PODCAST · arts
The Bookshelf
by ABC Australia
What are you reading, loving or being challenged by? We review the latest in fiction for dedicated readers and for those who wish they read more.
Episodes
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Australian artists, writers and readers share the Australian books they love most
On this special edition of The Bookshelf, ahead of the Top 100 Australian Books Countdown, Kate Evans speaks with historian Professor Martyn Lyons about the history of reading in Australia and what our reading lives can reveal about the nation. Plus, crime fiction expert Sue Turnbull traces the...
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Chris Hammer, Jem Calder and Pip Williams reviewed on this week's Bookshelf
Kate and Cassie are joined by rockstar Tim Rogers and novelist Madeleine Gray to discuss some big new releases. Australian crime heavyweight Chris Hammer swaps the outback for the world of high finance in Full Circle, a thriller of money, power and corruption. Then there's Jem Calder's I Want You...
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New fiction from Barbara Kingsolver, Colm Tóibín and Ayad Akhtar
This week, Kate and Cassie are joined by regulars Hannah Kent and Tom Wright to discuss three books that echo one another across themes of art, beauty, family and transformation. In Barbara Kingsolver's Partita, a young woman longs to escape her small town and difficult mother through music (and...
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Ambition, Rage, Gothic Hunger: New Novels from Min Jin Lee, Louise Kennedy and Catherine Chidgey
In American Hagwon, the bestselling author of Pachinko, Min Jin Lee, explores family, education, ambition and the long shadow of economic upheaval, set between Seoul, Sydney and California. Louise Kennedy's Stations offers a tough and deeply felt Irish family story, while Catherine Chidgey's The...
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Emily St. John Mandel and John Boyne alongside a Booker-longlisted debut
Kate and Cassie take a look at bestselling author Emily St. John Mandel's latest, Exit Party, an epic that follows a doppelgänger and a man who disappears from a Los Angeles party in 2031, leading to a journey across parallel worlds and fractured timelines. Internationally-bestselling crime…
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New Fiction: Donal Ryan, Emma Cline, Max Easton and Sebastian Barry
We step into Irish bestseller Donal Ryan's world in Where Are the Kings, a tender coming of age story about a boy navigating grief. Inside a fracturing mind in Emma Cline’s Booker Longlisted novel Switzy, read with novelist Madeleine Gray. A chronicle of DIY activism, collectives and autonomous...
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New Fiction from Melissa Harrison and Malcolm Knox + Mandy Sayer's Top 3
Kate and Cassie with regular reviewer Tom Wright discuss new releases including Melissa Harrison’s The Given World and Malcolm Knox’s The Second Child. Plus, novelist and memoirist Mandy Sayer on her Top 3 Australian books ahead of Radio National's Top 100 Australian Books Countdown. Mandy…
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Top 100 Australian Books from Byron Writers Festival
Voting in Radio National's Top 100 Books countdown is about to open and this year we're celebrating Australian books. As you think about your own Top 10, Kate and Cassie bring together a trio of award-winning writers (including last year's Top 100 Books winner!) to reveal the Australian books…
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Anjet Daanje's extraordinary The Stork and the Dromedary + Liane Moriarty returns with Big Little Truths
Anjet Daanje's The Song of Stork and Dromedary, translated from the Dutch, explores the intimate work of death and care in the eighteenth century. Liane Moriarty returns to the world of Big Little Lies with Big Little Truths, reuniting readers with the coastal suburb of Pirriwee and her cast a...
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The Haunting Wild, a Trip to Mars and Dreaming of Escape in 1980's France
We review the latest in fiction for dedicated readers and for those who wish they read more.
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Miles Franklin winner Omar Musa + Booker-longlisted All Them Dogs and Téa Obreht's Sunrise
Omar Musa joins us after winning the 2026 Miles Franklin Literary Award. Plus, Michael Robotham and Madeleine Gray review Djamel White's Booker Prize-longlisted debut All Them Dogs and Téa Obreht's sweeping new novel Sunrise.
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Meg Mason's new novel + reviews from Hannah Kent, Andy Griffiths, Tom Wright (BONUS: Anna Funder's Top 3)
From the nightclubs of 1930s Berlin to the heartache and awkwardness of high school, and into the green rooms and backstage spaces of writers' festivals.
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From Covid-era China to the world of Frida Kahlo and Colson Whitehead's latest
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead’s latest novel Cool Machine is a vivid portrait of Black New York in the 1980s. The book reunites readers with furniture salesman and part-time fence Ray Carney. Kate Evans and regular reviewer, critic and essayist Beejay Silcox discuss. Also this...
