Episodes
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Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s Listen Layla
Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s Listen Layla absolutely grabbed me with it’s combination of deep questioning and heart on its sleeve social conscience. Yassmin Abdel-Magied is a Sudanese-Australian writer, broadcaster and social advocate. She trained as a mechanical engineer and worked on oil and gas rigs...
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AB Endacott's Mirror Mirror
A B Endacott’s Mirror Mirror is a mini-book, an essay on the importance of narratives and a fabulous look at our world as storytellers. First up Mirror Mirror gives us reason to celebrate because it is the first offering from a new publishing house Debut Books. Against all odds it seems the...
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J.P. Pomare’s Tell Me Lies
J.P. Pomare is a regular guest on my show Final Draft in part because he is so damn prolific but more importantly he writes compelling, pacy thrillers that have the effect of glueing you to your chair turning pages till the last gripping moment. Last year Josh and I spoke about his incredible...
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Pip Drysdale’s The Paris Affair
Pip Drysdale’s The Paris Affair Pip Drysdale is an actor, Musician and writer. She’s the author of The Sunday Girl, and The Strangers We Know which is currently in production for a TV adaptation. Her latest is The Paris Affair. Harper Brown is in Paris to fulfil her dreams. She’s landed a job as…
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Rebecca Lim's Tiger Daughter
Rebecca Lim is the author of more than twenty books. Her works including The Astrologer's Daughter and the Mercy series and she’s been listed for the PM’s literary awards, the Indies and Aurealis awards. An important aspect of her writing career that I want to highlight; Rebecca is a co-founder…
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Laura Jean McKay's The Animals in That Country
Laura Jean McKay is the winner of the 2020 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. The Animals in That Country takes us north. Jean is a guide in a wildlife preserve. Irascibly anti-social, Jean drinks too much, smokes too much and picks fights online. Except for Thursdays when she cleans herself up...
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Loraine Peck's The Second Son
Lorraine Peck’s The Second Son is an all out riot of action and ideas that takes us into the dark heart of Sydney. I’m going to try not to use too much in the way of cliches here but The Second Son is the kind of novel that pours petrol on the drama and then dangles a lit match while you squirm....
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Garry Disher's Consolation
Garry Disher is the author of more than fifty titles. Garry Disher is the author of more than fifty titles. He was nominated for the Booker Prize for his 1996 novel The Sunken Road and has a lifetime Ned Kelly award. And today I want to share with you the latest in his rural noir series centering...
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Sophie Laguna's Infinite Splendours
Sophie Laguna is the author of the Miles Franklin Award winning Eye of the Sheep, the Indie Book Award winning The Choke. Sofie's latest novel is Infinite Splendours. Infinite Splendours takes us back to 1950’s Victoria... Lawrence lives an idyllic life with his mother and younger brother Paul....
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Ceridwen Dovey's Life After Truth
Ceridwen Dovey is a writer of fiction, creative non-fiction essays and profiles. Her books include Blood Kin, Only the Animals and In the Garden of Fugitives. I’ve got Ceridwen’s new novel, Life After Truth, for you and it is fantastically entertaining as well as thought provoking and genre...
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Maar Bidi - next generation black writing
This week's book club celebrates NAIDOC week 2020. The theme for this years NAIDOC is “Always was Always will be”. The theme acknowledges that First Nations people have occupied and cared for this land for more than 65, 000 years. First Nations people across the lands that we now collectively…
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Jess Hill's See What You Made Me Do
Today’s book is one that has been on my mind all year. Jess Hill’s See What You Made Me Do won the Stella Prize back in April and while I’m usually immersed in Australian literature for Final Draft, I knew this was a book that I had to read. I’ve spent the interceding months reading this work of...
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Petronella McGovern's The Good Teacher
The beginning of the school year brings a late enrollment into Allison Walsh’s Kindergarten class. Gracie has moved to Wirriga to be closer to the hospitals and treatments that hold the only hope for saving her young life. Allison prides herself as a caring person but since her husband left…
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Paul Dalgarno's Poly
Paul Dalgarno is a journalist and writer. He was born in Aberdeen Scotland and came to Australia in 2010. His first book entitled And you may find Yourself is a memoir about his journey into fatherhood and I’m going to tell you about his first novel Poly. Poly is the story of Chris and Sarah, or...
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Anna Whateley's Peta Lyre's Rating Normal
Peta Lyre’s Rating Normal is the debut novel from Anna Whateley. Anna has a PhD in literature from Queensland University. She’s an own voices author of young adult fiction that engages with diversity and the depth of human experience. Peta Lyre lives in a world that isn’t made for her brain.…
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Georgina Young’s Loner
Lona is nineteen. She’s dropped out of uni but still sneaks in to use the photo lab. Lona longs for life to be bigger than the collection of mundane events that her friends and family keep drawing her back into. She’s constantly bemoaning social niceties but also longing for her friends to…
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Rawah Arja’s The F Team
Rawah Arja’s The F Team is set at Punchbowl Boys High School. Tariq and his friends in year ten have heard their entire lives that there is something wrong with the school. The media paints them as a training ground for terrorists and now the department is threatening to shut them down and…
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Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching Novels
When you're young a series can really capture your imagination. The books draw you in and give you a hero who's just like you to identify and grow with. For my mind if you want some fantasy in your life you needn’t go further than Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. Within the forty plus books...
