...
So Far Gone: Jess Walter + Good People: Patmeena Sabit + Eradication: Jonathan Miles (REVIEWERS: Tim Rogers and Madeleine Gray)
13 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Join Kate and Cassie as they explore new fiction alongside guests: musician Tim Rogers (You Am I) and novelist Madeleine Gray (Green Dot, Chosen Fami...
Madeline Cash: Lost Lambs + George Saunders: Vigil + new releases by George Kemp and Steven Carroll (REVIEWERS: Michael Robotham & Roanna Gonsalves)
06 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Madeline Cash’s buzzy debut Lost Lambs pairs an off‑kilter storytelling sensibility with a sharp exploration of displacement and identity. George...
Michael Mohammed Ahmad: Bugger + Jeanette McCurdy: Half His Age + Nina McConigley: How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder (REVIEWERS: Hannah Kent & Tom Wright)
30 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Kate and Cassie read award-winning Australian author Michael Mohammed Ahmad’s bold new novel Bugger, while reviewers Hannah Kent and Tom Wright tak...
Julian Barnes: Departure(s) + Cassie Stroud: Iluka + Patrick Charnley: This, My Second Life (with reviewers: Tony Birch & Beejay Silcox)
23 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Kate and Cassie are back for a big year of books, beginning with Booker-Prize winner Julian Barnes' Departures, a novel about looking back, facing th...
Festival Special: Maggie O'Farrell on Hamnet and more
22 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Novelist and memoirist Maggie O'Farrell in conversation with Kate Evans at the 2025 Sydney Writers Festival. Her nine novels include After You'd Gone...
Summer Reading: at the Brisbane Writers Festival
15 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Kate and Cassie on stage at the 2025 Brisbane Writers Festival with authors Eric Puchner, Toni Jordan, Patrick Holland, and Zeynab Gamieldien, discus...
Summer Reading: with Alan Hollinghurst, Mariana Enriquez, Afra Atiq and Catherine Chidgey
08 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The Bookshelf's Kate Evans and the Book Show's Claire Nichols joined forces onstage at the 2025 Sydney Writers Festival — with a panel of internati...
Summer Reading: It's time for poetry
01 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Why aren't you reading more poetry? Perhaps you don't know where to begin — in which case, listen here, for a guide.Join Kate Evans, as she is join...
Summer Books Special: Novelist, essayist, raconteur Colm Tóibín
31 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Colm Tóibín onstage at the 2025 Sydney Writers Festival with The Bookshelf's Kate Evans — on fiction, fridges, rain, hinges, melodrama, reading, ...
Summer Reading: Jane Austen's Enduring Charm
25 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the year of Jane Austen’s 250th birthday, this lively and thought-provoking discussion explores her life, legacy, and literary brilliance — he...
Summer Books Special: Irish writer Niall Williams' Time of the Child
24 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It's Christmas, 1962, and a baby is born . . . and left behind, in Ireland. This all takes place in the fictional town of Faha, a place created by wr...
Summer Reading: Bloody Histories
18 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Whodunnit, whydunit, and where in time was all of it done — in an historical crime fiction special for our Summer Bookshelf. Kate Evans, onstage at...
Some of My Favourite Books: Trent Dalton, Garry Disher and Heather Rose at Canberra Writers Festival
11 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Trent Dalton (Gravity Let Me Go, Boy Swallows Universe), Heather Rose (A Great Act of Love, Bruny) and Garry Disher (the Peninsula Crimes and Hir...
The Best Books of 2025
04 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The best books of 2025 as selected by Cassie McCullagh, Kate Evans and a panel of bookish guests - Jason Steger, Jon Page and Robert Goodman. Keep sc...
Superstars of the literary and musical world: Margaret Atwood’s new memoir; Hannah Kent’s critical readings; Stuart Coupe’s musical knowledge; Bob Dylan...
27 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Superstars of the literary and musical world this week: Margaret Atwood’s new memoir; Hannah Kent’s critical readings; Stuart Coupe’s musical k...
Salman Rushdie's latest/Scandi noir/Australian crime fiction wrap & more...
20 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Short story collections reveal the fragile beauty of human experience in Salman Rushdie’s The Eleventh Hour, Liadan Ní Chuinn’s Everyone Still H...