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Art, apocalypse and country people
Dave Eggers explores the messy intersection of art, friendship and growing up in Contrapposto, while Daniel Mason's Country People follows an academic family into a Vermont landscape full of stories and believers in worlds beneath the earth. Then Maria Takolander's The End of Romance imagines…
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Laura McPhee Browne, Leïla Slimani, Kris Kneen & Bruce Pascoe's favourite Aus books
This week on The Bookshelf, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh discuss new novels including Laura McPhee-Browne's Worry Doll, a story of desire, obsession and uncertainty; Leïla Slimani's I'll Take the Fire, the acclaimed French-Moroccan writer's rich, politically charged exploration of family…
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Melbourne Writers' Festival with Hannah Kent and Beejay Silcox
A live recording from the 2025 Melbourne Writers Festival, with guests Hannah Kent and Beejay Silcox. 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 (Jonathan Cape) Caryl...
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The Bookshelf’s best: Four standout novels from the past year
We review the latest in fiction for dedicated readers and for those who wish they read more.
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Zan Rowe and Madeleine Gray review: Chris Ames/Fiona Mozley/Niamh Campbell
Cassie McCullagh is joined by Jonathan Green this time, for a wide-ranging hour of new fiction, from Australia and beyond. First, Fiona Mozley’s unsettling Awake Awake, where a young woman begins to suspect her grandfather may have killed Adolf Hitler, Zan Rowe weighs in. Then, Irish writer Niamh...
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Michael Robotham and Roanna Gonsalves review: Andrew Sean Greer/Ilka Tampke/Michael Pedersen
From a sun-drenched Tuscan reset with a side of style advice (Andrew Sean Greer's Villa Coco via Michael Robotham), to Ilka Tampke’s How To Love the World, a tender take on parenting and the pull of the bush (guided by Roanna Gonsalves), and throw in a windswept lighthouse on the edge of the…
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Hannah Kent and Tom Wright review: Maggie O'Farrell/Ann Patchett/Christine Balint
Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh are joined by regulars Hannah Kent and Tom Wright to talk new fiction from three major voices: Maggie O’Farrell’s Land, an expansive novel set in famine-era Ireland that traces memory, myth and the imprint of history on place; Ann Patchett’s Whistler, a sharp story...
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Beejay Silcox & Bernadette Brennan review: Doireann Ní Ghríofa/Chloe Wilson/Deborah Levy
Kate Evans is joined by Bernadette Brennan and Beejay Silcox to talk three striking new releases: Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s Said the Dead, a haunting, archive-rich exploration of a derelict Irish asylum; Chloe Wilson’s The Thornbacks, a darkly comic debut of morticians, dating apps and unsettling...
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Launching ABC Radio National’s 2026 Top 100 Books countdown at SWF
The Bookshelf comes to you from a sold out session at Sydney Writers’ Festival, for a conversation that brings together an exceptional line-up: acclaimed novelist and poet Tony Birch, Miles Franklin Award-winning author Siang Lu, and internationally celebrated writer Lily King. Together, with...
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Madeleine Gray & Tim Rogers review: Wayne Marshall/Ellena Savage/Lena Dunham/Douglas Stuart
We head by rackety ferry to Scotland in John of John, the latest, quietly devastating novel from Shuggie Bain author Douglas Stuart. Henry Lawson reimagined - brawling poets, strange tunnels, time loops, and a warped tussle between city and bush in Wayne Marshall’s Henry Goes Bush, reviewed by…
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Robert Forster & Geordie Williamson review: Elizabeth Strout/Daniel Kehlmann/Portia Elan
This week’s Bookshelf features the latest from Elizabeth Strout, creator of Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton, returning with a stand‑alone novel called The Things We Never Say. We’re also reading an ambitious, genre‑bending novel that moves from 1980s gaming culture to far‑future space travel…
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Elizabeth Strout returns, Caro Claire Burke's Yesteryear and more new fiction
This week’s Bookshelf features the latest from Elizabeth Strout, creator of Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton, returning with a stand‑alone novel called The Things We Never Say. We’re also reading an ambitious, genre‑bending novel that moves from 1980s gaming culture to far‑future space travel…
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Hannah Kent & Tom Wright review: Amanda Lohrey/Deepa Anappara + International Booker
In this episode, superstar reviewer Hannah Kent tackles the rugged terrain of a journey that edges towards the Tibetan border in Deepa Anappara's The Last of Earth, and theatre writer Tom Wright ponders extraterrestrial encounters in Amanda Lohrey's new one, Capture. Plus, Kate and Cassie take a...
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Tony Birch & Beejay Silcox review: Inga Simpson/Asako Yuzuki/Helen Bain
This week The Bookshelf leans into the wild as Kate Evans and guests are circled by stories of wolves, wild boar and witches, along with the final year of celebrated poet Sylvia Plath and a sensual story of food and obsession from Japan. Kate is joined by regular guests, the novelist, poet and...
