Good Reading Podcast

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 peculiar palate ...In this episode, Jack sits down with Angus Dalton to talk about Hangman and its new sequel, Hunter, getting published as a teenager, the ethical questions that surround cannibalism, and whether he'd mind being devoured upon dying...

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 Phelan escorts the body of a young soldier home from Afghanistan. Struggling to adapt back to civilian life, an encounter with a tattoo artist named Kira changes Phelan permanently - both inside and out. Simon joined Angus Dalton to talk about the legac...

Peggy Frew's Hope Farm was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Stella Prize. The Melbourne writer and ARIA Award-winning musician is back with Islands, a novel about a family in crisis that covers many generations, viewpoints and timelines. In this episode, Peggy tells Angus Dalton about creative doubt, running into the ocean in her undies, and 'the big, enormous, s...

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 hacker. They got talking about her life and Jeremy quickly became fascinated. His new book, 'Breaking and Entering: The extraordinary story of a hacker called Alien', is the result of that chance meeting. It's a fascinating profile of a d...

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 younger version of yourself, what kind of person would you find? These questions are central to Jennifer Spence's new novel, The Lost Girls. Stella slips back in time to 1997 and must disguise herself in the past, resist changing her family's...

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 Wake in Fright. Her dealings with Cook resulted in a 'volcanic' relationship and a brief marriage between two lovers of words. Jacqueline writes beautifully about her time with Ken in her new memoir, Beyond Words. In this episode, Angus Da...

Yotam Ottolenghi is universally admired for a cooking style that is complex, layered, and brimming with freshness and colour. Unfortunately that can sometimes lead to a lot of preparation and even more washing up. In his latest book, 'Simple', Ottolenghi proves that cooking his way doesn’t have to be so challenging. On the advice of his sister, Ottolenghi has created a book of recipes fo...

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 Australian and New Zealand crime books are as much a force of nature as Scandi noir. Alan Carter is the author of the Cato Kwong thriller series and the standalone novel 'Marlborough Man'. His latest book is 'Heaven Sent': http://...

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 divorced at 22. In this podcast she chats to Emma Harvey about bad break-ups, method writing, and the Machiavellian men that inspired her thriller, The Sunday Girl. More about The Sunday Girl: http://bit.ly/2snOseNListen to this podcast on Apple Podcas...

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 writer John Newton delves into how Australia foodies got over their fear of this now ubiquitous ingredient. He also lays out how we moved from a country of charcoal chops and mushy peas to the creators of a vibrant, 'mongrel' cuisine with in...

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 Kimberley. Tragedy soon followed, and Frauke was left alone to run a farm and raise a family in the Western Australian outback. But a discovery of global significance made by geologists nearby changed the course of Frauke's life forever.'A Diamond...

In his new book, 'New Jerusalem', historian Paul Ham casts his research net back some 500 years, to examine, in graphic detail, events in early 16th century Europe during the time of the Reformation. Gregory Dobbs talks to Paul ham about the rise of the Melchiorite sect and the bloody siege of the Westphalian town of Munster. He explores the blasphemy, depravity, and grisly death of Chri...

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 legendary thriller writer joins Angus Dalton to discuss Tom Cruise's recently announced departure from the Jack Reacher film franchise, the exact reasons why books are always better than movie, and how the death of Child's father led to one of th...

'Our mother had a dark heart feeling'. So begins Karen Foxlee's new children's novel, Lenny's Book of Everything, a story of the beetle-obsessed Lenny Spink, a boy who can't stop growing, and an encyclopedia that broadens their entire world. Karen Foxlee joins Angus Dalton to talk about her luminous, unforgettably moving book, and how her writing life began with sheet...

On 7 February, 2009, hundreds of bushfires tore across Victoria, taking 173 lives and destroying over 300 000 hectares of bushland and private property. In this podcast, we sit down with with Walkley Award-winning author and journalist Chloe Hooper to speak about her new book ‘The Arsonist’, a captivating and haunting retelling of the Black Saturday bushfires through the eyes of those who were the...

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 Walters had sold over 25 million crime thriller novels when she stopped writing in 2007. In the midst of a 10-year hiatus, she made a grisly discovery in her town near Dorset, UK. That discovery inspired her new series about the Black Death that fo...

'Seven Deadly Sins (And one very naughty fruit)' is an irreverent romp through gastronomical history. Comedian and presenter Mikey Robins serves up bizarre anecdotes about food from around the world that all relate to a deadly sin - from greed and gluttony to lust and envy. Hear Mikey tell some outrageous foodie stories, both from the book and hilarious yarns he couldn't quite fit i...

Lynette Noni is the author of the fantasy YA series 'The Medoran Chronicles' and 'Whisper', a novel about a girl called Jane Doe who has been locked away and experimented on for years. Olivia, Connor and Jenna from NSW's Central Coast Grammar School jumped behind the microphone and quizzed Lynette on everything from the hard hitting (how on earth do you write a book in jus...

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 with her new book, The Cook's Apprentice: Tips, Techniques and Recipes for New Foodies. The legendary cook tells Gregory Dobbs about attacking pomegranates, her lamentations about modern eating habits, and how teaching her father to bake bread tu...

In 2016, Archibald Prize-winning artist Ben Quilty travelled with Richard Flanagan to places where the Syrian refugee crisis was peaking. He had no idea what to make of the experience until he met a young girl named Heba, and asked her to draw him a picture of her home. Find out more about Home: Drawings by Syrian Children - http://bit.ly/2R8ew81

As ABC political correspondent Laura Tingle put the finishing touches on her latest Quarterly Essay, 'Follow the Leader: Democracy and the rise of the strongman', Canberra descended into chaos. Dutton challenged, Turnbull fell, Morrison won. After some lightning-fast edits, the updated essay came out in the wake of the turmoil, and it examines Australian politics and the leaders of Germa...

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 opened his own secondhand bookshop in his 20s, wrote a trilogy of bestselling erotica novels, and is now the Head of Books at Australian online bookshop, Booktopia. As part of that job, he's quizzed over a thousand of the world's brightest,...

Singer-songwriter Holly Throsby took Aussie fiction lovers by storm in 2016 with her debut novel, Goodwood. Her latest book, Cedar Valley, came to form because she couldn't quite leave the world of her first book. Here Holly talks to Emma Harvey about quintessential Australian 'dagginess', Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and why a book tour is a hell of a lot better (though slightly less...

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 fantasy author Wanda Wiltshire on her 'Betrothed' series, and have a discussion about love triangles, the character traits of strength and independence, Sarah J Maas and other favourite books, and advice for aspiring writers. Find out more abou...

‘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 debut that is earning comparisons to ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’ and ‘Thirteen Reasons Why.’ In this podcast, Meg chats to Good Reading about growing up on Jaclyn Moriarty and Melina Marchetta, being a high school drama teacher, and why she believes it’s...