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Kate & Jol Temple's The Battle of Book Week
Kate and Joel Temple are fantastic writers of books for younger children. They are the authors of, as they describe it, silly books for kids; some of them long, some of them short, some of them rhyming and others that don’t. They even have a book that’s an ode to that most fantastic of Australian...
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Christopher Raja's Into the Suburbs
Christopher Raja - Into the Suburbs Christopher Raja is the author of plays, essays and a novel The Burning Elephant. His memoir Into the suburbs is Christopher’s story of leaving Calcutta and beginning a life in Melbourne. I do not read a lot of memoir, perhaps to my detriment, but there was...
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Victoria Hannan's Kokomo
Victoria Hannan’s - Kokomo Victoria Hannan is a writer and photographer living in Melbourne. Kokomo, her first novel, was the winner of the 2019 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, and let me just give you a little context. The Victorian Premier's Literary Award for…
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After Australia edited by Michael Mohammed Ahmad
After Australia I think there are a lot of ways you can approach a short story collection and After Australia absolutely hits all of these… Perhaps you’re looking for a way to discover new Australian writing and writers? Well, After Australia has a selection of twelve incredible Indigenous…
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Robbie Arnott's The Rain Heron
Tasmanian author Robbie Arnott was a 2019 Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist and won the Margaret Scott Prize in the 2019 Tasmanian Premier’s Literary Prizes. Flames was his debut in 2018 and it went on to get shortlisted on seemingly every literary prize list. The Rain Heron is Robbie’s...
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Kay Kerr's Please Don't Hug Me
Kay Kerr is a freelance writer, author and former community newspaper editor. Her debut novel is Please Don’t Hug Me and it is out now from Text Publishing. Please Don’t Hug Me is the story of Erin. Erin is completing high school and has her sights set on schoolies as the unofficial finishing…
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Fiona Harris & Mike McLeish's The Drop Off
2ser Book Club - Mike McLeish's The Drop Off Fiona Harris and Mike McLeish are both what you might call a triple threat; they act, they write and they direct. Fiona and Mike have also collaborated to write a novel The Drop Off, based on their successful web series of the same name. Every morning…
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Madeleine Watts' The Inland Sea
Madeleine Watts is a writer whose work has appeared in the White Review and the LIfted Brow. Her novella Afraid of Waking It won the Griffith Review novella prize. In The Inland Sea, our narrator has left the comfort of university with barely a vague plan for what comes next. On the advice of a...
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Chris Flynn's Mammoth
Chris Flynn is the author of three novels including The Glass Kingdom and A Tiger in Eden. His latest is Mammoth and it is an absolute treat. Basically it’s a road trip across time that challenges our human centric world and introduces the best fossilised narrator I’ve ever met… I’m rambling so…
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Vivian Pham's The Coconut Children
Vivian Pham is a debut novelist and her pathway to publication is quite extraordinary. Vivian is at uni now but the writing of the Coconut Children began when she was a high school student. Her first draft developed out of a novella she wrote as part of a program at The Story Factory. Now only a...
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Mirandi Riwoe's Stone Sky Gold Mountain
Mirandi Riwoe is the award winning author of the Fish Girl, which took out Seizure’s Vive la Novella award as well as a short listing for the Stella Prize. Mirandi also writes Victorian era detective fiction under a nom de plume and she has a new novel out called Stone Sky Gold Mountain. Now…
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Alison Evans' Euphoria Kids
Alison Evans is the award winning author of Ida and Highway Bodies. They are a spectacular author of Australian YA and with so many high schoolers being home schooled at the moment, you could do worse than grabbing a copy of Alison’s catalogue. Especially the brilliant Euphoria Kids The story...
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Vikki Wakefield's This is How We Change the Ending
Nate's life is school, the youth center, home, rinse and repeat. He's just trying to get by and keep his head down. At home he shares a room with his twin three year old brothers, because his dad Dec needs Nate’s room for his horticultural business. Nate’s step mum Nance is barely older than Nate...
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J.P. Pomare's In the Clearing
On a hot, humid, Australian summer day a van waits by an isolated road as an eight year girl disembarks from her school bus. As the bus disappears the van accelerates, its occupants dragging the girl inside and drugging her into unconsciousness. The young girl is being taken to the clearing and…
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Laura McPhee-Browne's Cherry Beach
Hetty and Ness have been friends since childhood and now they are in Toronto discovering something of life and their selves. The two friends are in Toronto to escape, to adventure, and discover more about themselves. The sort of trip that has become an essential part of the growing up process.…
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LJM Owens' The Great Divide
Jake Hunter has only just arrived in the Tasmanian town on Dunton. He’s sought out the remote Tasmanian town to escape unnamed troubles back in Melbourne, but is struggling to adjust, especially because no one has connected the electricity in his tiny police issue accommodation. Early one morning...
