The Bookshelf

This week on The Bookshelf, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh discuss new novels including Laura McPhee-Browne's Worry Doll, a story of desire, obsession and uncertainty; Leïla Slimani's I'll Take the Fire, the acclaimed French-Moroccan writer's rich, politically charged exploration of family, memory and identity; and Kris Kneen's Rite of Spring, an eerie island novel where strange creatures lurk in...

A live recording from the 2025 Melbourne Writers Festival, with guests Hannah Kent and Beejay Silcox. Hannah Kent, Always Home, Always Homesick (Picador) Eimear McBride, The City Changes Its Face (Faber) Susan Choi, Flashlight (Jonathan Cape) Edward St Aubyn, Parallel Lines (Jonathan Cape) Caryl Phillips, Another Man in the Street (Bloomsbury) Guests Hannah Kent is the author of the novels Burial...

We review the latest in fiction for dedicated readers and for those who wish they read more.

Cassie McCullagh is joined by Jonathan Green this time, for a wide-ranging hour of new fiction, from Australia and beyond. First, Fiona Mozley’s unsettling Awake Awake , where a young woman begins to suspect her grandfather may have killed Adolf Hitler, Zan Rowe weighs in. Then, Irish writer Niamh Campbell’s Make Strange , a quietly eerie novel about a four-year-old asking impossible questions, in...

From a sun-drenched Tuscan reset with a side of style advice (Andrew Sean Greer's Villa Coco via Michael Robotham ), to Ilka Tampke’s How To Love the World , a tender take on parenting and the pull of the bush (guided by Roanna Gonsalves ), and throw in a windswept lighthouse on the edge of the world with Michael Pedersen’s Muckle Flugga . ~ OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED Charles Bukowski, works Andrew Sea...

Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh are joined by regulars Hannah Kent and Tom Wright to talk new fiction from three major voices: Maggie O’Farrell’s Land , an expansive novel set in famine-era Ireland that traces memory, myth and the imprint of history on place; Ann Patchett’s Whistler , a sharp story of family, lost fathers and the long shadow of childhood; and Christine Balint’s A Single Witness ,...

Kate Evans is joined by Bernadette Brennan and Beejay Silcox to talk three striking new releases: Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s Said the Dead, a haunting, archive-rich exploration of a derelict Irish asylum; Chloe Wilson’s The Thornbacks , a darkly comic debut of morticians, dating apps and unsettling female entanglements; and Deborah Levy’s My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein , a playful meditation on l...

The Bookshelf comes to you from a sold out session at Sydney Writers’ Festival, for a conversation that brings together an exceptional line-up: acclaimed novelist and poet Tony Birch , Miles Franklin Award-winning author Siang Lu , and internationally celebrated writer Lily King. Together, with Cassie, Kate and special guest Claire Nichols from The Book Show, they mark the launch of ABC Radio Nati...

We head by rackety ferry to Scotland in John of John , the latest, quietly devastating novel from Shuggie Bain author Douglas Stuart. Henry Lawson reimagined - brawling poets, strange tunnels, time loops, and a warped tussle between city and bush in Wayne Marshall’s Henry Goes Bush , reviewed by You Am I's Tim Rogers. From there, novelist Madeleine Gray turns her eye to Lena Dunham’s sharp, self‑a...

This week’s Bookshelf features the latest from Elizabeth Strout, creator of Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton, returning with a stand‑alone novel called The Things We Never Say. We’re also reading an ambitious, genre‑bending novel that moves from 1980s gaming culture to far‑future space travel, and Daniel Kehlmann’s The Director, a German novel in translation that explores film, power and propagand...

In this episode, superstar reviewer Hannah Kent tackles the rugged terrain of a journey that edges towards the Tibetan border in Deepa Anappara's The Last of Earth, and theatre writer Tom Wright ponders extraterrestrial encounters in Amanda Lohrey's new one, Capture. Plus, Kate and Cassie take a look at two titles on the International Booker Prize shortlist, from France and Bulgaria, one follows a...

This week The Bookshelf leans into the wild as Kate Evans and guests are circled by stories of wolves, wild boar and witches, along with the final year of celebrated poet Sylvia Plath and a sensual story of food and obsession from Japan. Kate is joined by regular guests, the novelist, poet and Professor of Australian literature Tony Birch; and critic Beejay Silcox, who arrives fresh from the U.K....

In this episode, Kate and Cassie are joined by celebrated novelist Madeleine Gray and rock icon Tim Rogers for a wide-ranging discussion looking at three works of contemporary fiction: Indian writer Amitav Ghosh’s Ghost Eye, a meditation on reincarnation and climate change; Australian writer and musician Edwina Preston’s Sororicidal, a sharp novel of sisterhood and rivalry; and English stylist Gwe...

