All Episodes
The Bookshelf — 522 episodes
Art, apocalypse and country people
Laura McPhee Browne, Leïla Slimani, Kris Kneen & Bruce Pascoe's favourite Aus books
Melbourne Writers' Festival with Hannah Kent and Beejay Silcox
The Bookshelf’s best: Four standout novels from the past year
Zan Rowe and Madeleine Gray review: Chris Ames/Fiona Mozley/Niamh Campbell
Michael Robotham and Roanna Gonsalves review: Andrew Sean Greer/Ilka Tampke/Michael Pedersen
Hannah Kent and Tom Wright review: Maggie O'Farrell/Ann Patchett/Christine Balint
Beejay Silcox & Bernadette Brennan review: Doireann Ní Ghríofa/Chloe Wilson/Deborah Levy
Launching ABC Radio National’s 2026 Top 100 Books countdown at SWF
Madeleine Gray & Tim Rogers review: Wayne Marshall/Ellena Savage/Lena Dunham/Douglas Stuart
Robert Forster & Geordie Williamson review: Elizabeth Strout/Daniel Kehlmann/Portia Elan
Hannah Kent & Tom Wright review: Amanda Lohrey/Deepa Anappara + International Booker
Tony Birch & Beejay Silcox review: Inga Simpson/Asako Yuzuki/Helen Bain
Tim Rogers & Madeleine Gray review: Amitav Ghosh/Edwina Preston/Gwendoline Riley
Michael Robotham & Geordie Williamson review: Steve Toltz/Ben Lerner/Siân Hughes
~ Festival Special: Irish Writer Colum McCann
Fiona Kelly McGregor: The Trap + Debra Adelaide: When I Am Sixty-Four + Yann Martel: Son of Nobody (REVIEWERS: Hannah Kent and Tom Wright)
Yann Martel, Debra Adelaide and Fiona Kelly McGregor - from myth to mid‑century Sydney
Short fiction from Louise Erdrich; essays by Alex Miller; and a surreal comic tale from Michael Winkler
Lanchester, Groff and Costello — reviewed by Hannah Kent and Tim Rogers
~ Festival Special: Bringing the past to life with Emily Maguire and Jock Serong
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)
Gabriel Tallent: Crux + Claire Thomas: On Not Climbing Mountains + Helle Helle: They (REVIEWERS: Hannah Kent and Tom Wright)
Does Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights adaptation do justice to the original novel?
Tayari Jones: Kin + Nadia Davids: Cape Fever + two bloody rom-coms (REVIEWERS: Tony Birch and Beejay Silcox)
So Far Gone: Jess Walter + Good People: Patmeena Sabit + Eradication: Jonathan Miles (REVIEWERS: Tim Rogers and Madeleine Gray)
Madeline Cash: Lost Lambs + George Saunders: Vigil + new releases by George Kemp and Steven Carroll (REVIEWERS: Michael Robotham & Roanna Gonsalves)
Michael Mohammed Ahmad: Bugger + Jeanette McCurdy: Half His Age + Nina McConigley: How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder (REVIEWERS: Hannah Kent & Tom Wright)
Julian Barnes: Departure(s) + Cassie Stroud: Iluka + Patrick Charnley: This, My Second Life (REVIEWERS: Tony Birch & Beejay Silcox)
Festival Special: Maggie O'Farrell on Hamnet and more
Summer Reading: at the Brisbane Writers Festival
Summer Reading: with Alan Hollinghurst, Mariana Enriquez, Afra Atiq and Catherine Chidgey
Summer Reading: It's time for poetry
Summer Books Special: Novelist, essayist, raconteur Colm Tóibín
Summer Reading: Jane Austen's Enduring Charm
Summer Books Special: Irish writer Niall Williams' Time of the Child
Summer Reading: Bloody Histories
Some of My Favourite Books: Trent Dalton, Garry Disher and Heather Rose at Canberra Writers Festival
The Best Books of 2025
Memoirs, Music, Mystery: new works from Sam Sussman, Sarah Hall, Margaret Atwood
Salman Rushdie's latest/Scandi noir/Australian crime fiction wrap & more...
