The Bookshelf

An Australian story of the tender, eager lives of greyhounds and their owners in Tenderfoot by Australian author Toni Jordan. Dark academia in Yellowface author R.F. Kuang’s new fantasy novel, Katabasis. Sport, miracles, and the Amish, in Ron Rindo’s Life, and Death, and Giants. BOOKS  Toni Jordan, Tenderfoot, Hachette  R.F. Kuang, Katabasis, Harper Voyager  Ron Rindo, Life, and Death, and Giants,...

The Bookshelf continues to explore new fiction, beginning in this episode with Ruins by Amy Taylor, a plunge into holiday chaos during a simmering summer in Greece. Maria Reva’s Endling takes us to Ukraine, where an eccentric scientist is breeding rare snails. And, Leif Enger’s I Cheerfully Refuse...dystopia with a twist. BOOKS  Amy Taylor, Ruins, Allen & Unwin  Maria Reva, Endling, Virago  Le...

Kate and Cassie discuss Vera, or Faith, Gary Shteyngart’s new novel about a ten-year-old Korean-American girl growing up in a dystopian United States. Alongside guest critics, they also look at The Bombshell by Darrow Farr, which traces the radicalisation of a young French woman in Corsica, and The Slip by Lucas Schaefer, the story of a missing teenage boy and the transformative power of boxing. B...

Australian author Rhett Davis re-imagines the everyday in his novels. In his latest, Arborescence, ordinary people begin transforming into trees. Is it a cult? Performance art? Or something else entirely? Also on the show: Guest reviewer Roanna Gonsalves discusses Saraswati, the debut novel by Gurnaik Johal, which winds its narrative around a sacred and possibly mythical river in North India. And,...

A critical assessment of the shortlist and winner of Australia’s most prestigious literary award, The Miles Franklin Literary Award. Kate and Cassie are joined by guests, scholar and literary biographer (and former judge of the MFLA) Bernadette Brennan; and critic and publisher, Geordie Williamson. BOOKS Brian Castro, Chinese Postman, Giramondo Michelle de Kretser, Theory & Practice, Text Winn...

Parties, scandals, sex, love, families, friendship, death – these books have, as they say, all the things. Nell Zink’s Sister Europe moves through one night in Berlin, while Amy Bloom’s I’ll Be Right Here sweeps through 80 years of history, and in James Frey’s Next to Heaven, the beautiful and rich fall apart rather spectacularly. BOOKS  Nell Zink, Sister Europe, Penguin Viking  Amy Bloom, I’ll Be...

Stories of the sea – and a great white whale in Xiaolu Guo's Call Me Ishmaelle; Hungry ghosts and kitchen mishaps in Daria Lavelle's NYC set novel Aftertaste; and the latest Australian crime fiction (of which there is a lot!) BOOKS  AUSTRALIAN CRIME FICTION:  Mark Brandi, Eden  Paul Daley, The Leap  Sam Guthrie, The Peak  Angie Faye Martin, Melaleuca   Michael Robotham, White Crow  Tanya Scott, St...

What’s the state of fiction today? Four brilliant minds—Samantha Harvey (UK), Rumaan Alam (USA), Torrey Peters (USA), and Robbie Arnott (AUS)—tackle the question live at the 2025 Sydney Writers’ Festival. Expect bold takes, big ideas, and a few surprises.

The same question is at the heart of three very different international novels on The Bookshelf this week, “What really happened”… To a WWI soldier who has forgotten his name and identity in The Remembered Soldier by Dutch author Anjet Daanje? To a fortune teller for the elite class in Ben Okri’s Madame Sosostris and the Festival for the Broken-hearted? When four high achieving American boys enter...

What would make a great Australian sporting novel? Our guests discuss translating the love of the game, footy nicknames, and intense team culture in ex-AFL player Brandon Jack’s Pissants. And making sport of the Melbourne literary scene, Dominic Amarena’s debut novel I Want Everything is a clever, celebratory satire.  Kate and Cassie also review the 2025 International Booker Prize winner Heart Lam...

The latest best-selling novels from Taylor Jenkins-Reid (Atmosphere) and Fredrik Backman (My Friends) explore 1980s astronauts, ambition and romance; and teenage anguish, friendship and art. Emotive and cinematic, how often is popular fiction written for the screen? Speaking of the screen, screenwriter Thomas Vowles’ debut novel Our New Gods takes us on a twisted psychological thriller through gay...

A guide to James Joyce from Irish writer Mary Morrissy, ahead of Bloomsday (16 June); New Zealand writer Becky Manawatu continues to explore howls of pain and compassion in her second novel, Kataraina; and magic realism in the boundaries between life and death, and Eastern Europe, in Helen Marshall's The Lady, the Tiger and the Girl Who Loved Death.  BOOKS James Joyce, Ulysses (1922) Mary Morrissy...

