Tsundoku

The highest compliment any reader can pay new crime fiction writer, Joanna Morrison, is “I couldn’t put it down” or “You moved me”. Both epitaphs apply equally to “The Ghost of Gracie Flynn”. It’s a non-linear unravelling of two compelling mysteries; a literary ghost story with a bittersweet twist.  and Louise Adler is a warm and witty conversationalist who shares what drives her in the creation o...

Prolific British author Fiona McIntosh faced the challenge of setting her latest two novels in an Australian landscape when Covid kept her from her usual European haunts. The result is “The Orphans”; a tale of love, murder and treachery set between 1930s Adelaide and the Flinders Ranges.  In her other post-Covid release, “Dead Tide”, McIntosh had to create a plot that allowed her to move her regul...

What are the odds of an author penning not one, but two, debut novels - and of BOTH being fabulous?! Newly retrenched from a career in aged care, Karen Herbert wrote “The Castaways of Harewood Hall”, a not so gentle comedy featuring elderly people and animals. She quickly followed that with “The River Mouth”, a dark drama set in a small WA town similar to where she grew up. and Dr Diane Velasquez...

Heather Rose has spent her life saying yes and pushing the boundaries of physical and spiritual experience. She tells of love, loss, and discovery in her memoir, "Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here". Music composed by  Quentin Grant   Heather Rose Insta -  @thelightawritersees Web -  https://heatherrose.com.au Allen & Unwin   @allenandunwin See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Detective Cato Kwong gets mixed up in dirty politics between Timor and Australia in “Crocodile Tears” by Alan Carter + We’ve got your summer reads completely covered  The fifth and final installment in the award-winning Cato Kwong series, “Crocodile Tears” sees Cato’s life on the line with someone from the past as his only hope. A thriller rich in political, cultural and historical detail, Cato’s...

Are there times when you wonder what sort of world our children and grandchildren will inherit? Grace Chan has created an online world called Gaia in which the people of 2080 take refuge from the climate ravaged earth. Gaia is clean, beautiful and exciting and it’s just announced the opportunity for citizens to shake off their bodies entirely and permanently upload their consciousness to it. Gaia...

When Jayne Tuttle fell in love with Paris she had no idea its quaint charm would be indirectly responsible for almost killing her. In her first Paris memoir "Paris Or Die" we meet her as a young aspiring actor dizzy with the joy of life in the City of Light. Her new memoir "My Sweet Guillotine" confronts and explores the terrifying incident that changed her Paris existence and her whole life’s dir...

When Pentecostal preacher Louise Omer started to question her devotion to a religion run by men to keep men in power, she decided to break free. " Holy Woman, A Divine Adventure" is the story of her wandering world pilgrimage looking for a religion that lets women share the power.   Music composed by Quentin Grant     Louise Omer  Insta - @/shahouley/ Web - https://www.louiseomer.co   Scribe Publi...

An innocuous little marshmallow shatters the life of a group of friends. As the anniversary of the horrible event looms, each must come to terms with their altered selves and address what their lives can now be. And How might we deal with alien life forms determined to destroy us if they were to enter our lives disguised as beloved children?  We compare Wyndham’s chilling sci-fi novel with its 21s...

After a “reading slump” Sarah was delighted to be swept away by a powerful new detective, Antigone Pollard; she isn’t afraid of the dark and won’t take no for an answer as she hunts down a sexual predator in the small seaside town of Deception Bay. And… Far from being spooked, Cath and Sarah find re-reading Agatha Christie’s crime novels strangely soothing…but both agree she was no poet! Guests: ...

Biologist and award-winning author Danielle Clode embarks on a journey to reveal the true story of Jeanne Barret, the first woman to circumnavigate the world in 1775. We meet an impoverished peasant from Burgundy who disguised herself as a man and sailed on a french voyage around the world from the South American jungles and Magellan Strait to the tropical islands of the Indo-Pacific. Seamlessly w...

The Times calls it “ingenious and clever”, the Daily Mail declares it “mind-bendingly clever”, “Psalms for the end of the World” is a sprawling jigsaw of a story that propels its characters through time and space as they explore and discover the relative nature of love and reality. And… Dani Vee wasn’t content merely to create a podcast, Words and Nerds, that attracts 50,000 listeners each month,...

Death isn’t like in the movies - there’s no grand musical score playing as we leave this world. It’s just the final scene of our wonderful, complex and maybe ordinary life. But, asks author Megan Albany, what’s to be done about all that unfinished business? In  The Very Last List of Vivian Walker,  Vivian writes a to-do list and so begins a tale both hilarious and heartbreaking. Music composed by ...

