The Book Show

The smell of books and Italian cooking are celebrated in the latest novels by bestselling Australian authors Pip Williams and Dominic Smith. Pip Williams' follow up to The Dictionary of Lost Words revisits Oxford as the setting for her wartime drama, The Bookbinder of Jericho. And Dominic Smith's Return to Valetto explores the people who choose to stay in crumbling Italian ghost towns.

Indian author Anindita Ghose on life after Vogue, her friendship with Jonathan Franzen, and the joy of killing the patriarch on page one.

Irish writers John Boyne, Esther Freud and Louise Kennedy share stories of the pub, the role of the church and whether there's such a thing as an Irish voice. 

Literary titan, Margaret Atwood on the death of her beloved husband, the influence of George Orwell and the pleasures of ageing. Her latest book is a collection of short stories, Old Babes in the Wood. Also, another Canadian writer Jessica Johns on her debut, Bad Cree.

American writer Sequoia Nagamatsu shares stories from his childhood growing up in Hawaii, his love of Star Trek, how environmentalism fuels his writing and how being Japanese American has shaped him. His debut novel is How High We Go in the Dark and he was a guest of the Perth Festival Writers Weekend.

 Bestselling British author Samantha Shannon celebrates women, love and desire in her latest fantasy novel, A Day of Fallen Night, Cate Kennedy takes a deep dive into the short story and Ronnie Scott on why he persisted with his second novel Shirley.

For Sydney WorldPride, we celebrate queer writers telling queer stories – the funny, the heartbreaking and the spooky. We’ve searched The Book Show archive to bring you highlights from Andrew Sean Greer, Val McDermid, Alan Hollinghurst, Jennifer Mills, S.J Norman, S.L Lim and Holden Sheppard.

A trio of books by women about bodies, ballet, grief and working mothers. Meg Howrey on They're Going to Love You, Inga Simpson on Kath O'Connor's posthumous debut novel Inheritance, and Dinuka McKenzie on the physical pain of being a breastfeeding mother returning to the police force. 

Indian writer Deepti Kapoor takes on corruption, wealth and poverty in India in her novel The Age of Vice, Michelle Johnston takes you deep in to the basement of the Perth hospital where she works and writes and American author Kevin Wilson's "book for prudish teens", Now is Not the Time to Panic.

Two very different crime fiction writers, Australian Indigenous author Julie Janson and Scottish writer Stuart MacBride imagine grisly scenarios in their books Madukka: The River Serpent and The Dead of Winter. Also Briony Stewart's re-imagining of Frente's 90s hit song Accidentally Kelly Street as a children's book. 

Bret Easton Ellis and Paul Jennings have been very successful writers for 40 years and although they're very different writers - Bret Easton Ellis is best known for American Psycho and Paul Jennings for his children's books - they both discuss how they've navigated the benefits and pitfalls of fame.

It's been 40 years since Tim Winton published his first novel, An Open Swimmer. Today he is the beloved writer of 29 books, a four-time Miles Franklin winner (for Shallows, Cloudstreet, Dirt Music and Breath) and an incomparable observer of the Western Australian landscape. For the Big Weekend of Books, he joined The Book Show's Claire Nichols and a live audience at the ABC studios in Perth.

Marlon James' African Game of Thrones, Markus Zusak gets your fanmail and Meg Mason's surprise success with Sorrow and Bliss.

Booker winner Douglas Stuart, Indyana Schneider and Omar Sakr explore queer love and identity in their fiction.

Writers (and bookworms) Craig Silvey, Tony Birch, and Dervla McTiernan talk about their reading lives, in this special episode recorded at the Perth Festival Writers Weekend.

Ruth Ozeki, Shehan Karunatilaka and Jennifer Down share the backstory to their award winning books.

Australian novelist Heather Rose lost her brother in a tragic accident when she was just 12 years old. In her memoir Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here, she shares how her grief and curiosity led her on a lifelong search for the extraordinary. Also, Wiradjuri activist-turned-author Yvonne Weldon on her love story Sixty-Seven Days and Thomas Keneally tackles a tricky subject in his historic novel Fanati...

City-saving superheroes, cheese-bingeing record store employees and a chemist turned TV chef with NK Jemisin, Katharine Pollock and Bonnie Garmus.

Booker winner George Saunders on his short story addiction, Inga Simpson on the great Australian cricket novel and pandemic fiction for kids.

Alex Miller and Patricia Cornwell talk about ageing and fiction and their novels A Brief Affair and Livid, and we explore the line between fact and fiction with historical novelists Jock Serong, Eleanor Limprecht and Sienna Brown.

Actor Joseph Paterson shines a spotlight on Black British history, Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk's Ottoman Empire saga and Australian Fiona McFarlane goes in search of a lost boy in 1883.

Graham Norton, Diana Reid and Holly Throsby discuss why they enjoy writing about women in fiction. Graham Norton's fourth novel Forever Home is about a woman saying a slow goodbye to her partner (and wondering about a weird smell in the basement). Diana Reid's second novel Seeing Other People unapologetically explores the anxieties of young, educated women in Sydney and musician Holly Throsby's no...

Ian Rankin's detective John Rebus has been part of the literary world for 35 years and now his 24th Rebus novel has just landed, A Heart Full of Headstones. Discover the hard centre of Victoria Hannan's new novel Marshmallow and find out what an ear prostitute is with Singaporean writer Clarissa Goenawan's Watersong.

Barbara Kingsolver explains her connection to Charles Dickens and why her latest Demon Copperhead is set in Appalachia, USA. Sophie Cunningham's almost 20 year grapple with her latest book This Devastating Fever and apples, orchards and rabbits in Tasmanian author Robbie Arnott's third novel, Limberlost.

Shehan Karunatilaka is the winner of the 2022 Booker Prize for his book The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. He spoke to The Book Show about setting the novel during the Sri Lankan Civil War and the importance of bearing witness to its horrors.