Memory, lost conversations and almost-fathers-and sons in Ben Lerner's Transcription; children divided by the throw of a dice, and that's just the start of it, in Steve Toltz's A Rising of the Lights; no such thing as unskilled labour, in Siân Hughes' No Such Thing as Monday, where a woman works as a drycleaner, trying desperately to rid herself of the stains of her childhood; new crime releases,...

What does it mean to write using an 'ethical imagination'? Colum McCann onstage with Kate Evans at the 2025 Melbourne Writers Festival, on his novels Twist, Apeirogon, TransAtlantic, Let the Great World Spin and many more; and his work with the social justice storytelling movement, Narrative Four. Presenter/ Producer: Kate Evans Sound Engineers: Simon Branthwaite, Antonia Gauci Acting Arts Editor:...

This week The Bookshelf revisits the Trojan War from the ground up in Yann Martel’s Son of Nobody, moves through friendship and loss in Debra Adelaide’s When I Am Sixty‑Four, and dives into queer Sydney in the 1940s with Fiona Kelly McGregor’s The Trap.  BOOKS Fiona Kelly McGregor, The Trap, Picador Debra Adelaide, When I Am Sixty-Four, UQP Yann Martel, Son of Nobody, Text GUESTS Tom Wright, theat...

A rich mix of voices and stories in short fiction from acclaimed Native American writer Louise Erdrich; essays and memories from two‑time Miles Franklin Award winner Alex Miller; bleakly funny childhood tales by English author Mark Haddon; and, from Michael Winkler, a surreal and darkly comic story about a man who decides he’d rather be the family dog. BOOKS  Michael Winkler, Griefdogg, Text  Loui...

What if the most talked‑about streaming show of the moment was a mirror reflecting your most private fears and failures? That unnerving question sits at the heart of John Lanchester’s Look What You Made Me Do, a sharp novel about resentment, revenge, money, class and generational unease. Plus: the art of the short story, as Hannah Kent reads and reflects on Lauren Groff’s new collection Brawler; a...

A Bookshelf festival special featuring Kate Evans onstage with writers Jock Serong and Emily Maguire on historical fiction, from the 2025 Sydney Writers Festival. GUESTS Emily Maguire is a novelist and essayist whose books include An Isolated Incident and Love Objects, and her latest, Rapture Jock Serong is a novelist and lawyer, whose books include The Rules of Backyard Cricket, On the Java Ridge...

Statues come alive and London is re-imagined in Francis Spufford's Nonesuch, and surprising parallels in two Australian novels of secrets, shame, land and time in M L Stedman's A Far-Flung Life and Eva Hornung's The Minstrels. Kate Evans, Cassie McCullagh, Michael Robotham and Roanna Gonsalves - to help you decide what to read next. BOOKS Francis Spufford, Nonesuch, Faber Eva Hornung, The Minstrel...

In this episode, we travel from the Swiss Alps to the quiet strangeness of Danish suburbia and the fierce edges of American literary drama. We begin with the visceral intensity of Gabriel Tallent’s latest novel, Crux, where characters cling to passion and survival with bloodied fingertips. Claire Thomas reflects on art, ambition, and the lure of towering peaks in On Not Climbing Mountains, and Hel...

Emerald Fennell's film adaptation of Wuthering Heights has been marketed as " the greatest love story ever told ", which is not typically the description given to the original novel. What does this adaptation achieve, and what does it sacrifice in the process? The Bookshelf 's Kate Evans and Radio National's Arts Hour 's Sky Kirkham discuss what they felt did and didn't work in this film and, in a...

Kate and Cassie read Kin, the latest novel from Tayari Jones — the acclaimed American novelist behind An American Marriage, a book that resonated with both critics and readers alike. Her work sits alongside a bold mix of stories in this episode, from a vampiric love story to speed‑dating slasher fiction, and South African writer Nadia Davids adds her own unsettling brilliance, taking us into the l...

Join Kate and Cassie as they explore new fiction alongside guests: musician Tim Rogers (You Am I) and novelist Madeleine Gray (Green Dot, Chosen Family). Three American novels, each tackling big ideas in very different ways - from the political absurdity and humour of Jess Walter’s So Far Gone, to the mockumentary-style tensions of Patmeena Sabit’s Good People, to the darkly comic moral maze of Jo...

Madeline Cash’s buzzy debut Lost Lambs pairs an off‑kilter storytelling sensibility with a sharp exploration of displacement and identity. George Saunders returns with Vigil, offering his moral curiosity in a novel that probes what it means to pay attention to the world. George Kemp’s Soft Serve delivers a charming and quietly affecting debut about growing up in a small town; and Steven Carroll’s...