The Bookshelf

On this special edition of The Bookshelf, ahead of the Top 100 Australian Books Countdown , Kate Evans speaks with historian Professor Martyn Lyons about the history of reading in Australia and what our reading lives can reveal about the nation. Plus, crime fiction expert Sue Turnbull traces the evolution of Australian crime writing before sharing three books she loves. Singer-songwriter Fanny Lum...

Kate and Cassie are joined by rockstar Tim Rogers and novelist Madeleine Gray to discuss some big new releases. Australian crime heavyweight Chris Hammer swaps the outback for the world of high finance in Full Circle, a thriller of money, power and corruption. Then there's Jem Calder's I Want You to Be Happy, a zeitgeisty portrait of young Londoners searching for connection in an increasingly disc...

This week, Kate and Cassie are joined by regulars Hannah Kent and Tom Wright to discuss three books that echo one another across themes of art, beauty, family and transformation. In Barbara Kingsolver's Partita, a young woman longs to escape her small town and difficult mother through music (and there are dogs and an accident); Ayad Akhtar's The Radiance follows a man whose vivid, radiant life is...

In American Hagwon, the bestselling author of Pachinko, Min Jin Lee, explores family, education, ambition and the long shadow of economic upheaval, set between Seoul, Sydney and California. Louise Kennedy's Stations offers a tough and deeply felt Irish family story, while Catherine Chidgey's The Starving Bride turns hunger into a strange gothic performance. Kate and Cassie are joined this time by...

Kate and Cassie take a look at bestselling author Emily St. John Mandel's latest, Exit Party, an epic that follows a doppelgänger and a man who disappears from a Los Angeles party in 2031, leading to a journey across parallel worlds and fractured timelines. Internationally-bestselling crime writer Michael Robotham is in to discuss The Weight of Angels by John Boyne; and Graham Akhurst, novelist, a...

We step into Irish bestseller Donal Ryan's world in Where Are the Kings, a tender coming of age story about a boy navigating grief. Inside a fracturing mind in Emma Cline’s Booker Longlisted novel Switzy, read with novelist Madeleine Gray. A chronicle of DIY activism, collectives and autonomous living in Sydney's west in Australian writer Max Easton’s Now, Autonomy, read for us by singer-songwrite...

Kate and Cassie with regular reviewer Tom Wright discuss new releases including Melissa Harrison’s The Given World and Malcolm Knox’s The Second Child. Plus, novelist and memoirist Mandy Sayer on her Top 3 Australian books ahead of Radio National's Top 100 Australian Books Countdown . Mandy Sayer's Top 3 Australian Books Christina Stead, The Man Who Loved Children (1940) Robin Dalton, Aunts up the...

Voting in Radio National's Top 100 Books countdown is about to open and this year we're celebrating Australian books. As you think about your own Top 10, Kate and Cassie bring together a trio of award-winning writers (including last year's Top 100 Books winner!) to reveal the Australian books they have loved and been influenced by: Trent Dalton, Claire Thomas and Steve MinOn, with a surprise appea...

Anjet Daanje's The Song of Stork and Dromedary, translated from the Dutch, explores the intimate work of death and care in the eighteenth century. Liane Moriarty returns to the world of Big Little Lies with Big Little Truths , reuniting readers with the coastal suburb of Pirriwee and her cast a decade on,  just with a little more menopausal rage, teenage angst, and a severed finger. Joining us are...

We review the latest in fiction for dedicated readers and for those who wish they read more.

Omar Musa joins us after winning the 2026 Miles Franklin Literary Award. Plus, Michael Robotham and Madeleine Gray review Djamel White's Booker Prize-longlisted debut All Them Dogs and Téa Obreht's sweeping new novel Sunrise.

From the nightclubs of 1930s Berlin to the heartache and awkwardness of high school, and into the green rooms and backstage spaces of writers' festivals.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead’s latest novel Cool Machine is a vivid portrait of Black New York in the 1980s. The book reunites readers with furniture salesman and part-time fence Ray Carney. Kate Evans and regular reviewer, critic and essayist Beejay Silcox discuss. Also this week, Isabelle Li’s The Northern Tomb offers an intimate and richly textured portrait of life in Northeas...