Fiction bending reality in new books by Thomas Pynchon, Olivia Laing and Jeanette Winterson
Madeleine Gray's Chosen Family + Chris Kraus and Graeme Macrae Burnet
October Book Buzz: Andrew Pippos, Kiran Desai, Olga Ravn & More
We reveal the books that didn’t quite make the Top 100
Brisbane Writers Festival: Eric Puchner, Toni Jordan, Patrick Holland, Zeynab Gamieldien
Four new memoirs: Mandy Sayer/Elizabeth Gilbert/Arundhati Roy/S. Shakthidharan
Top Poems of the 21st Century
Patricia Lockwood's auto-fiction-ish Will There Ever Be Another You + The Buffalo Hunter Hunter + The Original
Ian McEwan's What We Can Know + new work from Olga Tokarczuk and Miranda Darling
Still Turning Heads at 250: Jane Austen’s Enduring Charm
Superstar children's author Andy Griffiths reviews! Plus, Omar Musa's Fierceland and Geoff Dyer's Homework
Greyhounds, dark academia and an Amish community in new fiction by Toni Jordan, R.F. Kuang and Ron Rindo
A simmering summer in Greece, rare snails, dystopia with a twist: new fiction by Amy Taylor, Leif Enger and Maria Reva
AI in America, a kidnapping in Corsica, the transformative power of boxing: books by Gary Shteyngart, Darrow Farr, and Lucas Schaefer
People turning into trees, mythical rivers rising...new novels by Rhett Davis and Gurnaik Johal (plus, Irish fiction with Colm Tóibín)
2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award assessed
Parties, scandals, sex, love: new novels by Nell Zink, Amy Bloom and the controversial James Frey
New Australian crime + hungry ghosts and a great white whale
Sydney Writer's Festival: The State of the Art of the Novel
Mystery in new fiction from Ben Okri, Sameer Pandya and Anjet Daanje
Sweat, sport and sharp Australian satire; And the 2025 International Booker Prize winner
Popular fiction across space and time, and queer bush doof thriller in Thomas Vowles' Our New Gods
Reading James Joyce's Ulysses for Bloomsday (and new fiction galore)
New fiction from Gail Jones, S A Cosby and Seán Hewitt
A vibrant gay coming-of-age story set in Geraldton
Sydney Writers' Festival: Top 100 Books launched with Alan Hollinghurst, Catherine Chidgey, Mariana Enriquez, Afra Atiq
On stage at Melbourne Writers' Festival with Hannah Kent and Beejay Silcox
A woman falls through the cracks of time in the first of Solvej Balle's seven-novel-series
A beach holiday told four ways in Luke Horton's Time Together
James Bradley's Landfall reveals a flooded, baked and dilapidated city
The Bookshelf Easter Special: Irish writer Niall Williams
A love triangle set against the beauty of Montana in Eric Puchner's Dream State
Folk horror, dreams under surveillance, lonely in Guatemala
Andrea Goldsmith's The Buried Life - and a train steaming towards disaster . . .
Curtis Sittenfeld's Show Don't Tell + Tim Rogers and Zan Rowe on two new debuts
This week’s novels takes us to Zanzibar, Budapest and Renaissance Florence
On stage at Adelaide Writers' Week with Niall Williams, Charlotte Mendelson and Brian Castro
Australian bestseller Diana Reid returns with Signs of Damage
Irish writer Colum McCann’s Twist dives deep under the ocean and takes on a charismatic mystery
Mothers and Sons...is the story as fraught as the title suggests?
Alaska, folktales, mothers and daughters
A story of yearning, belonging, secrets and identity from Native America
Sweden, France, New Zealand: books from around the world
A medical crisis brings one man close to love, art, and beauty
Summer Reading: Quick, give me a recommendation!
Summer Reading from Australia and the World
Summer Reading: Fiction for a new year
Summer Reading: Books to get your teeth into
Summer Reading: What did you miss?
Crime fiction and why we keep coming back: The repeat protagonist
Best Books of 2024
The much anticipated new novel by Haruki Murakami, and plenty more...
Literature in translation with special guests Bora Chung and Anton Hur + Yu Shi
The Case for Critics - on stage at Canberra Writers' Festival with Christos Tsiolkas, Beejay Silcox and James Jiang
Niall Williams’ Time of the Child might just be the big ‘feel-good book of the year’
Dark Skies, a quest and nature writing in Inga Simpson’s The Thinning
Matricide, the (Virginia) Woolfmother, Norwegian woods: Graeme Macrae Burnet, Michelle de Kretser, Karl Ove Knausgaard
Melanie Cheng's The Burrow: can a pet rabbit heal a family dealing with tragedy?
Twins, pumas and a colonial western in Robbie Arnott’s Dusk
Tim Winton and the ruined future of his novel Juice
What's the verdict on Sally Rooney's new novel Intermezzo?
French provocateur Michel Houellebecq + Olga Tokarczuk's health resort horror
The rich and entitled are back but so are Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton
Malcolm Knox's The First Friend: a black comedy set in Stalin's Soviet Union
2024 mid-year review
Vortex: a new novel from Rodney Hall, twice winner of the Miles Franklin Award
Rita Bullwinkle's Headshot: a luminous debut that steps into the boxing ring
Miles Franklin Literary Award 2024
Weird fiction writer China Miéville's surprising collab with Keanu Reeves
Willy Vlautin's The Horse: drenched in twangy music and heartbreak
Dylin Hardcastle's A Language of Limbs: emotionally true, structurally complex
Awfully Rich: Taffy Brodesser-Akner's Long Island Compromise and more
Fairytales are at play in Julia Phillips' Bear
Catherine McKinnon's To Sing of War takes us to PNG during WW ll
A new fiction title from bestselling author Bruce Pascoe
