Good Reading Podcast

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 a near-deserted coasted town south of Sydney. Soon they must follow the great migration south, but before they go, a newly arrived couple become a point of infatuation for young Finch. Craig Ensor's The Warming is a beautifully written story ab...

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 Baudelaire to an illiterate young girl, a noir romance story in wartime Paris that begins in a graveyard and a tale about a woman with paranormal powers. They all weave together to create a stunningly imaginative story about seven lifetimes and two souls....

The so-called 'discovery' of Australia's world famous fauna is overwhelmingly associated with European men like John Gould and Joseph Banks. But Indigenous Australians had been living alongside these animals for tens of thousands of years, and it was their sophisticated zoological knowledge that allowed European naturalists to bring the attention of the world to Australia's biz...

When nomadic Irish author James Delargy experienced the Western Australian outback, something about the landscape enthralled and terrified him. He channelled that awe into 55, a new thriller with a terrifying premise. Two men turn up to a police station with the exact same story of being kidnapped by a serial killer - and each accuses the other of being the murderer. Angus Dalton chats with James...

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 the Anarchists, Utopians, And Technologists Who Built Cryptocurrency, is essential reading for the modern citizen. Gregory Dobbs talks to Finn about the genius and the madness behind the development of cryptocurrency.

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 story that could rock the literary world, and a reclusive elderly woman in Brisbane with secrets to keep. Mary-Rose MacColl joins Angus Dalton to talk about celebrity, the royals, why lost infants often show up in her stories, and how a baby crow came...

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 mule and a furious goldfish named after the King of Men. Their father, the Murderer, has fled, and their mother, the Mistake Maker, is dead. The Book Thief author joins Angus Dalton to talk about the decade it took to write Bridge of Clay, his reverenc...

The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone is a sharply written literary mystery infused with nostalgia that leaves its readers guessing. Journalist and author Felicity McLean joins Angus Dalton to talk 90s cuisine, the art of ghostwriting, Australian Gothic, and which iconic Aussie actor accidentally catalysed the writing of her novel. Listen on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2NGVDYKListen on Google Podcasts: bit.ly...

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 magazines and medical research journals. She joins the Good Reading podcast to tell Angus Dalton about her life-saving research, the realms of medicine and biotechnology, and a medical trial that sparked the idea for her new thriller, Eight Lives. L...

Now the author of four novels who works in one of Australia's biggest publishing houses among blockbuster titles like Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine and Boy Swallows Universe, Matt Howard never planned to make a life surrounded by books. In this episode of the Good Reading podcast, Angus Dalton pays a visit to Matt's office to talk about his latest novel, The Time is Now Monica Spar...

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 media landscape. In his new book, Truthteller, Stephen reveals the 'toolbox' of methods used by governments and corporations to mislead the public and dodge accountability. Here he tells Angus Dalton fascinating stories from his life as a jo...

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 literate, engaged and sober society? For this episode of the Good Reading Podcast, historical fiction author Karen Brooks joins Angus Dalton to tell us more about chocolate's transformation of 17th-century London and her new novel, The Chocolat...

In her first book for adults since 2004, 'Gravity is the Thing', treasured children's author Jaclyn Moriarty writes about a mysterious self-help book called 'The Guidebook' that is sent to selected mailboxes one chapter at a time. Jaclyn joins Angus Dalton in this episode to talk about getting sucked in to self-help, why she would like an external committee to be in contro...

Archivist and curator Vanessa Finney unearths Australia's earliest natural history photographs in Capturing Nature, her new book that reveals how scientific photography began at the Australian museum. From tiny inch-long fish to whale skeletons as long as buses, the museum's camera captured thousands of extraordinary images that have never been seen by the public. Angus Dalton heads to t...

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...