The Bookshelf

Leap into the early 1980s, step onto an isolated rocky outcrop, and walk through a fraught dream house, all in a collection of new writing.

A woman in a series of hotel rooms, two boys riding bikes in 1960s Sri Lanka, and a girl fleeing an ominous pairing of a Priest and a Poacher. New fiction.

Reviews and discussion of Garth Greenwell's Cleanness, Jeanine Cummins' American Dirt and Isabel Allende's A Long Petal of the Sea. New fiction, every week

Me Myshelf and I with Indian writer Tishani Doshi; with Roger Pulvers, who reads Russian and Japanese; YA novelist David Nicholls and children’s author Katherine Rundell

What does it mean if you have to grit your teeth to get through a book? Endurance reading with too much pain or violence?

Reading influences and recommendations from three Australian novelists

Three fantasy writers share the bookshelves that have shaped them, and some writing insights too.

Boxing, fairytales and political scandal as three writers share the bookshelves that have shaped them.

A trio of readers join Kate and Cassie with their reading recommendations.

Novelist Graeme Simsion and reviewer Nicole Abadee on Marcy Dermansky's Very Nice and Curdella Forbes' A Tall History of Sugar, and reading America in Ben Lerner's The Topeka School

A podcast special edition of the Bookshelf, in which English poet and writer Lemn Sissay reveals his life and history as a child in care, and connects it to the many foster children of literature.

In this podcast extra edition of The Bookshelf, writer Charlotte Wood talks to Kate Evans about writing friendship, ageing, grief and joy.

From stage to screen to page, Leah Purcell has taken Henry Lawson's 1890s story of a lone woman in a tough landscape and remade it as her own in The Drover's Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson. And thrillers and crime stories with recurring characters.

Rewriting the end of the 19th century in London; rewriting colonial Africa from the inside; and lighting up Faha, Ireland

What will fans of André Aciman's Call Me By Your Name make of his follow-up novel, Find Me?

Crime writing dominates this week's show, with Garry Disher's novel Peace and Michael Connelly (Bosch) sharing his own bookshelf. And reading novellas with Griffith Review's Ashley Hay

Fantasy writer Garth Nix and arts journalist Martin Portus join Cassie and Kate to discuss a collection of water-filled novels: Beyond the Sea, The Starless Sea and The River Capture

Kate and Cassie with guests Meredith Lake (Soul Search), Karen Viggers (The Orchardist's Daughter) and Chris Hammer (Scrubland, Silver) as they discuss new fiction by Christos Tsiolkas, Helen Phillips and Jacqueline Woodson - and many more besides

Kate and Cassie onstage with writers Holden Sheppard (Invisible Boys) and Roanna Gonsalves (The Permanent Resident), and Mitchell Librarian Richard Neville, as they read new novels by Australian writers Charlotte Wood and Katherine Johnson, American Alice Hoffman and Frenchman Philippe Besson

Book influences and recommendations from India, Russia, Japan, Australia, the USA and more, in a podcast extra edition of The Bookshelf

Political satire from Ian McEwan and Heather Rose, a short story collection by Zadie Smith and the state of historical fiction with Robert Gott and Elisabeth Storrs

Me Myshelf and I, as novelists Jessie Burton and Dominic Smith (The Electric Hotel), and comedian Corey White, reveal the books and reading that has shaped them

On Philip Pullman's The Secret Commonwealth, Favel Parrett's There Was Still Love and Nino Haratischvili's The Eighth Life (For Brilka)

Kate and Cassie are joined by writer Chloe Higgins and interviewer Michaela Kalowski as they discuss Edna O'Brien's Girl, Benjamin Myers' The Offing and Etgar Keret's Fly Already

Autoethnographer and storyteller Denise Chapman and shortstory writer Amanda O'Callaghan join Kate and Cassie as they discuss Ann Patchett's The Dutch House, Bernardine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other and Emma Donoghue's Akin