The Literary Salon

Our dearest podcast listeners - we have a special, important message for you from our founder Damian Barr, as we say a very fond but sad farewell to the Literary Salon... Some of you have come along in person or online or listened to our podcast for years. Thank you for being there—readers bring a book to life, and that’s what you’ve done for Salon. It’s been fifteen years since our first night at...

Before the summer is out we wanted to share a page-turning holiday read on the podcast. The Orchid Hour takes us back to New York City, 1923, when Zia De Luca’s life is about to be shattered. She lives with her in-laws in Little Italy and works at the public library, but when an unassuming patron is murdered, the police investigation focuses on Zia... After another tragedy strikes even closer to h...

Our Book of the Week is a spellbinding debut novel by writer and commissioning editor on The Observer newspaper, Kathryn Bromwich. In At the Edge of the Woods, Laura lives alone in a cabin deep in the Italian Alps. When she isn’t translating documents, she spends her days climbing the mountains exploring the woods. But while she reconnects with nature, Laura is hiding from the violence of her past...

Our Book of the Week will have you laughing and crying in equal measure! Stand-up comedian Jo Caulfield’s hilarious memoir, The Funny Thing About Death, is about two unconventional girls growing up in the 1970s. Six years ago, Jo was about to go on stage when she found out that her big sister Annie had cancer. Not the best way to start a nationwide comedy tour. But the tour turns out to be a welco...

This week we’re joined by Paul Dalgarno reading from his thoughtful, existential novel, A Country of Eternal Light. Margaret Bryce has been having a hard time since dying in 2014. In a liminal place, we join Margaret as she revisits her life, from her Aberdeen prefab childhood to the birth of her twin girls, through Thatcher’s Britain, the Piper Alpha oil rig disaster, Australia’s Black Summer bus...

In this week's episode, Catherine Taylor reads from her new book The Stirrings: A Memoir in Northern Time, a story about coming of age in the north of England during the 1970s and 80s. Historical events were happening all around her: from the pursuit and capture of the Yorkshire Ripper, to the anti-nuclear protests and Miners’ Strike. But there were also pressing concerns at home, including her pa...

In this week’s episode, Booker award-winning author Ben Okri combines fiction, essay and poetry in Tiger Work. This incredible collection, inspired by environmental activism, displays his classic blend of storytelling, fantasy and magic in tales that imagine messages sent to us from beyond the end, from those who saw it coming - exhorting us to change now.  'Both a work of lyrical imagination and...

From the Booker longlisted author, and an Irish Times No.1 bestseller - Donal Ryan’s The Queen of Dirt Island is a searing, jubilant novel about four generations of women and the stories that bind them. On a council estate in County Tipperary, Ireland, the Aylward women stick with each other through thick and thin, and always with a wicked sense of humour. The head of the family, Nana, is a woman...

Our next guest on the podcast is Essie Fox, reading from her instant Sunday Times bestseller, The Fascination. It’s a Victorian story about the estranged grandson of a wealthy collector of human curiosities, who becomes fascinated with teenage twin sisters, leading them into a web of dark obsessions... And we love this dazzlingly gothic novel from the bestselling author of The Somnambulist. ‘A mag...

We’ve got a literary thriller in store for you this week! In the seaside town of Kinlough, Ireland, three old friends are thrown together for the first time since the disappearance of their friend Kala... Fifteen years later Helen has reluctantly returned for her father's wedding; Joe is a world-famous musician back in town for a gig; and Mush has never left, too scared to venture beyond the count...

Deep in Brazil's neglected Bahia hinterland, two sisters find an ancient knife beneath their grandmother's bed and, momentarily mystified by its power, decide to taste its metal. The tragedy that follows marks their lives and binds them together forever... Heralded as a new masterpiece and the most important Brazilian novel of this century, Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior merges folklore with...

Award-winning actor and creator of a myriad of unforgettable characters from Lady Whiteadder to Gertrude Stein, Miriam truly is a national treasure - and possibly our very favourite lesbian. She made us wait a long time for her extraordinary life story, and it's far richer and stranger than any part she's played. From declaring her love to Vanessa Redgrave to being told to be quiet by the Queen, h...

Smart, accessible, thoughtful, entertaining and frank: our Book of the Week is Black Girl, No Magic by Kimberly McIntosh. Informed by years of social policy research and campaign work, as well as her own personal experiences, this debut essay collection investigates the intersection of race and class in the UK. She discusses dismantling the myth of social mobility for those who conform to expectat...

