The Literary Salon

Enjoy the world's first reading and interview with award-winning author Kit about her brand new book 'Without Warning And Only Sometimes', published this week! Kit is the award-winning and bestselling author of 'My Name Is Leon' and edited the pioneering collection 'Common People'. 'Without Warning & Only Sometimes: Scenes from an Unpredictable Childhood' is her story of growing up in a household...

One shipwreck. Two misfits. 300 years apart. The Night Ship is a feat of imagination from award-winning author Jess Kidd. We’re delighted to have her read on our podcast from her new novel, an accomplished work of fiction that takes place across dual timelines. In 1629, Mayken is aboard the Batavia which is doomed to crash on the shores of Beacon Island in Western Australia. Gil joins his grandfat...

Our book of the week is for anyone who’s ever felt that they were the “other.” After leaving Egypt when Sara was only six years old, her family slowly learns how to navigate the social dynamics of their new home. Her father refuses to buy his co-workers a ginger beer, thinking it contains alcohol. Her mother won’t wear a hijab, even if it would help them to connect with other local Muslims. And Sa...

For anyone who loves a poignant, thoughtful, revealing and all round incredibly written memoir, Ali Millar’s The Last Days is a knock-out.   It's 1982 and in the Kingdom Hall we are Jehovah's Witnesses. The state of the world shows us the end is close, and Satan is like a roaring lion, seeking to devour us. Ali is waiting for Armageddon. Her childhood revolves around regular meetings in the Kingdo...

Our latest episode is for all the It’s A Sin fans out there. That spectacular show won our hearts and was celebrated by the Literary Salon and almost a thousand of you at a virtual event starring its screenwriter/producer Russell T Davies. So now we’re absolutely thrilled to bring you a reading from 'the real life Jill'! Jill Nalder shares her new memoir - Love From the Pink Palace - which tells t...

Our book of the week is by Australian author Sara Schmidt who was long listed for the Women's Prize for her book See What I Have Done. In her new novel, Blue Hour, Eleanor is fleeing her marriage in the wee hours with her daughter in the back seat of their car. Haunted by the voice of her mother and her parents' relationship defined by the second world war, this is a book shaped by conflict and mo...

We're back with a deliciously sharp-witted book to share with you. Rebecca Wait is best known for her gripping novel Our Fathers which was a Guardian Book of the Year. Now she shares a reading with us from her new bestseller in the making, I’m Sorry You Feel That Way, about dysfunctional family dynamics between twin sisters Alice and Hanna and their mother Celia.   For Alice and Hanna, saint and s...

Need a beach read? We’ve got you covered. Bolu Babalola’s Honey & Spice is just the summer romance you’ve been looking for.  Kiki Banjo is an expert in relationship-evasion. She’s made it her mission to protect the women of Whitewell University from the dangers of players and heartbreak, supplying advice, tips and essentials to paying men no mind on her student radio show, Brown Sugar. But then Ki...

Our book of the week is by Scottish debut author, Claire Alexander. Meredith, Alone is a poignant but optimistic novel about Meredith Maggs, a woman who hasn't left her house in 1,214 days. But she insists she isn't alone. She has her cat and her friend Sadie. There’s also her online support group, the Tesco delivery man and her treacherous memories to keep her company.  But something's about to c...

Listeners, prepare for a winding tale: a cascade of true stories by DBC Pierre in his new book Big Snake Little Snake. Written while on his way to make a short film with a parrot in Trinidad, the book examines the nature of gambling and aims to shed light on the invisible odds and outrageous chances of everyday life on Earth. This satisfyingly existential book is published by independent press, Ch...

We love historical fiction and this week’s featured title, Hex by Jenni Fagan, is simply bewitching. Edinburgh, December 1591. On this, the last night of her life, in a prison cell several floors below, convicted witch Geillis Duncan receives a mysterious visitor – Iris, who says she comes from a future where women are still persecuted for who they are and what they believe. Hex is a visceral depi...

We’re thrilled to feature the latest book from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Queenie on the podcast! Candice Carty-Williams’ novel People Person is about five half-siblings with abandonment issues brought together by crisis in a story of heart, humour, and homecoming. The tension will have you turning the page and the characters will have you laughing to yourself into the wee hours of the...

