Good Reading Podcast

[CONTENT WARNING: This podcast contains descriptions of war and mental illness that may upset listeners. Discretion is advised. In addition, the intro contains descriptions of violence against a child; skip to 1:34 in the podcast if you'd like to avoid this.]As a boy living in the Dinka tribe in what is now South Sudan, the youngest country in the world, Ayik Chut Deng was a member of the Sud...

Prague, 1943. Taken from her home in Prague, Hana Lederova finds herself imprisoned in the Jewish ghetto of Theresienstadt, where she is forced to endure appalling deprivation and the imminent threat of transportation to the east. When she attracts the attention of the Czech gendarme who becomes her guard, Hana reluctantly accepts his advances, hoping for the protection she so desperately needs. S...

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 irrepressibly curious, Esme spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of lexicographers are gathering words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, unseen...

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 from her beloved granddaughter, Kimberly. Instead, she surrounds herself with animals, working as a guide in an outback wildlife park. And although Jean talks to all her charges, she has a particular soft spot for a young dingo called Sue. As disturbin...

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 become a daily battle to numb the pain. But her job is something she can do better than anyone else – and the only thing that keeps the memories at bay. A face-off on the waterfront between the unions and big business is just the kind of story to get h...

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: years spent hiding in plain sight in wartorn Berlin, the annihilation of dozens of family members in the Holocaust, and the courageous choice to build anew. Ariana Neumann joined Gregory Dobbs to chat about how the process of uncovering her father's...

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, adult addictions, missteps and changing directions are acutely captured in poignant and poetic detail. In his most intimate prose work to date, Kinsella never shies from writing about the violence and intolerance of those scared of difference, and...

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 mistrust. After all, this is a country where myth and legend are woven into the fabric of the everyday, a time when those who defy custom like Sorcha has are called to account. Based on the shocking true story of the witch hunt of Pittenweem, 'Th...

Below Deck is the highly anticipated debut contemporary novel from author Sophie Hardcastle. A heartbreakingly poetic and haunting story about the vagaries of consent, about who has the space to speak and who is believed. In this episode, Greg Dobbs chats to Sophie about the themes of consent and reclaiming the body, and how her Synesthesia influenced the novel's vivid prose. Grab a copy of B...

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 in plain view. Yet this woman had been violently murdered without anyone noticing. Other equally brutal and shocking murders of women in public places were to follow. Australia's first serial killer was at large. Tanya Bretherton is the acclaim...

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 environment. With seemingly nothing to lose, she makes the biggest decision of her life – to stay. But Emily's attempts to bridge a yawning loneliness spur a downward spiral of recklessness, as she hurtles from one sexual encounter to the next. I...

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, are haunted by their terrifying escape from a train headed for Auschwitz after their mothers threw them from the carriage, promising they would follow. But instead the girls find themselves alone in a frozen, alien land. Anita Abriel based 'The Li...

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 got married. Priya and her husband Nick are being treated at the same fertility clinic, and while they don't face the same pressure as the Ardens, the younger couple have their own problems. A year on, one of the women learns her embryo was impl...

In a peaceful coastal town, a young woman is found brutally murdered, a piece of scripture held tightly in her hand. Local detective Charlotte Callaghan is put on the case, and she’s glad for the distraction – Gull Bay can be a hard place to keep a secret, and she’s holding on to a few. A gripping crime novel about murder, betrayal and the monsters who hide in plain sight, The Devil Inside examine...

Critically acclaimed and bestselling author of the ‘Caleb Zelic’ series, Emma Viskic, is back with book three: ‘Darkness for Light.’ In this episode of the Good Reading podcast, Emma shares the challenges of writing a deaf detective, Sulari Gentill’s favourite travel snack, and why she steers clear of supernatural horror. 'Darkness for Light,' is out now: bit.ly/38RPF1R

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 the head and the heart, demonstrating how each of us has the opportunity to make a huge difference in the lives of others, without diminishing the quality of our own. The 10th anniversary revised eBook and celebrity-read audiobook of 'The Life...

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 memory for the very worst reasons.'The Gap' is a vivid portrait of the lead-up to Christmas; an unflinching, no-holds-barred look at what happens after the triple-zero call is made – the drugs, nightclubs, brothels, drunk rich kids, billionair...

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 bestselling 'Scrublands', Chris Hammer continues the story of Martin Scarsden as he returns to his hometown of Port Silver. Soon he and his new partner Mandy Blonde are embroiled in a brutal murder and a media storm, bringing them face to face wi...

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 and light the fire of relentlessness for every case. Now John Jack is dead and Harry inherits a murder book that Thompson took with him when he left the LAPD 20 years before — the unsolved killing of a troubled young man in an alley used for drug dea...

Award-winning author of 'The Museum of Modern Love', Heather Rose, is a sixth-generation Tasmanian. In this episode, Emma Harvey sits down with Heather to talk about the importance of engaging with those we disagree with, how she learned to rid ego and romanticism from her craft, and why her explosive new satire ‘Bruny’ is proving more prophetic by the day. 'Bruny' by Heather R...

[CONTENT WARNING: This podcast discusses issues of mental health and suicide]In a small town, everyone thinks they know you: Charlie is a hardcore rocker, who's not as tough as he looks. Hammer is a footy jock with big AFL dreams, and an even bigger ego. Zeke is a shy over-achiever, never macho enough for his family. But all three boys hide who they really are. When the truth is revealed, wil...

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 horror. In 1971, off the back of a cadetship at Women's Weekly, Mary wanted to become a TV news reporter. Unfortunately for her, in those days, only men were afforded that gig. Instead she forged a diverse career as a 'show-biz' journalist,...

'Paris Savages' is a fictional account of events from the late 19th century when human zoos were big business across Europe. It follows the journey of three Indigenous Australians from the Badtjala tribe of Fraser Island who make the perilous journey to Germany and France where they are admired, feared and exploited for mass entertainment masquerading as science and education. In this co...

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 at a price. She eventually finds herself imprisoned in the Russian gulag where survival is no less easy. In this sequel to the international best-seller ‘The Tattooist of Auschwitz’, Heather Morris explains how this heart-breaking story came to be....

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 familiar to him. He didn’t know them, but the communities they grew up in and the challenges they faced mirrored the circumstances of his own life. His book, 'Why Young Men' traces Jivani’s education as an activist fighting one of today’s mos...