Good Reading Podcast

Walking Sydney invites you to walk with a city’s writers as they share their places of home and imagination. From the streets of the suburbs to the shores of the harbour, as we walk amid diasporas, countercultures, activists, artists, dreamers and thieves, the city comes alive with story. Written by Belinda Castles from walks taken with fifteen writers, Walking Sydney is an opportunity to see the...

Brisbane, 1975: Andie Tanner's world is small but whole. Her mum is complicated, but she adores her dad and the kennel of racing greyhounds that live under their house. Andie is a serious girl with plans: finish school with her friends, then apprentice to her father until she can become a greyhound trainer, with dogs of her very own. But real life rarely goes to plan, and the world is bigger...

After years away from his home town of Melbourne, Luke Harris is back on track. All he wants is a normal job, his own house and a dog. But Luke is a man with a past, when life was anything but peaceful and his skills ran to the dark side. A past not easily forgotten – or forgiven. When he crosses paths with Gus Alberici – the brutal criminal he worked for as a teenager – he's dragged reluctan...

Bryce Courtenay was one of Australia's highest-selling and most-loved authors. From his first book, The Power of One, he captivated readers. Many of his fans would have thought they knew him, and they did - they knew the version of him that he wanted to present to the world. To his son Adam, Bryce Courtenay was larger than life, mercurial, and impossible to know completely. In this moving, un...

News cowboys – it was the nickname the reporters and camerapeople at Seven Network’s Los Angeles bureau jokingly gave themselves as they headed off on assignments, not knowing what to expect and often unprepared for what they found. It was a way of coping, of not taking too seriously what was often deadly serious, as they witnessed some of the worst moments in recent world history. For 18 years Mi...

Where’s Moon?’ follows a day in the life of June, a toddler who is searching for the moon! The story was written by Speech Pathologist, Olivia Purvis, and edited by her sister, Amelia. The story was inspired by their young nephew, Sebastian, who innocently enquired about the Moon’s whereabouts one day. Olivia’s inner Speech Pathologist could not resist weaving a strong narrative with a variety of...

T he Haunting of Mr and Mrs Stevenson tells the story of Robert Louis Stevenson’s friendship with the charming Eugene Chantrelle and the murder mystery that contributed to Robert’s need to create a novel focused on the dualistic nature of the psyche. From a séance with the Shelleys at Boscombe Manor to a haunted wardrobe made by an infamous Scottish criminal, the novel is underscored by the story...

In the dying days of the Roman republic, a remarkable woman steps out of the shadows and beyond the boundaries imposed on her sex, driven by an unstoppable ambition. Kaarina Parker's stunning debut novel, told in the compelling voice of this brilliant woman from history, brings Fulvia and the society in which she lived vividly to life. Born into a wealthy but unimportant family, Fulvia is rai...

The liver's ability to heal and regenerate can greatly improve your wellbeing. Clinical nutritionist and bestselling author Sarah Di Lorenzo’s four-week plan has helped hundreds of her patients repair their inner health and now she’s sharing it with you. One in three Australians have a fatty liver, one of the most prevalent liver conditions worldwide. Revitalising your liver health can increa...

As animals our brains float above the planet’s surface. We were made to be mobile and carry our intelligence with us. A huge leap for mankind is happening right now. Contained within our minds and everything around us is the solution to our anxiety. Ecologist and naturalist Simon Mustoe shows us how to consume a more balanced variety of knowledge to become healthier and happier by reconnecting wit...

Erna Walraven on her memoir about zoo-keeping and feminism, 'Hear Me Roar' In the early 1980s, when Erna Walraven decided to follow her dreams and become one of the first female zookeepers in Australia, she thought her biggest challenges would be feeding big cats and subduing irate gorillas. In fact, it was her male colleagues who made work miserable, harassing and humiliating her for do...

In the magical city of Nevermoor, long-buried secrets are coming to light, and Morrigan Crow's life is about to turn upside down. When Morrigan is invited into Nevermoor's wealthy Silver District, she discovers a world of extravagance and a family mystery she's eager to unravel. She could never imagine where it will lead: a white wedding, a golden dragon and a red pool of blood. Emb...