Fiction bending reality in new books by Thomas Pynchon, Olivia Laing and Jeanette Winterson
13 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week, Cassie McCullagh and Jonathan Green take a look at Thomas Pynchon’s Shadow Ticket - a cryptic plunge into paranoia and power, where noth...
Madeleine Gray's Chosen Family + Chris Kraus and Graeme Macrae Burnet
06 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Stories of love, friendship, and the ties that bind - with a dash of dirt and darkness in three new works of fiction...Madeleine Gray's Chosen Family...
October Book Buzz: Andrew Pippos, Kiran Desai, Olga Ravn & More
30 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Kate and Cassie are back in the studio, introducing a line-up of October releases that span continents, centuries, and genres, kicking off with an Au...
We reveal the books that didn’t quite make the Top 100
23 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Join us for a lively Top 100 Books of the 21st Century after-party!Following last weekend’s extraordinary two-day countdown, this event recaps the ...
Brisbane Writers Festival: Eric Puchner, Toni Jordan, Patrick Holland, Zeynab Gamieldien
16 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Joining Kate and Cassie on stage at Brisbane Writers Festival, authors Eric Puchner, Toni Jordan, Patrick Holland, and Zeynab Gamieldien discuss thei...
Four new memoirs: Mandy Sayer/Elizabeth Gilbert/Arundhati Roy/S. Shakthidharan
09 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We look at some compelling new memoirs, including Mandy Sayer’s No Dancing in the Lift, a tribute to her jazz drummer father, capturing the grit of...
Top Poems of the 21st Century
02 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What are your favourite poems of the last 25 years? The ones that you turn to, couplets memorised and shared, the lines that leapt from the page or s...
Patricia Lockwood's auto-fiction-ish Will There Ever Be Another You + The Buffalo Hunter Hunter + The Original
25 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week’s episode explores three new books. First up, Patricia Lockwood’s Will There Ever Be Another You, a third-person autofiction-ish tale t...
Ian McEwan's What We Can Know + new work from Olga Tokarczuk and Miranda Darling
18 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We get stuck into some new fiction, starting with Ian McEwan’s What We Can Know, a meditation on a future shaped by climate disaster and memory. We...
Still Turning Heads at 250: Jane Austen’s Enduring Charm
11 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the year of Jane Austen’s 250th birthday, this lively and thought-provoking discussion explores her life, legacy, and literary brilliance — he...
Superstar children's author Andy Griffiths reviews! Plus, Omar Musa's Fierceland and Geoff Dyer's Homework
04 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Australian poet, artist, hip hop musician and author, Omar Musa, tells a story of Australia and Borneo, forests and fathers, in his new novel Fiercel...
Greyhounds, dark academia and an Amish community in new fiction by Toni Jordan, R.F. Kuang and Ron Rindo
28 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
An Australian story of the tender, eager lives of greyhounds and their owners in Tenderfoot by Australian author Toni Jordan. Dark academia in Yellow...
A simmering summer in Greece, rare snails, dystopia with a twist: new fiction by Amy Taylor, Leif Enger and Maria Reva
21 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Bookshelf continues to explore new fiction, beginning in this episode with Ruins by Amy Taylor, a plunge into holiday chaos during a simmering su...
AI in America, a kidnapping in Corsica, the transformative power of boxing: books by Gary Shteyngart, Darrow Farr, and Lucas Schaefer
14 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Kate and Cassie discuss Vera, or Faith, Gary Shteyngart’s new novel about a ten-year-old Korean-American girl growing up in a dystopian United Stat...
People turning into trees, mythical rivers rising...new novels by Rhett Davis and Gurnaik Johal (plus, Irish fiction with Colm Tóibín)
07 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Australian author Rhett Davis re-imagines the everyday in his novels. In his latest, Arborescence, ordinary people begin transforming into trees. Is ...
2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award assessed
31 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A critical assessment of the shortlist and winner of Australia’s most prestigious literary award, The Miles Franklin Literary Award. Kate and Cassi...
Parties, scandals, sex, love: new novels by Nell Zink, Amy Bloom and the controversial James Frey
24 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Parties, scandals, sex, love, families, friendship, death – these books have, as they say, all the things. Nell Zink’s Sister Europe moves throug...