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Scott Westerfeld's Shatter City
Book Two of The Imposters series - After the events of Imposters Frey is left impersonating her sister Rafia in the citadel of Shreve. Her plan is to bide her time until she can assassinate her father, end his regime and free the citizens. Plans go awry though as her fake fiancé, but actual...
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Garry Disher's Peace
Paul Hirschhausen is the cop in Tiverton; a small town in farming country south of the Flinders Ranges in South Australia. He’s only been there a year, but in the lead up to Christmas he wants what all cops want over the silly season, a little peace. Of course there’s some petty crime like a ute...
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Adrian McKinty's The Chain
A young girl waits at a bus stop immersed in her phone. So much so she doesn't notice the man approaching her with a gun... Soon after her mother Rachel receives a call; Kylie and Rachel have become a link in The Chain. Rachel must now kidnap another child if she ever wants to see Kylie alive again!
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Katherine Johnson's Paris Savages
Paris Savages tells the story of three Batdjala people who leave their home on K’gari - or as white colonisers called it; Fraser Island and travel through Europe in the late nineteenth century. Bonangera, Jurano and Dorondera have agreed to travel with Louis Muller to highlight their culture and…
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Heather Rose's Bruny
A massive two-billion dollar bridge is being constructed to connect sleepy Bruny Island to the Tasmanian mainland. It’s jobs and growth for the Tassie economy but also meets with opposition from environmental groups and local interests. So when the bridge is bombed, the question is not so much…
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Sonia Henry's Going Under
Going Under is the story of Kitty Holliday. Kitty’s a surgical intern at a major teaching hospital struggling to balance her idealism, against the gruelling reality of making it in the medical world. Suffering abuse at the hands of patients and senior doctors alike Kitty must rely on her friends…
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Jannali Jones' My Father's Shadow
Kaya and her mother are on the run. They must flee their home and escape to the isolated hamlet of Mount Wilson. Kaya has witnessed something, a crime she cannot remember and now her father is missing and she is in danger. Hidden in Mount Wilson Kaya struggles to regain her memories and hide...
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Meg Mundell's The Trespassers
From across the UK people jealously guard their clean bill of health in order to leave England’s shores in search of work in Australia. As passengers board The Steadfast, protesters line the docks denouncing the men, women and children as traitors for abandoning the infected country. On board the...
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Tara June Winch's The Yield
Albert Gondiwindi grew up on the mission at Massacre Plains. There he met his wife, raised a family and grandchildren and lost loved ones. As he nears death he begins recording a dictionary of the language of his people. August Gondiwindi is returning home from England. It’s a country she escaped...
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Helena Fox's How it Feels to Float
Helena Fox’s debut novel is How it Feels to Float. In How it Feels to Float Helena welcomes us into the life of Elizabeth Martin Grey, or just Biz, coz no one she loves would call her by her full name. Biz lives near the beach in Wollongong with her Mum and her twin brother and sister. She’s got...
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Alice Bishop's A Constant Hum
Alice Bishop’s debut collection is A Constant Hum. Across nearly fifty stories Bishop explores responses from communities and individuals in times of bushfire. The collection is in many ways a response to the Black Saturday bushfires that devastated Victoria in February 2009. The collection in A...
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Why YA?
Young Adult is consistently one of the hottest shelves in any bookstore. With new blockbuster movies capturing our favourite YA novels it seems almost limitless in scope... But what is YA and where did it come from? In today's book club Andrew and Julia explore the origins of YA and trace its...
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Mark Smith's Land of Fences
Mark Smith’s Winter trilogy kicked off in 2016. The Road to Winter introduced us to Finn and transported us to Australia’s not too distant future; a world barren of all but a few survivors. Finn is surviving in the coastal town of Angourie; surfing and trapping food to live. His world is…
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Sarah Hopkins' The Subjects
Daniel is being transported through a regional Australian landscape to an unknown destination. Daniel’s a teenage drug dealer who has been diverted from a hefty jail sentence at the last minute by a strange intervention. Dr J runs a clandestine facility in an undisclosed location. Daniel will…
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Alex Landragin's Crossings
On the surface Alex Landragin’s Crossings is a collection of three short stories; The first, a final tale from the French poet Charles Baudelaire. The second is a dark romance set in Paris on the eve of German invasion. While the final tells the tale of a mysterious being travelling through...
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Podcast Bonus - Who Is Nancy Drew?
Nancy Drew is nearly 100 years old! The girl detective has lived hundred's of mysteries and was the inspiration for our last episodes novel The Nancy's. But who is the girl detective and where did she come from? Andrew and Tess get to the bottom of the Nancy mystery!