A grand hotel, a famous opera star and a psychoanalyst with a hidden agenda. Our Book of the Week offers a glamorous, thrilling ride through murder, madness and the darkest recesses of the mind, set at Birmingham’s Regent Hotel in 1929, where guests sip absinthe cocktails on velvet banquettes and nothing is as it appears... Hokey Pokey by Kate Mascarenhas is published by Apollo, an imprint of belo...

We’re thrilled to bring you a reading from And Then He Sang a Lullaby by Ani Kayode Somtochukwu. This is the inaugural title from a new publisher on the scene: Roxane Gay Books, an imprint of Grove Atlantic. Roxane Gay is of course the bestselling author of Bad Feminist and her press will publish beautifully written, provocative, intelligent writing including underrepresented fiction, nonfiction a...

This week we’re bringing you a brilliant, poignant and darkly comic novel by Irish author Alice Ryan.  Molly Black has been running away since her parents died. But this time, or so says her note, she's gone for good... There's Been a Little Incident is an award-winning debut novel about grief, family and the people who are there for you when you can't be there for yourself. 'Warm, wry and genuine...

It’s time for some sex positivity! This week we’ve invited sex and relationship columnist Zachary Zane to read to you from his painfully funny memoir, Boyslut: A Memoir and Manifesto. The New York based author bares all in this memoir-manifesto, exploring how, even today, we live in a world that shames people for the sex they have and the sexualities they inhabit. Through the lens of his bisexuali...

We’ve got another page-turner on the podcast this week, this time by internationally bestselling author Joanne Harris!   In Broken Light, Bernie Moon has given her life to other people: her husband, her son, her friends. At nineteen she was full of dreams and ambitions; now almost fifty, and going through the menopause, she's fading, fast. When a young woman is murdered in a local park, it sparks...

Prepare to be dazzled by our Book of the Week, Eyes Guts Throat Bones, an anthology of macabre tales at the end of civilisation. Moïra Fowley's spellbinding imagination will captivate your senses in an irresistible collection that explores our darkest impulses and deepest fears, interlaced with stories of queer love.  ‘One of my favourite storytellers. These tales lingered, morphed, consumed me.’...

We’re delighted to bring you a new instalment of The Darkland Tales! In this series, leading Scottish authors offer dramatic retellings of stories from their nation's history, myth and legend. Last season we brought you Hex by Jenni Fagan. This season we’re spotlighting Nothing Left to Fear From Hell by award-winning author Alan Warner. In this story, Bonnie Prince Charles flees from the disastrou...

Make room in your heart for our book of the week! Arthur and Teddy Are Coming Out by Ryan Love is the feel-good book you need to read right now. When 79-year-old Arthur comes out to his family the announcement is met with mixed feelings and leads his grandson Teddy to reconsider sharing his own secret... Now the two must navigate a new world of love, heartbreak and finding their place in the queer...

This week we’re bringing you a gripping literary thriller set in the world of dark academia, for fans of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and Katy Hays The Cloisters.  In Joanna Margaret’s debut novel The Bequest, PhD student Isabel Henley arrives to study at St Andrew’s University but when her friend Rose disappears she must solve a 450 year-old mystery to save both their lives... 'Richly atmosph...

We’re beyond thrilled to welcome Max Porter onto the podcast to read from his highly anticipated and acclaimed new novel, Shy! Max is the bestselling author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers and Lanny. His latest story is about adolescent rage, struggles with mental health, imagination and coming-of-age in an alienating world, about being lost in the dark and the uncertainty of whether you’ll ev...

This week’s episode is especially for fans of folklore and readers of marvellous myths. White Cat, Black Dog contains seven modern fairytales from Pulitzer Prize finalist Kelly Link, featuring illustrations by award-winning artist Shaun Tan. Each is inspired by a classic fable retold with a modern twist, breathing new life into old favourites with Kelly’s signature imagination and wit. If you enjo...

If you could save the life of a loved one by trading in years of your own life, how many years would you give? How many lives could you save? Would you know when to stop? Francis Broad has negotiated the day of his death and now he must come to terms with the decisions he has made. Three Gifts by Mark A. Radcliffe is our thought provoking, page-turning book of the week. Published by Brighton-based...