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Tim Rogers & Madeleine Gray review: Amitav Ghosh/Edwina Preston/Gwendoline Riley
In this episode, Kate and Cassie are joined by celebrated novelist Madeleine Gray and rock icon Tim Rogers for a wide-ranging discussion looking at three works of contemporary fiction: Indian writer Amitav Ghosh’s Ghost Eye, a meditation on reincarnation and climate change; Australian writer and...
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Michael Robotham & Geordie Williamson review: Steve Toltz/Ben Lerner/Siân Hughes
Memory, lost conversations and almost-fathers-and sons in Ben Lerner's Transcription; children divided by the throw of a dice, and that's just the start of it, in Steve Toltz's A Rising of the Lights; no such thing as unskilled labour, in Siân Hughes' No Such Thing as Monday, where a woman works…
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~ Festival Special: Irish Writer Colum McCann
What does it mean to write using an 'ethical imagination'? Colum McCann onstage with Kate Evans at the 2025 Melbourne Writers Festival, on his novels Twist, Apeirogon, TransAtlantic, Let the Great World Spin and many more; and his work with the social justice storytelling movement, Narrative…
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Fiona Kelly McGregor: The Trap + Debra Adelaide: When I Am Sixty-Four + Yann Martel: Son of Nobody (REVIEWERS: Hannah Kent and Tom Wright)
This week The Bookshelf revisits the Trojan War from the ground up in Yann Martel’s Son of Nobody, moves through friendship and loss in Debra Adelaide’s When I Am Sixty‑Four, and dives into queer Sydney in the 1940s with Fiona Kelly McGregor’s The Trap. BOOKS Fiona Kelly McGregor, The Trap…
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Yann Martel, Debra Adelaide and Fiona Kelly McGregor - from myth to mid‑century Sydney
This week The Bookshelf revisits the Trojan War from the ground up in Yann Martel’s Son of Nobody, moves through friendship and loss in Debra Adelaide’s When I Am Sixty‑Four, and dives into queer Sydney in the 1940s with Fiona Kelly McGregor’s The Trap. BOOKS Fiona Kelly McGregor, The Trap…
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Short fiction from Louise Erdrich; essays by Alex Miller; and a surreal comic tale from Michael Winkler
A rich mix of voices and stories in short fiction from acclaimed Native American writer Louise Erdrich; essays and memories from two‑time Miles Franklin Award winner Alex Miller; bleakly funny childhood tales by English author Mark Haddon; and, from Michael Winkler, a surreal and darkly comic…
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Lanchester, Groff and Costello — reviewed by Hannah Kent and Tim Rogers
What if the most talked‑about streaming show of the moment was a mirror reflecting your most private fears and failures? That unnerving question sits at the heart of John Lanchester’s Look What You Made Me Do, a sharp novel about resentment, revenge, money, class and generational unease. Plus…
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~ Festival Special: Bringing the past to life with Emily Maguire and Jock Serong
A Bookshelf festival special featuring Kate Evans onstage with writers Jock Serong and Emily Maguire on historical fiction, from the 2025 Sydney Writers Festival. GUESTS Emily Maguire is a novelist and essayist whose books include An Isolated Incident and Love Objects, and her latest, Rapture…
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Siblings, secrets and shame in regional Australia in M L Stedman's A Far Flung Life and Eva Hornung's The Minstrels (REVIEWERS Michael Robotham and Roanna Gonsalves)
Statues come alive and London is re-imagined in Francis Spufford's Nonesuch, and surprising parallels in two Australian novels of secrets, shame, land and time in M L Stedman's A Far-Flung Life and Eva Hornung's The Minstrels. Kate Evans, Cassie McCullagh, Michael Robotham and Roanna Gonsalves…
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Gabriel Tallent: Crux + Claire Thomas: On Not Climbing Mountains + Helle Helle: They (REVIEWERS: Hannah Kent and Tom Wright)
In this episode, we travel from the Swiss Alps to the quiet strangeness of Danish suburbia and the fierce edges of American literary drama. We begin with the visceral intensity of Gabriel Tallent’s latest novel, Crux, where characters cling to passion and survival with bloodied fingertips. Claire...
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Does Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights adaptation do justice to the original novel?
Emerald Fennell's film adaptation of Wuthering Heights has been marketed as "the greatest love story ever told", which is not typically the description given to the original novel. What does this adaptation achieve, and what does it sacrifice in the process? The Bookshelf's Kate Evans and Radio...
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Tayari Jones: Kin + Nadia Davids: Cape Fever + two bloody rom-coms (REVIEWERS: Tony Birch and Beejay Silcox)
Kate and Cassie read Kin, the latest novel from Tayari Jones — the acclaimed American novelist behind An American Marriage, a book that resonated with both critics and readers alike. Her work sits alongside a bold mix of stories in this episode, from a vampiric love story to speed‑dating slasher...