New Australian crime + hungry ghosts and a great white whale
17 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Stories of the sea – and a great white whale in Xiaolu Guo's Call Me Ishmaelle; Hungry ghosts and kitchen mishaps in Daria Lavelle's NYC set novel ...
Sydney Writer's Festival: The State of the Art of the Novel
10 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What’s the state of fiction today? Four brilliant minds—Samantha Harvey (UK), Rumaan Alam (USA), Torrey Peters (USA), and Robbie Arnott (AUS)—t...
Mystery in new fiction from Ben Okri, Sameer Pandya and Anjet Daanje
03 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The same question is at the heart of three very different international novels on The Bookshelf this week, “What really happened”…To a WWI sold...
Sweat, sport and sharp Australian satire; And the 2025 International Booker Prize winner
26 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What would make a great Australian sporting novel? Our guests discuss translating the love of the game, footy nicknames, and intense team culture in ...
Popular fiction across space and time, and queer bush doof thriller in Thomas Vowles' Our New Gods
19 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The latest best-selling novels from Taylor Jenkins-Reid (Atmosphere) and Fredrik Backman (My Friends) explore 1980s astronauts, ambition and romance;...
Reading James Joyce's Ulysses for Bloomsday (and new fiction galore)
12 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A guide to James Joyce from Irish writer Mary Morrissy, ahead of Bloomsday (16 June); New Zealand writer Becky Manawatu continues to explore howls of...
New fiction from Gail Jones, S A Cosby and Seán Hewitt
05 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Fiction from all over the world, crossing genres, borders and ideas in American crime writer S A Cosby's King of Ashes, a gripping tale of family, sm...
A vibrant gay coming-of-age story set in Geraldton
29 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Kate and Cassie read W.A. writer Holden Sheppard's King of Dirt, a vibrant, gay coming-of-age story set in Geraldton. Plus, Australian author Jennife...
Sydney Writers' Festival: Top 100 Books launched with Alan Hollinghurst, Catherine Chidgey, Mariana Enriquez, Afra Atiq
23 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What books have shaped the 21st century so far? Recorded live at the 2025 Sydney Writers’ Festival, literary heavyweights Catherine Chidgey (NZ), M...
On stage at Melbourne Writers' Festival with Hannah Kent and Beejay Silcox
15 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A live recording from Melbourne Writers' Festival as Hannah Kent and Beejay Silcox sit down with Kate Evans and Jonathan Green to discuss the latest ...
A woman falls through the cracks of time in the first of Solvej Balle's seven-novel-series
08 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
One day lived over and over again with humour, despair and self-improvement is what we’re up against in Danish novelist Solvej Balle’s On The Cal...
A beach holiday told four ways in Luke Horton's Time Together
01 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Old friends gather together on the coast in Australian writer Luke Horton’s Time Together, Kate and Cassie take a look. Plus, Jo Harkin’s The Pre...
James Bradley's Landfall reveals a flooded, baked and dilapidated city
24 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Cities that are both flooded and on alert for the next storm in James Bradley’s Landfall. The body of a saint, dreamily and weirdly listening to ev...
The Bookshelf Easter Special: Irish writer Niall Williams
18 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Irish writer Niall Williams with Kate Evans at the 2025 Adelaide Writers Week — with a focus on his Faha novels, History of the Rain, This is Happi...
A love triangle set against the beauty of Montana in Eric Puchner's Dream State
17 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Families, secrets, mysteries, war...Kate and Cassie read Eric Puchner’s Dream State, an American saga that spans fifty years and is set against the...
Folk horror, dreams under surveillance, lonely in Guatemala
10 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Cassie McCullagh is on leave this week, so Kate Evans and guests read Lucy Rose’s The Lamb, Laila Lalami’s The Dream Hotel, and Rachel Morton’s...
Andrea Goldsmith's The Buried Life - and a train steaming towards disaster . . .
03 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Kate and Cassie read three new works of fiction, with the help of two guest reviewers: a novel of ideas, death, love and music, in Australian writer ...
Curtis Sittenfeld's Show Don't Tell + Tim Rogers and Zan Rowe on two new debuts
27 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Kate and Cassie discuss bestselling American writer Curtis Sittenfeld’s sharp and observant collection of short stories Show Don’t Tell; You Am ...