Jenny Erpenbeck's Kairos, winner of the 2024 International Booker Prize
In Parade Rachel Cusk blurs reality and fiction
Kaliane Bradley's extraordinary time travel love story
Booker Prize winner Paul Lynch joins an all-star panel from SWF
A new novel from Miles Franklin winner Shankari Chandran
Claire Messud's epic family odyssey
Colm Tóibín's long awaited sequel to Brooklyn
Gabriel Garcia Marquez's lost novel
One Day author David Nicholls is back
A never before published novel from Charmian Clift
Bri Lee's The Work explores art, ambition, privilege and power
Andrew O'Hagan's Caledonian Road is "majestic"
Téa Obreht, Asako Yuzuki, Steven Carroll: dystopia, butter, murder
Reimagining Huckleberry Finn, a talking fox, art and alienation
Three new Australian novels! Iain Ryan, Amy Brown, Sharlene Allsopp
A Trans-Tasman edition: Myfanwy Jones, Anna Smaill and Sulari Gentill
Meditations on writing: Gail Jones, Jennifer Croft and a new anthology edited by Margaret Atwood
Dreams and nightmares: Leo Vardiashvili, Teju Cole, Matthew Blake
Mysteries and meta-physical thrillers: Kemper Donovan, Mike McCormack and Alex Michaelides
New fiction from Francis Spufford, Hisham Matar and Kiley Reid
We're back for 2024 featuring new novels from Katherena Vermette, Dolly Alderton and Jonathan Lethem
Summer Reads: history remade, futures reimagined
Summer Reads: True Crime, historical injustice, NZ satire and God's Teeth
Summer Reads: from Aphra Behn to Max Porter
Summer reading: heists, horses, Harlem, Ireland, rage
Summer Reads: Impossible creatures, an Indian thriller and love in a cherry orchard
Romance, crime, adventure: Summer reading recommendations
Best Books of 2023: What to read now, next and over Summer
Bad Art Mother: Canberra Writers Festival Book Club pod extra
The Book Club: Thrillers
Reading the end of the world: Naomi Alderman, Michael Cunningham, Nicholas Jose, Katherine Brabon
Lucy Treloar, Tony Birch, Paul Auster, A K Blakemore: Books to chew on
Memory, history, ghosts and parrots: Richard Flanagan, Sigrid Nunez, Jayne Anne Phillips
The Book Club: Historical Fiction with Jesmyn Ward's Let Us Descend and Zadie Smith's The Fraud
New novels from Christos Tsiolkas, Amanda Lohrey, David Diop and Siân Hughes
Jellyfish, beauty, betrayal and Camelot: new fiction
Melissa Lucashenko, Charlotte Wood and Bryan Washington: powerful new fiction
Three major new works - Trent Dalton, Paul Harding and Suzie Miller
The Book Club - Short Stories
Lauren Groff, Daniel Mason and Anna Kate Blair: fables, trees, history and art
Novels by Anne Enright, Paul Lynch and Emma Donoghue: love, pain, politics and Ireland
Bringing the Past to Life: with Geraldine Brooks, Pip Williams and Sally Colin-James
The Book Club: Frank Moorhouse Retrospective
New fiction from Chris Womersley, Jenny Erpenbeck and Tan Twan Eng: Australia, Germany, Malaysia
New fiction from Peter Polites, Angela O'Keeffe and Guy Guneratne
New books by Ann Patchett, Naoise Dolan and Hwang Sok-yong: “Good marriages are never as interesting as bad affairs”
The Book Club - Miles Franklin Literary Award 2023 shortlist
Crooked Harlem, corrupt Wellington, bereaved London: books by Colson Whitehead, Emily Perkins and Elizabeth McCracken
A crying room, a road trip and blazing fury: Gretchen Shirm, Richard Ford and Claire Kilroy
Fiction: The State of the Art
Wifedom, hoarded memories and political road rage: New books by Anna Funder, Jen Craig and Priya Guns
The Book Club: The Greek Myths
Miles Franklin Literary Award shortlist 2023: pod extra interview special
Gay saunas, dog walking and an extravagant lie: new fiction from R F Kuang, Dennis Altman and Briohny Doyle
Strangers and Saints: Katherena Vermette and Benjamin Myers
Politicians, ghosts and sad girls: books by Lorrie Moore, Robert Gott and Pip Finkemeyer
The Book Club - Romantic Comedy
From the Sydney Writers Festival with Shehan Karunatilaka, Jason Reynolds and Grace Chan
Grifters, pilgrims and scribes: new fiction from Emma Cline, Benjamin Myers and Robyn Cadwallader
History, identity, doppelgangers: new fiction from Deborah Levy, André Dao and Catherine Lacey
Poetry, jumpers, islands: new fiction from John Kinsella, Justin Cronin, Jente Posthuma
The Book Club: Salman Rushdie
New books by Max Porter, Han Kang and Yan Lianke
A bookbinder, Andy Warhol's typist and the cleverest woman in the world
Dystopia, satire, gladiators and gardeners: new fiction from Eleanor Catton and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
The Book Club - weather in fiction with Hannah Kent and Robbie Arnott
Mermaids, man overboard and more: new fiction from Julia Langbein and Stephanie Bishop
Sleuths, silence, secrets: new fiction from Rebecca Makkai, Carole Hailey and Sebastian Barry
Freedom, family and an all-consuming love: new fiction from Anindita Ghose, Vigdis Hjorth and Alice Nelson
Podcast extra: Infidelity and compassion: changing morality in 19th century fiction
The Book Club: Infidelity
Raucous aunts, warriors and dragons, Queer Nigeria and more: new fiction
Trinidad, Antarctica and a corporate city-state in not-quite Korea: three new novels for you
From Barbados in the 1830s to the Melbourne present via the Scottish imaginary: three new books
From frontier western to a wandering ghost: new fiction
Serial killers, thrillers and Shirley Hazzard: new books from Bret Easton Ellis and Deepti Kapoor
Summer Reading: Where will books take you?
