Good Reading Podcast

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...

Whether you're in need of a solid knock-knock joke, a cringeworthy pun, a hilarious yarn or a weird factoid you can whip out at a family barbecue, the Worland brothers are here to help. Triple M radio host Gus Worland and his brother, writer Steve Worland, have created 'The Bloke-a-saurus: Jokes for blokes, fair dinkum funnies and true blue Aussie wisdom'. Ranging from groan-inducin...

Please note: This podcast contains discussions of sexual abuse. Bri Lee is the author of ‘Eggshell Skull’, a bestselling memoir about Bri's time as a Judge's Associate in Queensland, witnessing institutional injustices faced by women, children and minorities in sexual assault trials. The book is also a devastating coming-of-age story, as Bri’s recounts her own journey through the legal s...

In Australia, judges are legally obliged to take a person’s apparent remorse into account when formulating their sentence, and yet how remorse is measured remains unclear. Kate Rossmanith’s new hybrid memoir, 'Small Wrongs: How We Really Say Sorry in Life, Love and Law', investigates legal, cultural, religious understandings of remorse and how they play out both in courtrooms and our per...

'Scrublands' by Chris Hammer begins with a young priest, Byron Swift, shouldering a high-powered hunting rifle and opening fire on his congregation in the tiny, drought-stricken town of Riversend. Martin Scarsden, a Sydney Morning Herald journalist, is sent to profile the town a year on from the massacre and discovers that there's far more to the killings than was initially reported...

Besides gambling destinations like Macau or Monaco, Australia has the highest amount of poker machines per capita in the world. New South Wales was the second jurisdiction - just behind Nevada in the US - to legalise pokies, and a Sydney manufacturer continues to be at the forefront of pokie machine design and production. Drew Rooke's 'One Last Spin: The power and peril of the pokies&apo...

What happens when a burgeoning movie star is killed on the set of a blockbuster zombie flick? Melbourne crime writer Sarah Bailey is back with her unforgettable character, Detective Sergeant Gemma Woodstock, who has left her small regional town in favour of the big smoke. Sarah talks to Angus Dalton about women in the police force, books for boys, and why she's drawn to crimes on display. Lis...

For the launch of Good Reading's new podcast, sponsored by Pantera Press, we're joined by author of the Rowland Sinclair mystery novels, Sulari Gentill. She tells Angus Dalton about being turned away by the White Australia Policy, finding stories in the stars, her dapper amateur detective and the unsolved mystery of the Pyjama Girl Murder. Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://...