Ellis Gunn didn’t just survive the terrifying and unsettling experience of being stalked.  She wrote about it, in a book that is part poetic real life thriller, part advice manual for women. And… It may be many centuries since Vikings raided, traded and settled across Europe and Scandinavia, but time has not dimmed the romance of their stories. Viking scholar Dr Lisa Bennett explores why the heroi...

Australian author Charlotte McConaghy talks about her latest novel, how her screenwriting experience informs its edgy pace and why climate remains her passion even as she writes a romantic thriller. Another book by Charlotte McConaghy is “Migrations; A novel” Music composed by Quentin Grant   Insta - @ charlottemcconaghy FB - charlottemcconaghyauthor Twitter - @ CharMcConaghy Web - https://www.cha...

It took forty years for Dr Tony Bernard to uncover the full horror of what his father went through in World War 2. The memoir “Ghost Tattoo” is an extraordinary adventure and survival tale of life in Auschwitz but more than that it tells the lesser-known story of what really happened in  the Jewish ghettos. And… What sets memoir apart from autobiography and why is it such an important form of writ...

A man gasps for breath as he is dragged from the ocean and given another chance. Living within a surreal, war-torn landscape and ever on the run through the swampy and threatening world of Basin, Scott McCulloch’s un-named protagonist takes readers on a road story that is unsettling and stark.  And,  Discover or re-discover Earthsea, a vast archipelago of islands populated by wizards, dragons and...

A discarded painting in a roadside clean-up, forgotten bones in a research archive, and Lexington, the greatest racehorse in US history. From these strands of fact, in 'Horse' Geraldine Brooks weaves a sweeping story of spirit, obsession and injustice across American history. And… Meet writer and artist Joe Brainard, whose series of ' I Remember' memoirs broke new literary ground in the 1960s and...

Katherine is hafu ; half Japanese, half English but in the experience of eating her body “forgot its cultural confusion”. Meshi explores the meals of Katherine’s childhood through Japan’s twenty-four sekki (seasons) untangling the threads of meaning, memory and ritual woven through every delicious mouthful. And… From hand-written recipes passed down through generations, to cook books that take us...

Mabel Worley leapt off the pages of history and could not be shaken from the consciousness of museum curator, Corinne Ball. Who was this woman who gave birth to a daughter in a destitute asylum, married, ran away to join the circus and rubbed shoulders with the stars of her day – only to lapse eventually into criminal existence as a vagrant and public drunk? How did it all go wrong? Corinne Ball t...

Michael Robotham has a new psychological thriller on the shelves, Lying Beside You .  While his stories delve into the dark side, in person he is a warm and relaxed man with a passion for his craft. And… Evan S. Connell’s Depression-era pair of novels Mrs Bridge and Mr Bridge tell a still familiar tale of a safe but desperate marriage.    Guests:  Michael Robotham author of Lying Beside You   Olga...

Miles Allinson  on his book "In Moonland" - a son untangles the mystery of his father as he follows his  trail into the 70s hippie heart of India. And  Jean Rhys 's 1960s hit novel " Wide Sargasso Sea"  exposes a darker side of Jane Eyre hero Rochester.   Guests:  Miles Allinson,  author of " In Moonland" Dr Lisa Bennett , senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, Flinders University Dr Kylie Cardell ,...

Award winning  Melbourne author  Hannah Kent  talks about her new book  Devotion  - a love story that traverses oceans, reality and magic. And we revisit the  Virginia Woolfe  classic,  Mrs Dalloway , which follows a day in the life of a high society lady in the 1920s. Guests:  Hannah Kent,  author of   Devotion   Dr Lisa Bennett , senior...

Award winning  Melbourne author Emily Bitto talks about her new book Wild Abandon - the story of a naive young Australian man’s odyssey of self discovery, from  the decadent  glamour of New York  right into the terrifying dark heart of the American mid- west.  And travel writer Max Anderson explains why he doesn’t read travel books, but prefers to follow in the...

Edgy Sydney author Michael Mohammed Ahmad talks about his latest book The Other Half of You… and about why writing is like boxing And we revisit the classic Australian Gothic novel that unsettled and mystified readers half a century ago – who needs castles and vampires when you have the truly chilling atmosphere of the Aussie Bush in Picnic at Hanging Rock Gue...