Books Extra: Fiona McFarlane's The Sun Walks Down
Summer reading: from the afterlife to New Zealand fiction, we have you covered
Books Extra: Becky Manawatu and Leila Mottley
Summer Reading: It's time to catch up on some great books you missed
Books Extra: Audrey Magee's The Colony
Summer Reading: love, sex, drugs and mischief
Books Extra: the criminal (ish) minds of John Darnielle and Charity Norman
Summer reading: Islands of the imagination
Books Extra: Patrick Gale's Mother's Boy
Shelflife: Four writers on the books that electrified them (no, not literally)
Summer reading extra: Republic and Revolution in England with Philippa Gregory
Books of the year: 2022 with a panel of readers
The Book Club: Beyond the boundary
Stolen bicycles, stolen love and stolen children: new books by Philip Salom, Celeste Ng and Arinze Ifeakandu
Underclass, underground, undone: New Australian fiction from Fiona Kelly McGregor, Shaun Prescott and Yumna Kassab
Blazing stories: new fiction from Gail Jones, Alex Miller and Luke Carman
The Book Club: Reading Kamila Shamsie
New fiction from Cormac McCarthy, Fiona McFarlane and Cole Haddon
George Saunders, Barbara Kingsolver, John Irving: an American Bookshelf
Sisters at breaking point, a grizzly bear on the run and living with 100 ex-boyfriends
A whale gone mad, fierce Irish love and a Māori detective
The Book Club: The ouevre of Ian McEwan
Pod extra: Hilary Mantel, the Booker prize-winning author of the Wolf Hall trilogy has died
Siblings, revelry and fear: Peggy Frew, Kate Atkinson and Adrian McKinty
Drugs, gangs, racism and reputation: three new works of fiction
A Renaissance wedding, a Mediaeval war and the ghosts of Modernism: three new novels
The Book Club: Is crime fiction a literature of resistance? (plus a guide to Korean lit)
Three monks in a boat, the last white man, and wild wild women
Joan of Arc re-imagined, dystopian coastlines and trees in the Oz literary imagination
A champion pedestrianist, an island haunted by grief and running into all your exes
Big Weekend of Books at the State Library of NSW: writers special
Reviewing the 2022 Miles Franklin Literary Award winner and shortlist
An urn full of memories, an everlasting lightbulb and what to read next: Chris Womersley's The Diplomat and Anjali Joseph's Keeping in Touch
Paul Daley's Jesustown, A G Slatter's The Path of Thorns, and a guide to books for kids
Dystopias, ship's monsters and trees: Claire G Coleman, Jokha Alharthi, Jess Kidd and Jane Rawson
The Book Club: Celebrating Australian literature for the ABC's 90th
Frank Moorhouse from the ABC Archives: podcast special
A Métis family tree and a Sydney Leprosarium: Katherena Vermette's The Strangers and Eleanor Limprecht's The Coast
Abomination, modernism and crime: new fiction from Ashley Goldberg, Michelle Cahill and Matthew Spencer
Racecourses, race, sex work and exile: new fiction from Geraldine Brooks, Leila Mottley and Zaheda Ghani
The Book Club: Horses and their Riders
Ireland, Italy, England and Oz: four bold new works of fiction
From the Sydney Writers Festival: The Joy of Re-reading
From the Sydney Writers Festival: with Jackie Huggins, Damon Galgut and George Haddad
Making umbrellas in the afterlife: New books from Steve Toltz, Emiliano Monge and Domonique Wilson
Soap, silences and happy stories (maybe): new fiction from Paddy O'Reilly, Patrick Gale and Norman Erikson Pasaribu
The Book Club: Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad & The Candy House
A moon colony, T S Eliot, Shakespeare and pain: new fiction from Emily St John Mandel, Steven Carroll and Mona Awad
A Glasgow teenager, a Roman emperor and a sneaky revolutionary: new books by Douglas Stuart, Julian Barnes and Charmian Clift
A snowy Tokyo, a haunted house and a cracked swimming pool: books by Jessica Au, John Darnielle and Julie Otsuka
The Book Club: reading New Zealand through Keri Hulmes' The Bone People + Lloyd Jones' The Fish
Mexico, dystopian exile, and Oz suburbia: new fiction from Fernanda Melchor, Toni Jordan and Tom Watson
Iceland, Nebraska and the Sunshine Coast: new fiction from Robert Lukins, Kári Gíslason and Harlan Coben
New fiction from Ireland and New Zealand
The Book Club: Monica Ali's Brick Lane and Love Marriage
New fiction from Omar Sakr, Karen Joy Fowler and Aoife Clifford
Reading Korean history, fierce Italian parents and a theme park of funerary futures
Reading our way to islands, monsters, balloons, snowscapes, heroes and more
The Book Club: Rebecca and Rebecca
Reading Hanya Yanagihara, Gary Shteyngart and Nikki May
Pip Williams and The Dictionary of Lost Words
Summer Reads: Hannah Kent, Caleb Azumah Nelson, Sunjeev Sahota and Aravind Adiga
The Bookshelf that Made Me: Siri Hustvedt & Jennifer Mills
Summer Reads: Patricia Lockwood, Ann Patchett, Simon Winchester, Suyi Davies Okungbowa and Jay Kristoff
The Bookshelf that Made Me: Tilly Lawless & Jon McGregor
Summer Reads: James Ellroy, Jhumpa Lahiri, Guillermo Martinez and Charlotte McConaghy
The Bookshelf that Made Me: R W R Mcdonald & Jacqueline Bublitz
Summer Reading: a wild party, Beowulf, and Gillian Mears
The Bookshelf that Made Me: Colm Tóibín and Emily Gale
Summer Reading: Jane Austen, Joan Silber, Kevin Barry and Elizabeth Strout
The Bookshelf That Made Me: Sarah Winman and Nick Earls
The Bookshelf That Made Me: Ken Follett, Rose Tremain, Amie Kaufman & Jaclyn Moriarty
Best Reads 2021 Part 2: General Adult Fiction
Claudia Karvan and the Books that Made Us: Pod Extra
The Book Club: John Hughes' The Dogs + Kate Grenville's The Secret River
Classic Australian Novels - Alexis Wright's Carpentaria
Classic Australian Novels - Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang
Classic Australian Novels - Richard Flanagan's Gould's Book of Fish
Classic Australian Novels - Michelle de Kretser's Questions of Travel
Classic Australian Novels - Helen Garner's Monkey Grip
Classic Australian Novels - Kim Scott's That Deadman Dance
Classic Australian Novels - Kate Grenville's The Secret River
Best Reads 2021 Part 1: Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction
On Christos Tsiolkas' 7 ½, Vietnamese smoky ghosts & a helluva book
Behemoths, Novellas and Essays: reading recommendations
The Book Club: Amor Towles' The Lincoln Highway + Cormac McCarthy's The Road
Adam Liaw and Hannah Kent: Star Reviewers #4
Geraldine Hakewill and Graeme Simsion: Star Reviewers #3
Tim Rogers and Pip Williams: Star Reviewers #2
Marta Dusseldorp and John Safran: Star Reviewers #1
The Book Club: George Eliot's Middlemarch + Colson Whitehead's Harlem Shuffle
Did you hear the one about the obscenity trial?