This week’s reading comes to us from Dolen Perkins-Valdez, the New York Times bestselling author of Wench. Her timely new novel, Take My Hand, will get under your skin and stay with you long after the last page.   Montgomery, Alabama. 1973. Civil Townsend works at the Family Planning Clinic and has big plans to make a difference in her community, helping Black women make their own choices for thei...

Abi Morgan OBE is the BAFTA and Emmy-winning playwright and screenwriter who created the BBC's rave series The Split, The Iron Lady, Suffragette, The Hour and much more. She shifts from screen to page for her first book This Is Not A Pity Memoir, and we were thrilled to have the world premiere at a very special Literary Salon. Poignant and heart-breaking but resolutely unwilling to rely on sentime...

Prepare for some sparkling literature that you need to read this summer. That Green Eyed Girl by Julie Owen Moylan has everything we love in a book: a character-driven plot, a dual timeline, and a mystery that gradually unfolds making for a page-turning novel. Ava is a young girl struggling to cope with an absent father and a mother suffering from a debilitating mental illness. She’s managing to k...

This week we’re featuring Poguemahone: a wild, free-verse monologue, steeped in music and folklore, crammed with characters, both real and imagined. It’s an epic 600-page book by twice Booker-shortlisted author Patrick McCabe that takes place in the 1970s, in Northwest London, and in the fractured mind of Una Fogarty. This is a really exciting literary novel that plays with form - the kind of book...

EXTRA SPECIAL EPISODE ALERT! Enjoy this full-length Literary Salon with Douglas Stuart! We held a very special evening with Douglas in conversation with Damian at an in-person Salon in Brighton - it was an incredible conversation, and we're still thinking about it. So join us as we celebrate Douglas' brilliant new novel 'Young Mungo', the story of two boys, two tribes and two Scotlands. Catholic J...

As the weather warms, we’re bringing you a sun-drenched mid-century novel from the international bestselling author Adriana Trigiani. In 'The Good Left Undone', we’re treated to a family saga that spans a century, taking us from Italy to the UK and back again. Through the generations, the Cabrellis have been subject to the tides of history and it is up to Matelda, the matriarch nearing the end of...

If you love a whodunnit then we’ve got just the thing to satisfy that craving. A Tidy Ending by Joanna Cannon is a novel about Linda, an ordinary middle-aged housewife who keeps herself to herself. That is, until her husband Terry starts keeping strange hours just as a string of young women begin disappearing. There’s something nasty lurking behind the net curtains on Cavendish Avenue…  A darkly f...

You may have noticed the rise in popularity of compelling novels written across dual timelines. We say: the more the merrier! This week we’re spotlighting one such novel, Edgware Road. It explores the story of Khalid, an immigrant father and gambler who goes missing in 1981. In 2003, his daughter Alia, now a young academic at Oxford, is on a mission to discover who her father really was. A family...

In times of need we turn to literature. Maggie’s Gee’s timely modern fable The Red Children is our featured title this week, and just the tonic we all need to make sense of confusing times. Set in a world in crisis, this original, gripping story about migration and global warming restores belief in the power of human kindness. Do yourself a favour and buy this book! Published by Telegram Books, an...

You know we love a debut, and this week’s featured novel is startlingly good.  Something gleeful and malevolent is moving in Lia’s body, learning her life from the inside out. A shape-shifter. A disaster tourist. It’s travelling down the banks of her canals. It’s spreading.  Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies is a story of coming-of-age at the end of a life. Utterly heart-breaking yet darkly funny, Ma...

We have a remarkable novel to share with you this week. At Certain Points We Touch by Lauren John Joseph is lyrical, sexy, and will appeal to readers of Garth Greenwell’s Cleanness, which, if you haven’t read the book, is highly rated by everyone at the Literary Salon!  At Certain Points We Touch is a story of first love and last rites, conjured against a vivid backdrop of London, San Francisco an...

A daughter. A cult. A wild unravelling. Lily Dunn reads from her compelling memoir, Sins of My Father .  When Lily was just six years old, her father left the family home to follow his guru to India for the promise of enlightenment with the cult of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Since then he has been a mystery to her. In her quest to understand him, she asks how we can reconcile unconditional love with...

This week’s episode is for our listeners who love historical fiction. Mother’s Boy by Patrick Gale is a finely wrought novel that centres around Cornwall, class, desire and two world wars. Based on the life of poet Charles Causley, Mother’s Boy is the story of a man who is among, yet apart from, his fellows. Charles is being shaped for a long, remarkable and revered life spent hiding in plain sigh...