Vaccination is arguably the greatest public health achievement in history, yet the disappearance of many diseases has also seen an increased focus on the side effects of vaccines and the rise of the anti-vax movement. The COVID-19 pandemic propelled anti-vaccination sentiment into the mainstream – including from some leaders in the medical profession – in an explosion of pseudoscience and disinfor...

You may have heard the story of the man from Snowy River and his fearless ride through the mountains. This is Colt’s story, of nickering mares and a rearing stallion. How did Colt escape the man? What did Colt see, feel and smell as he charged through the bush? Beloved children’s author Dianne Wolfer responds to The Man from Snowy River, creating an essential companion to the original poem. It is...

‘ What does it mean to be on land that was taken from other people? Now that we know how the taking was done, what do we do with that knowledge?’ Kate Grenville is no stranger to the past. Her success and fame as a writer exploded when she published The Secret River in 2005, a bestseller based on the story of her convict ancestor, an early settler on the Hawkesbury River. More than two decades on,...

The First Wiradyuri War of Resistance ended in 1824 with a series of massacres conducted by settlers in the Bathurst region. From the 1830s, colonists began occupying more and more Aboriginal land across western New South Wales and stocking it with sheep and cattle. By 1838, a dramatic fightback began across the entire frontier of the colony. What has been called the Second Wiradyuri War of Resist...

Ange Crawford is the winner of the the inaugural Walker Books Manuscript Prize. With themes including coercive control, coming of age, and finding yourself, her debut young adult novel, How to be Normal , authentically deals with timely issues with insight, sympathy and well crafted humour. Six students at Cerdon College in Merrylands, NSW, caught up with Ange to ask her about her inspiration and...

From the coast of Western Australia to Sydney’s suburbs, young people are discovering nature in their neighbourhoods and setting up nesting boxes for birds, cleaning up waterways, planting to attract bees and koalas, and building insect hotels. They’re learning about amazing native species and finding ways to protect them. The Bee Squad inspires you to take part in these exciting adventures and pr...

The Unlocking: An Autism Story unfolds in pandemic-stricken Melbourne, charting one family’s desperate battle against the escalating behavior of their autistic toddler. Amid the lack of in-person services, Harry exhibits severely restricted eating, obsessive-compulsive tendencies, crippling separation anxiety, and a demand avoidance that impedes every function in his young life. Harry meets the de...

When nineteen-year-old farm girl Adelaide Hoffman applies for a cadetship at the Gunnawah Gazette, she sees it as her ticket out of a life too small for her. The paper's owner, Valdene Bullark, seeing something of the girl she once was in young Adelaide, puts her straight to work.  What starts as a routine assignment covering an irrigation project soon puts Adelaide on the trail of a much big...

After a 30-year absence Agnes is returning to Australia, the country of her birth, at the behest of her aging, narcissistic mother. Having undergone a long period of psychotherapy she now entertains a hope that burning questions will be answered, haunting mysteries solved, and buried memories encouraged into the light. Something has blighted her life since childhood. Something has cast a long shad...

All Kim wants to do is play Dungeons & Dragons with his friends and ride his bike around the local lake. But he has always lived in the shadow of his younger sister. Eila is a prodigy, and everyone talks about how smart she is, though in Kim's eyes, she has no common sense. So when Eila finds an enigmatic, otherworldly globe which gives her astonishing powers, Kim not only has to save his...

Will Helloran is sixteen years old and lives with his father in the Canberra dome complex that protects its inhabitants from the corrosive atmosphere outside. At night his dreams are haunted by his beloved uncle Adam, who unexpectedly died in his sleep almost a year ago. As the nightmares grow increasingly disturbing, Will comes to believe that his uncle's death may have been suspicious - and...

Swimming Sydney is a tale of 52 swims in and around Sydney that take place over a calendar year. From Palm Beach to Cronulla, Mount Druitt to Bondi, Chris Baker swims at iconic beaches, municipal pools, harbour baths, tidal rock pools, bushland lakes and a backyard pool. Taking his weekly plunges, Baker reflects on friendship, history and family, and how swimming can help us better understand ours...

A controversial entrepreneur is murdered in a remote mountain valley, but this is no ordinary case. Ivan and Nell are soon contending with cowboy lawyers, conmen, bullion thieves and grave robbers. But it's when Nell discovers the victim is a close blood relative that the past begins to take on a looming significance. What did take place in The Valley all those years ago? What was Nell's...