'Uneasy, Ambiguous and Strange': Why rewrite Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann?
Yes, we are reviewing Sally Rooney's new novel
The Book Club: On Memory
How to read like an Australian writer
Why you should read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (and meet his feistiest character)
Wolves, ghosts and a great flood: scary things in books
Outraged tweeters, miniature soldiers and the flooded canals of Venice
The Book Club: Amanda Lohrey's The Labyrinth & the Miles Franklin Literary Award shortlist
Three novels of seclusion: by Mark Brandi, Sunjeev Sahota, Patrick McGrath
The deliberately depraved and dissolute worlds of James Ellroy and Lisa Taddeo
Podcast Extra: More Musical Mayhem with Taylor Jenkins Reid and Dawnie Walton
The Book Club: Turn up the Music!
Can't Travel? Here's a collection of books that will transport you
A party to end all parties, a stranded whale, musical words and a train: what to read this week
A shrinking lake, a circus of wonders, and a baby: novels to make you feel and think
Reading Jane Austen from the 1940s until now (and other adventures in reading and reviewing)
The Book Club: Patricia Highsmith
Podcast Extra: Patricia Highsmith's biographer answers your questions
Reading Western Sydney, a hot country town & fantasy Africa remade
Ern Malley Rides Again! Writes, we meant writes
Podcast Extra: Reading the world in Spinoza's Overcoat
Earwax, kidnappings and an octopus god
Podcast Extra: Sujata Massey and a woman lawyer in India in the 1920s
The Book Club: reading Kazuo Ishiguro in the sun
Live from the Sydney Writers Festival with Anita Heiss, Rick Morton and Emily Maguire
Podcast Extra: General Sir Peter Cosgrove reads historical fiction and political biography
New books by Patricia Lockwood, Jacqueline Maley, Peace Adzo Medie and Marco Missiroli
Podcast extra: Maria Dahvana Headley and all that monstrous reading
New fiction from Ethan Hawke, Olivia Sudjic and Dirk Kurbjuweit
Podcast Extra: Steven Carroll on reading wartime surrender in the scandalous Story of O
New books by Haruki Murakami, Patricia Engel and Blair James
Podcast Extra: Fiona Mozley reads her way into London and Edinburgh
The Book Club: The Vietnamese diaspora and the aftermath of war
Podcast Extra: Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual and the books behind it
Trevor Shearston's The Beach Caves, Fiona Mozley's Hot Stew and what Caleb Azumah Nelson reads
Podcast Extra: Robert Jones Jr on James Baldwin and the other writers that have shaped him
New fiction from Edward St Aubyn, Steven Carroll and Lisa Harding
Podcast Extra: Daisy Buchanan is insatiable for books
Ella Baxter's New Animal, Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual & the Sydney Writers' Festival is back
Podcast Extra: Max Porter answers your questions
The Book Club: February — Art in fiction
Podcast Extra: Simon Winchester's Bookshelf
Reading Simon Winchester, Sarah J Maas, John Kinsella and Guillermo Martínez
Podcast Extra: What does Angie Thomas read?
New fiction by Caleb Azumah Nelson, Melissa Broder and Sònia Hernández
Podcast Extra: Andrew Pippos and the bookshelf that made Lucky's
On Robert Jones Jr's The Prophets, Una Mannion's A Crooked Tree, and a new translation of Beowulf
Podcast Extra: More on the writer Madeleine St John
The Book Club 2021 No 1: Work
On Anna North's Outlawed, Raven Leilani's Luster & Kevin Barry's That Old Country Music
Summer Bookshelf celebrating Australian writing
Summer Bookshelf with novels by Malcolm Knox, Frances Cha & Garth Greenwell
Summer Bookshelf with novels by Aravind Adiga, Richard Flanagan and Maggie O'Farrell
Summer Bookshelf and The Dry on screen plus novels by Laura Jean McKay, Curtis Sittenfeld & Mieko Kawakami
Summer Bookshelf: The Rain Heron, Greenwood, A Theatre for Dreamers and Mayflies
The Bookshelf's Best Reads of 2020 (Part 2)
The Bookshelf's Best Reads of 2020 (Part 1)
Podcast Extra: Naomi Novik
Podcast Extra: Garth Nix
The Book Club No 8: Mining the past
Podcast Extra: Susanna Clarke
Maybe they're all aliens?