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So Far Gone: Jess Walter + Good People: Patmeena Sabit + Eradication: Jonathan Miles (REVIEWERS: Tim Rogers and Madeleine Gray)
Join Kate and Cassie as they explore new fiction alongside guests: musician Tim Rogers (You Am I) and novelist Madeleine Gray (Green Dot, Chosen Family). Three American novels, each tackling big ideas in very different ways - from the political absurdity and humour of Jess Walter’s So Far Gone…
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Madeline Cash: Lost Lambs + George Saunders: Vigil + new releases by George Kemp and Steven Carroll (REVIEWERS: Michael Robotham & Roanna Gonsalves)
Madeline Cash’s buzzy debut Lost Lambs pairs an off‑kilter storytelling sensibility with a sharp exploration of displacement and identity. George Saunders returns with Vigil, offering his moral curiosity in a novel that probes what it means to pay attention to the world. George Kemp’s Soft Serve...
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Michael Mohammed Ahmad: Bugger + Jeanette McCurdy: Half His Age + Nina McConigley: How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder (REVIEWERS: Hannah Kent & Tom Wright)
Kate and Cassie read award-winning Australian author Michael Mohammed Ahmad’s bold new novel Bugger, while reviewers Hannah Kent and Tom Wright take on Jennette McCurdy’s provocative new book Half His Age — from the former child actor whose memoir I'm Glad My Mom Died shook readers worldwide —…
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Julian Barnes: Departure(s) + Cassie Stroud: Iluka + Patrick Charnley: This, My Second Life (REVIEWERS: Tony Birch & Beejay Silcox)
Kate and Cassie are back for a big year of books, beginning with Booker-Prize winner Julian Barnes' Departures, a novel about looking back, facing the future, and coming to the end of life. Plus, regular reviewers Tony Birch and Beejay Silcox join us for discussions on This, My Second Life by...
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Festival Special: Maggie O'Farrell on Hamnet and more
Novelist and memoirist Maggie O'Farrell in conversation with Kate Evans at the 2025 Sydney Writers Festival. Her nine novels include After You'd Gone, the Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, This Must be the Place, Hamnet and the Marriage Portrait . . . and her extraordinary memoir is I Am I Am I Am:...
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Summer Reading: at the Brisbane Writers Festival
Kate and Cassie on stage at the 2025 Brisbane Writers Festival with authors Eric Puchner, Toni Jordan, Patrick Holland, and Zeynab Gamieldien, discussing their most recent novels and the books and writers who inspire them. This discussion was recorded in front of a live audience, just ahead of…
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Summer Reading: with Alan Hollinghurst, Mariana Enriquez, Afra Atiq and Catherine Chidgey
The Bookshelf's Kate Evans and the Book Show's Claire Nichols joined forces onstage at the 2025 Sydney Writers Festival — with a panel of international writers — to talk favourite and influential books from the 21st century, in the lead up to the inaugural Top 100 Books countdown of the...
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Summer Reading: It's time for poetry
Why aren't you reading more poetry? Perhaps you don't know where to begin — in which case, listen here, for a guide. Join Kate Evans, as she is joined by acclaimed author and poet Maxine Beneba Clarke, Stella Prize-winning poet and academic Sarah Holland-Batt, much-loved broadcaster and author...
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Summer Books Special: Novelist, essayist, raconteur Colm Tóibín
Colm Tóibín onstage at the 2025 Sydney Writers Festival with The Bookshelf's Kate Evans — on fiction, fridges, rain, hinges, melodrama, reading, and why he can't write American dialogue so every character he writes has to be Irish (except, of course, when they're Thomas Mann and family). This is…
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Summer Reading: Jane Austen's Enduring Charm
In the year of Jane Austen’s 250th birthday, this lively and thought-provoking discussion explores her life, legacy, and literary brilliance — her novels are charming, sure, but also radical, political, witty, and entertaining. Presented in partnership with the State Library of NSW, this event...
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Summer Books Special: Irish writer Niall Williams' Time of the Child
It's Christmas, 1962, and a baby is born . . . and left behind, in Ireland. This all takes place in the fictional town of Faha, a place created by write Niall Williams in his novels History of the Rain, This is Happiness and (his latest, and the one featuring said baby) Time of the Child. Niall...
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does The Bookshelf have?
The Bookshelf currently has 534 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The Bookshelf about?
What are you reading, loving or being challenged by? We review the latest in fiction for dedicated readers and for those who wish they read more.
How often does The Bookshelf release new episodes?
The Bookshelf releases new episodes frequently with a large back catalog of 534 episodes. Check the episode list for recent publication dates.
Where can I listen to The Bookshelf?
You can listen to The Bookshelf on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts The Bookshelf?
The Bookshelf is created and hosted by ABC Australia.
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