This week’s novels takes us to Zanzibar, Budapest and Renaissance Florence
20 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week’s novels takes us to Zanzibar, Budapest and Renaissance Florence with Nobel Prize-winning English-Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah’s ...
On stage at Adelaide Writers' Week with Niall Williams, Charlotte Mendelson and Brian Castro
13 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This edition of the Bookshelf was recorded on stage at Adelaide Writers' Week on Sunday 2 March – with Irish writer Niall Williams (Time of the Chi...
Australian bestseller Diana Reid returns with Signs of Damage
06 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Four women’s lives intertwined between Africa and the USA in Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Dream Count. Plus, secrets and trauma in ...
Irish writer Colum McCann’s Twist dives deep under the ocean and takes on a charismatic mystery
27 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Irish writer Colum McCann’s Twist dives deep under the ocean and takes on a charismatic mystery; 2024 Nobel Prize winner Han Kang’s We Do Not Par...
Mothers and Sons...is the story as fraught as the title suggests?
20 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
An examination of family dynamics through three novels...Adam Haslett’s Mothers and Sons reflects on unspoken stories and familial divides; The Boy...
Alaska, folktales, mothers and daughters
13 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Alaska, folktales and mothers and daughters in Eowyn Ivey's Black Woods Blue Sky. Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Anne Tyler is back with Three Days ...
A story of yearning, belonging, secrets and identity from Native America
06 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A story of yearning, belonging, secrets and identity from Native America in Morgan Talty’s Fire Exit; rusted robots, prosthetic limbs, AI and noisy...
Sweden, France, New Zealand: books from around the world
30 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Cassie and Kate read Marie-Hélène Lafon’s The Son’s Story, a family story that spans the twentieth-century, full of melancholy beauty and secre...
A medical crisis brings one man close to love, art, and beauty
23 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Kate and Cassie are back for 2025!In this episode, a discussion of Panic by Catherine Jinks, about a young woman looking for a fresh start after post...
Summer Reading: Quick, give me a recommendation!
17 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Reading Percival Everett's James, Dylin Hardcastle's Language of Limbs and James McBride's The Heaven and Earth Grocery StoreCassie and literary inte...
Summer Reading from Australia and the World
10 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Books you might have missed: from England, Turkey and within the Australian Tongan communityCassie and critic Beejay Silcox agree to disagree over Da...
Summer Reading: Fiction for a new year
03 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Time to reassess your TBR pile – To Be Read, that is – ready for 2025. To help, some of the best books and literary discussions from the past yea...
Summer Reading: Books to get your teeth into
27 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ready for some Big Books? Ambition, money, philosophy, bodies and history – all explored through history.Cassie and Tom Wright's review of Andrew O...
Summer Reading: What did you miss?
20 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Catch up on the best books and discussions about them from the last year. A songwriter, a plaintive guitar, time travel and a motel are all in the mi...
Crime fiction and why we keep coming back: The repeat protagonist
13 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Detectives, tea ladies, journos, psychologists – what's the appeal of the crime series and repeat protagonist? Kate Evans with crime writers Michae...
Best Books of 2024
06 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The best books of 2024 as selected by Cassie McCullagh, Kate Evans, Jason Steger, Lev Grossman and Michaela Kalowski. Keep scrolling for a full (and ...
The much anticipated new novel by Haruki Murakami, and plenty more...
29 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What do Kate and Cassie make of Will Self’s Elaine, a portrait of a frustrated fifties housewife, based on his mother's own diaries. Plus, The City...
Literature in translation with special guests Bora Chung and Anton Hur + Yu Shi
21 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A focus on literature in translation with special guests Bora Chung and Anton Hur, both of whom are South Korean authors and translators, who transla...
The Case for Critics - on stage at Canberra Writers' Festival with Christos Tsiolkas, Beejay Silcox and James Jiang
15 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Derided, disparaged and cursed to the heavens, book critics are depicted as literature’s grand villains – as frustrated creators and gleeful wrec...
Niall Williams’ Time of the Child might just be the big ‘feel-good book of the year’
08 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
At 2025 Adelaide Writers’ Week, Irish author Niall Williams joins Kate Evans to talk Faha, fiction, and Time of the Child—his latest novel. Also ...