Podcast Extra: Lev Grossman
A film set, a glass heart, and the unclaimed dead
Podcast Extra: Graham Swift and the rough glittering world
A cafe, a shiver, a chase
Fictionalised lives, old friends and empty streets
The Book Club No 7: On the Coast and in the Water
Tragedies, Sagas and Infinite Splendours
Vanishing body parts and toxic relationships
Podcast Extra: Andrew O'Hagan
A mythic quest and star-crossed love
Podcast Extra: Chris Riddell sharpens his pencil
The Book Club No 6: Italy in translation
Podcast Extra: Sue Miller
Standing on the bridge, wrong side of the rail
Podcast Extra: Maria Lewis
Slipping between worlds and cities, in history, fiction and fantasy
Podcast Extra: Meg Rosoff
Podcast Extra: Christopher Paolini
Podcast Extra: Sarah Moss & Ian McGuire
Imagined taxonomies of life, love, death and memory
Podcast Extra: Raymond E Feist
Podcast Extra: Dugald Bruce Lockhart
Book Club No 5: Speculative Fiction and N K Jemisin’s The City we Became
Podcast Extra: Kester Grant
Podcast Extra: Nicholas Shakespeare
A tricky nemesis or two, the past, and a damp holiday camp
Poisonous plants, talking rabbits, and a roadtrip of tears
Thrillers, wars and labyrinths spiral through fiction
Family secrets and the approach of General Winter in three new Australian novels
The Book Club No 4: Tara June Winch's The Yield and Miles Franklin's My Brilliant Career
Creatures, sisters and relationships in fiction
A note in a forest, a train on fire, a gothic mood
History, fiction and plastic surgery
The Book Club No 3: Crime, thrillers, and Lawrence Wright’s The End of October
Pod Extra: Poetry and Music
The discomfort of grief and memory
Reading love and tragedy in Jamaica, Trinidad and India
Race, apocalypse and robots
The Book Club No 2: Joan London’s The Golden Age & Shirley Hazzard’s The Transit of Venus
A bird made of rain, a girl made of plantain, a family made of loss
What If, said the writer, What If?
Hello Kitty with unshaved armpits (and other bookish insights)
A fossilised penguin walked into a bar (and other stories)
The Book Club No 1: Come on, join our Book Club
What did that dingo just say to me? And other adventures in fiction
What lives from books? What drama?
How to read Shakespeare's family
These books are edged with gold
Reading in isolation? We’ve got you covered
Novels from Poland, Norway and Crescent City
Fiction that takes on the world
'The dice is shaken in a bone cup,' in Hilary Mantel's The Mirror and the Light
In the wings, on the reservation, inside a woman's rage
In which we give Tyson Yunkaporta a book that's too good
Novels by Anne Enright, Aravind Adiga and Kiley Reid
New books by Carmen Maria Machado, Evie Wyld and Emma Forrest
Novels by Eimear McBride, Romesh Gunesekera and Benjamin Myers
New books by Garth Greenwell, Isabel Allende and Jeanine Cummins
Summer reads from India, Russia, Japan and the Amazon
When reading is gothic, digital or just plain hard
Begin your reading year with Peter Goldsworthy, Sarah Bailey and Anna Krien
Fantasy with Samantha Shannon, Jay Kristoff and Amie Kaufman
Book recommendations from Kate Forsyth, Heather Rose and Alex McClintock
The Bookshelf's best books of 2019
New fiction from Ben Lerner, Marcy Dermansky and Curdella Forbes
Pod Extra: Poet Lemn Sissay and the many foster children of literature
Pod Extra: Charlotte Wood's The Weekend
Leah Purcell's novel The Drover's Wife and crime with Garry Disher, Emma Viskic and Jessica Chapnik Kahn
New books from Julian Barnes, Petina Gappah and Niall Williams
André Aciman's Find Me, Inez Baranay's Turn Left at Venus and Zimbabwean literature
Reading Los Angeles with Michael Connelly plus new Australian fiction
New books by Paul Lynch, Erin Morgenstern and Mary Costello
On Christos Tsiolkas' Damascus, Helen Phillips' The Need and the books on Chris Hammer's bookshelf
The Bookshelf at the State Library of NSW
Books from Tishani Doshi, Katherine Rundell, Roger Pulvers and David Nicholls
Political satire, historical fiction and short stories
The bookshelves of Jessie Burton, Corey White and Dominic Smith
New novels from Philip Pullman, Favel Parrett and Nino Haratischvili
New books by Edna O'Brien, Etgar Keret and Benjamin Myers
On Ann Patchett's The Dutch House, Bernardine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other and Emma Donoghue's Akin
On Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, Elizabeth Strout's Olive, Again, Peter Goldsworthy's Minotaur and Alvydas Šlepikas's In the Shadow of Wolves
New fiction from Deborah Levy, Andrew McGahan and Claire G Coleman
On Salman Rushdie's Quichotte, Lucy Treloar's Wolfe Island, Lisa Taddeo's Three Women and the state of Oz crime