Dave Eggers explores the messy intersection of art, friendship and growing up in Contrapposto , while Daniel Mason's Country People follows an academic family into a Vermont landscape full of stories and believers in worlds beneath the earth. Then Maria Takolander's The End of Romance imagines life after collapse. Joining Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh are our regular reviewers, novelist Madelein...

This week on The Bookshelf, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh discuss new novels including Laura McPhee-Browne's Worry Doll, a story of desire, obsession and uncertainty; Leïla Slimani's I'll Take the Fire, the acclaimed French-Moroccan writer's rich, politically charged exploration of family, memory and identity; and Kris Kneen's Rite of Spring, an eerie island novel where strange creatures lurk in...

A live recording from the 2025 Melbourne Writers Festival, with guests Hannah Kent and Beejay Silcox. Hannah Kent, Always Home, Always Homesick (Picador) Eimear McBride, The City Changes Its Face (Faber) Susan Choi, Flashlight (Jonathan Cape) Edward St Aubyn, Parallel Lines (Jonathan Cape) Caryl Phillips, Another Man in the Street (Bloomsbury) Guests Hannah Kent is the author of the novels Burial...

We review the latest in fiction for dedicated readers and for those who wish they read more.

Cassie McCullagh is joined by Jonathan Green this time, for a wide-ranging hour of new fiction, from Australia and beyond. First, Fiona Mozley’s unsettling Awake Awake , where a young woman begins to suspect her grandfather may have killed Adolf Hitler, Zan Rowe weighs in. Then, Irish writer Niamh Campbell’s Make Strange , a quietly eerie novel about a four-year-old asking impossible questions, in...

From a sun-drenched Tuscan reset with a side of style advice (Andrew Sean Greer's Villa Coco via Michael Robotham ), to Ilka Tampke’s How To Love the World , a tender take on parenting and the pull of the bush (guided by Roanna Gonsalves ), and throw in a windswept lighthouse on the edge of the world with Michael Pedersen’s Muckle Flugga . ~ OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED Charles Bukowski, works Andrew Sea...

Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh are joined by regulars Hannah Kent and Tom Wright to talk new fiction from three major voices: Maggie O’Farrell’s Land , an expansive novel set in famine-era Ireland that traces memory, myth and the imprint of history on place; Ann Patchett’s Whistler , a sharp story of family, lost fathers and the long shadow of childhood; and Christine Balint’s A Single Witness ,...

Kate Evans is joined by Bernadette Brennan and Beejay Silcox to talk three striking new releases: Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s Said the Dead, a haunting, archive-rich exploration of a derelict Irish asylum; Chloe Wilson’s The Thornbacks , a darkly comic debut of morticians, dating apps and unsettling female entanglements; and Deborah Levy’s My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein , a playful meditation on l...

The Bookshelf comes to you from a sold out session at Sydney Writers’ Festival, for a conversation that brings together an exceptional line-up: acclaimed novelist and poet Tony Birch , Miles Franklin Award-winning author Siang Lu , and internationally celebrated writer Lily King. Together, with Cassie, Kate and special guest Claire Nichols from The Book Show, they mark the launch of ABC Radio Nati...

We head by rackety ferry to Scotland in John of John , the latest, quietly devastating novel from Shuggie Bain author Douglas Stuart. Henry Lawson reimagined - brawling poets, strange tunnels, time loops, and a warped tussle between city and bush in Wayne Marshall’s Henry Goes Bush , reviewed by You Am I's Tim Rogers. From there, novelist Madeleine Gray turns her eye to Lena Dunham’s sharp, self‑a...

This week’s Bookshelf features the latest from Elizabeth Strout, creator of Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton, returning with a stand‑alone novel called The Things We Never Say. We’re also reading an ambitious, genre‑bending novel that moves from 1980s gaming culture to far‑future space travel, and Daniel Kehlmann’s The Director, a German novel in translation that explores film, power and propagand...

This week’s Bookshelf features the latest from Elizabeth Strout, creator of Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton, returning with a stand‑alone novel called The Things We Never Say. We’re also reading an ambitious, genre‑bending novel that moves from 1980s gaming culture to far‑future space travel, and Daniel Kehlmann’s The Director, a German novel in translation that explores film, power and propagand...