Dark Skies, a quest and nature writing in Inga Simpson’s The Thinning
01 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Dressmaker’s backstory, a universe of stars to expand our ideas about nature writing, and fragments and tricks galore: Kate and Cassie read Ing...
Matricide, the (Virginia) Woolfmother, Norwegian woods: Graeme Macrae Burnet, Michelle de Kretser, Karl Ove Knausgaard
25 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The latest from double Miles Franklin Award winner, Michelle de Kretser, Theory and Practice, a novel that evokes the 1980s and Virginia Woolf. Scott...
Melanie Cheng's The Burrow: can a pet rabbit heal a family dealing with tragedy?
18 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Kate and Cassie read Melanie Cheng’s The Burrow, a pandemic-set novella that details the healing powers of a pet rabbit for a family dealing with t...
Twins, pumas and a colonial western in Robbie Arnott’s Dusk
11 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Twins, pumas and a colonial western in Robbie Arnott’s Dusk; gay lives, racial politics, class, theatre and exquisite writing, in Alan Hollinghurst...
Tim Winton and the ruined future of his novel Juice
04 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Bookshelf is a program for dedicated readers and those who wished they read more.
What's the verdict on Sally Rooney's new novel Intermezzo?
27 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Many people have been awaiting the release of Intermezzo, the latest book by Irish writer Sally Rooney, which explores love, grief, growing up, playi...
French provocateur Michel Houellebecq + Olga Tokarczuk's health resort horror
20 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Novels from France, Poland and India – with politics, sanatoriums, automata and horror in the mix too. Kate and Cassie read French writer (and prov...
The rich and entitled are back but so are Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton
13 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Sex parties, corruption and dark dark deeds in not-quite-Nigeria, in Akwaeke Emezi’s Little Rot; aspiration, real estate and misguided philanthropi...
Malcolm Knox's The First Friend: a black comedy set in Stalin's Soviet Union
06 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A peripatetic hotel, a paddle steamer of dreams and a dastardly law firm, in Jock Serong’s Cherrywood; one of the 20th century’s top 10 all-star ...
2024 mid-year review
30 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
An overview of the books of the year so far, what’s coming up for the rest of the year, and the 'to be read' book pile of regret as Kate and Cassie...
Vortex: a new novel from Rodney Hall, twice winner of the Miles Franklin Award
23 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Stories of Northern Soul, pigs trotters in performance art and politics in the subtropical 1950s come to life in three new works of fiction including...
Rita Bullwinkle's Headshot: a luminous debut that steps into the boxing ring
16 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Kate and Cassie read Rita Bullwinkle's Headshot, a luminous debut that follows eight teenage girl boxers in Reno, Nevada. Crime writer Michael Roboth...
Miles Franklin Literary Award 2024
09 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What does the 2024 Miles Franklin shortlist tell us about our shared imagination? Bernadette Brennan and Geordie Williamson join Kate and Cassie to e...
Weird fiction writer China Miéville's surprising collab with Keanu Reeves
02 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Bruce Isaacs on weird fiction novelist China Mievelle's The Book of Elsewhere, a genre-bending epic written in collaboration with Hollywood star Kean...
Willy Vlautin's The Horse: drenched in twangy music and heartbreak
26 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Award-winning U.S. author Willy Vlautin's The Horse is his poignant new novel about the life of a lonely country musician in Nevada and his chance en...
Dylin Hardcastle's A Language of Limbs: emotionally true, structurally complex
19 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Kate Evans and Jonathan Green with guests Pip Williams and Sarah Bailey read Dylin Hardcastle's A Language of Limbs, Lev Grossman's The Bright Sword,...
Awfully Rich: Taffy Brodesser-Akner's Long Island Compromise and more
12 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Money, kidnapping, reality TV, politics, corruption, families, love, and betrayal in all three books on this edition of The Bookshelf. Kate Evans and...
Fairytales are at play in Julia Phillips' Bear
05 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The band is back together! Join Cassie and Kate as they head to an island off North America in Julia Phillips’ Bear, plus two Australian novels –...
Catherine McKinnon's To Sing of War takes us to PNG during WW ll
28 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Kate Evans is joined by guest host Richard Aedy to discuss Catherine McKinnon's To Sing of War, a novel of love, war and friendship. Plus, two debut ...