New fiction from Ben Hobson, Carolina Setterwall and Kate Forsyth plus an exhortation re reading
Novels by Téa Obreht, Wai Chim and Vasily Grossman (and a booklist from Julia Phillips)
On Alix Nathan's The Warlow Experiment, David Nicholls' Sweet Sorrow and Lisa See's The Island of Sea Women
Reading the Counterculture
Kathryn Hind's Hitch, Herman Koch's The Ditch and Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
On Joyce Carol Oates' My Life As a Rat, Peter Polites' The Pillars and Me Myshelf and I with Sulari Gentill
Monsters in fiction with Sarah Perry
New fiction from Ocean Vuong, Colson Whitehead and Sarah Hopkins
On Tara June Winch's The Yield, Tony Birch's The White Girl and Julia Phillips' Disappearing Earth
On Dominic Smith's The Electric Hotel, Roque Larraquy's Comemadre, Amitav Ghosh's Gun Island and the reading habits of Robert Forster and Fiona McGregor
Bookshelf Podcast Extra with Damian Barr, Andrea Goldsmith, Nguyen Phan Que Mai, Simon Cleary and Emma Ashmere
On Damian Barr's You Will Be Safe Here, Chip Cheek's Cape May and Alex Landrigan's Crossings
On James Ellroy's This Storm, Tishani Doshi's Small Days and Nights and Elizabeth Cook's Lux
On Susan Choi's Trust Exercise, Elizabeth Gilbert's City of Girls and Richard Anderson's Boxed
On Jeanette Winterson's Frankissstein, Guzel Yakhina's Zuleikha and Annaleese Jochems, Baby
Podcast Extra on traumatic reading, Chris Womersley's bookshelf and Julianne Schultz's digital futures
On Ali Smith's Spring, Mark Haddon's The Porpoise, Laila Lalami's The Other Americans & how digital is disrupting reading
Podcast extra on Samantha Shannon's The Priory of the Orange Tree and Jay Kristoff and Amie Kauffman's Aurora Rising
On Rohan Wilson's Daughter of Bad Times, Hallie Rubenhold's The Five and Kauffman & Kristoff's YA SF Aurora Rising
The Bookshelf Live from the Sydney Writers Festival
Podcast extra on NSW Premier's Literary Awards, Les Murray, translation in China and Holly Throsby's bookshelf
On T C Boyle's Outside Looking In, Don Winslow's The Border and Simon Cleary's The War Artist
On Ian McEwan's Machines Like Me and Joanne Harris's The Strawberry Thief, and the bookshelves of Caro Llewellyn and Dervla McTiernan
On Siri Hustvedt's Memories of the Future, Valeria Luiselli's Lost Children Archive, the Stella Prize and the reading habits of Jenny Brockie and Sam Twyford-Moore
On Max Porter's Lanny, Alexander Chee's Edinburgh, Dave Eggers' The Parade and Katherine Kovacic's Bookshelf
Novels by Andrea Goldsmith, Sarah Moss, Niviaq Korneliussen, Felicity McLean and José Luís Peixoto
On Leah Kaminsky's The Hollow Bones, Ben Marcus's Notes from the Fog, Julie Keys, The Artist’s Portrait, Katherine Kovacic, Painting in the Shadows and Andrea Goldsmith on books
On Mark Brandi's The Rip, Dervla McTiernan's The Scholar, Leïla Slimani's Adèle and Mohammed Hanif's Red Birds
On Carrie Tiffany's Exploded View, Peggy Frew's Islands, Taylor Jenkins Reid's Daisy Jones and the Six and the bookshelf that made Karen Viggers
On Melissa Harrison's All Among the Barley, Nana Kwama Adjei-Brenyah's Friday Black and Emiliano Monge's Among the Lost
On Sigrid Nunez's The Friend, Will Dean’s Red Snow and Karen Thompson Walker's The Dreamers
Reading Roberto Bolaño's The Spirit of Science Fiction and Delphine de Vigan's Loyalties plus the bookshelves of Lynda La Plante and Ferenc Barnás
On Marlon James' Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Debra Adelaide's Zebra, Tessa Hadley's Late in the Day and what's on David Stratton's bookshelf
On Caoilinn Hughes' Orchid & the Wasp, Steven Carroll's The Year of the Beast, John Lanchester's The Wall and Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Result
On Summer reading and Ben Okri's The Freedom Artist, Chigozie Obioma's An Orchestra of Minorities and Søren Sveistrup's The Chestnut Man
What Morris Gleitzman read on the factory floor, being amanuensis to Will Self, talking to Sofie Laguna, and a bit of Finnish Weird
Are you a rereader? And other thoughts for a Summer Bookshelf
Do you have book-shaped New Year's reading resolutions?
If you dog-ear your books, you're part of a long tradition
Summer reading with Tayari Jones' An American Marriage, Peter Cochrane's The Making of Martin Sparrow and talking to Tara Westover about her memoir Educated
Podcast extra edition: with Viv Albertine, Jessie Burton and Jorge Carrion
Best reads of the year from Stuart Coupe, Nicole Abadee, Trent Jamieson and Cassie & Kate
What are the best books Trent Dalton, Shaun Prescott and Amelia Lush have read this year?