Fiction from all over the world, crossing genres, borders and ideas in American crime writer S A Cosby's King of Ashes, a gripping tale of family, smoke, and fire; Irish writer Sean Hewitt’s Open, Heaven, a beautifully woven story about longing, escape and memory; and, first up, The Name of the Sister, the latest from acclaimed Australian literary novelist Gail Jones. BOOKS  Gail Jones, The Name o...

Kate and Cassie read W.A. writer Holden Sheppard's King of Dirt, a vibrant, gay coming-of-age story set in Geraldton. Plus, Australian author Jennifer Mills' new one, Salvage, in which we enter a very well drawn post apocalyptic Mad Max-ish world; and, Florence Knapp's The Names has been named one of the most anticipated fiction releases of the year, a sliding doors story leading to three differen...

What books have shaped the 21st century so far? Recorded live at the 2025 Sydney Writers’ Festival, literary heavyweights Catherine Chidgey (NZ), Mariana Enriquez (Argentina), and Alan Hollinghurst (UK) swap favourites, challenge conventions, and dive into the fiction and non-fiction that’s made a mark—and sparked debate.

A live recording from Melbourne Writers' Festival as Hannah Kent and Beejay Silcox sit down with Kate Evans and Jonathan Green to discuss the latest fiction releases they’re enjoying, loving and being challenged by.  BOOKS- 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, Jo...

One day lived over and over again with humour, despair and self-improvement is what we’re up against in Danish novelist Solvej Balle’s On The Calculation of Volume, a fictional work in seven volumes, the first volume (the one we’re talking about in this episode), has been shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. Plus, The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong, the poet and novelist famous for...

Old friends gather together on the coast in Australian writer Luke Horton’s Time Together, Kate and Cassie take a look. Plus, Jo Harkin’s The Pretender, set during the time of the Tudors' ascent it tells the story of a little-known real-life figure; and Laura Elvery’s Nightingale, a re-imagining of the life of Florence Nightingale. BOOKS  Luke Horton, Time Together, Scribe  Jo Harkin, The Pretende...

Cities that are both flooded and on alert for the next storm in James Bradley’s Landfall. The body of a saint, dreamily and weirdly listening to everyone around her in Western Australia, in Josephine Rowe’s Little World. And from Malaysia, Tash Aw's The South, in which a family has left the city to head to a failing orchard, a story of longing, promise, generations, and misunderstandings   BOOKS ...

Irish writer Niall Williams with Kate Evans at the 2025 Adelaide Writers Week — with a focus on his Faha novels, History of the Rain, This is Happiness and (his latest) Time of the Child. Williams is also a screenwriter, playwright and travel writer — and his first novel, Four Letters of Love, has just been released as a film. He also appeared onstage at AWW with Kate and Cassie, for a special edi...

Families, secrets, mysteries, war...Kate and Cassie read Eric Puchner’s Dream State, an American saga that spans fifty years and is set against the expansive beauty of Montana; mysterious encounters and marital strife between an actor and an art critic in New York in Katie Kitamura’s Audition, and a World War II story set in an apartment block in Brussels in Alice Austen’s 33 Place Brugmann. BOOKS...

Cassie McCullagh is on leave this week, so Kate Evans and guests read Lucy Rose’s The Lamb, Laila Lalami’s The Dream Hotel, and Rachel Morton’s The Sun was Electric Light (with interview extracts from Lucy Rose on body horror and Cumbrian folk traditions, and from Rachel Morton on her move from poetry to prose). BOOKS  Rachel Morton, The Sun was Electric Light, UQP  Lucy Rose, The Lamb, Weidenfeld...

Kate and Cassie read three new works of fiction, with the help of two guest reviewers: a novel of ideas, death, love and music, in Australian writer Andrea Goldsmith's The Buried Life; a real train derailment from the 1890s hurtles together rail workers, coffee sellers, anarcho-feminism, art and typewriters in Irish-Canadian writer Emma Donoghue's The Paris Express (read with historical novelist N...

Kate and Cassie discuss bestselling American writer Curtis Sittenfeld’s sharp and observant collection of short stories Show Don’t Tell; You Am I frontman Tim Rogers reads First Name Second Name, an excellent debut from Queensland novelist Steve MinOn, and the ABC’s own Zan Rowe (of Triple J, Double J and Take 5 fame) shares her thoughts on Scottish singer-songwriter (from Belle and Sebastian) Stu...

This week’s novels takes us to Zanzibar, Budapest and Renaissance Florence with Nobel Prize-winning English-Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Theft; while guest reviewers Tim Ayliffe reads Laurent Binet’s Perspectives; and Siang Lu reads David Szalay’s Flesh. BOOKS  Abdulrazak Gurnah, Theft, Bloomsbury  Laurent Binet, Perspectives (translated from the French by Sam Taylor), Harvill Secker  Davi...