Reading Sydney Noir, finding plague pits in the backyard with Minette Walters, Anne Summers on fiction and new journalism and Sally Rippin's bookshelf
On Graham Norton's A Keeper, R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries and Georgina Harding's Land of the Living with David Hunt, Aoife Clifford and Anne Summers
New fiction from Patrick Gale, Minette Walters, Rick Gekoski and Amitava Kumar
Podcast Extra edition: with Fiona Wright, Kimberley Knight, Stephanie Bishop and Moreno Giovannoni
On Anna Burns' Milkman, Esi Edugyan's Washington Black and Philip Teir's The Summer House
RN Armistice 100 The Bookshelf podcast extra: On Robert Graves' Good-Bye to All That and a coda for Vera Brittain
RN Armistice 100: Australian WWI fiction, Indian writing & Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth
New fiction from Andrew Miller, Anne Tyler and Victor LaValle
On Krissy Kneen's Wintering, Les Zig's August Falling, Margaret Morgan's The Second Cure, Ilka Tampke's Songwoman and more
On Haruki Murakami's Killing Commendatore, Sarah Perry's Melmoth and Kristina Olsson's own bookshelf
On Kristina Olsson's Shell, Markus Zusak's Bridge of Clay and Prayaag Akbar's Leila
Reading habits, influences and recommendations from Australian novelists Emma Viskic, Melissa Lucashenko, Chris Hammer and Christian White
On books by J M Coetzee, Kate Morton, Sebastian Faulks, Rebecca O'Connor and John Connell
New novels from Louis de Bernières, Kate Atkinson, Andrew Sean Greer and Rebecca Lim
On Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls, Patrick de Witt's French Exit and the Australian Reading Hour
Short stories from Robert Drewe, Curtis Sittenfeld, Roxane Gay, Lauren Groff, William Trevor & John Edgar Wideman
On Sally Rooney's Normal People and Stephanie Bishop's Man Out of Time (just for starters)
Vale Crimewriter Peter Corris: Cliff Hardy has made his exit
On Anna Seghers' The Seventh Cross, Tiffany Tsao's Under Your Wings and books by Edward St Aubyn and Roland Schimmelpfennig
On Melissa Broder's The Pisces, Audrey Schulman's Theory of Bastards and V S Naipaul - with writers Felicity Castagna, Margo Lanagan and Khalid Warsame
On crime writer Ann Cleeves, Laura Elizabeth Woollett's Beautiful Revolutionary, Simon Mawer's Prague Spring and A People's History of the Vampire Uprising
On Melissa Lucashenko's Too Much Lip, Chris Hammer's Scrublands and Gregory Day's A Sand Archive
On Mario Vargas Llosa, Libby Page's The Lido, Sharlene Teo's Ponti and Tim Ayliffe's The Greater Good
On Tara Isabella Burton's Social Creature, Barry Hill's Reason and Lovelessness, Natasha Lester's The Paris Seamstress and Sunni Overend's The Rules of Backyard Croquet
On Rachel Cusk's Kudos, Maria Tumarkin's Axiomatic and Kim Scott's bookshelf
Barbara Kingsolver, Alexander McCall Smith and why some novelists disappear
On Enza Gandolfo's The Bridge, Hallgrímur Helgason's The Woman at 1000 Degrees, The Book Ninja & Michael Robotham's The Other Wife
On Peter Cochrane's The Making of Martin Sparrow, Willy Vlautin's Don't Skip Out on Me, Meg Wolitzer's The Female Persuasion and Sally Seltmann's bookshelf
Poet A F Harrold; Claire G Coleman, Melanie Cheng and Felicity Castagna telling 'home truths' through fiction; and SF writer Jay Kristoff
On Helen Garner, Jim Crace's The Melody, Charles Frazier's Varina, Nathaniel Rich's King Zeno, Kit de Waal's The Trick to Time & Danny Denton
Aminatta Forna's Happiness, Emily O'Grady's The Yellow House, Meena Kandasamy's When I Hit You, Joseph Cassara's The House of Impossible Beauties and Westwords
Raymond E Feist's King of Ashes, Kate Mosse's The Burning Chambers and Lisa Genova's Every Note Played
Christos Tsiolkas on Patrick White, Stuart Coupe on Irvine Welsh's Dead Men's Trousers, Eleanor Limprecht on Alicia Drake's I Love You Too Much and Jonathan Green on Meanjin's short fiction collection
On Michael Ondaatje's Warlight, Jenny Ackland's Little Gods, Charmaine Craig's Miss Burma and David Peace's Patient X.
Cassie and Kate present the Bookshelf live from the Sydney Writers Festival with Junot Diaz, Jennifer Egan and Tayari Jones
Laura Lindstedt's Oneiron, Madeline Miller's Circe, Bridie Jabour's The Way Things Should Be and Madeleine Seys on Fashion and Narrative in Victorian Popular Literature
Rodney Hall's A Stolen Season, Leïla Slimani's Lullaby, Imogen Hermes Gowar's The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock and Natasha Lester's bookshelf that made her
Review discussions of Gail Jones' The Death of Noah Glass, Antonio Muñoz Molina's Like a Fading Shadow, Åsne Seierstad's Two Sisters and Heidi Sopinka's The Dictionary of Animal Languages
Robert Hillman's The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted, Robyn Cadwallader's Book of Colours, Dervla McTiernan's The Rúin & Mick McCoy's What the Light Reveals
Mark Brandi's Wimmera, Steven Camden's Nobody Real, Han Kang's The White Book, Holly Ringland's The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart and reading Muriel Spark
Alan Hollinghurst's The Sparsholt Affair, Eleanor Limprecht's The Passengers and reviewers Nicole Abadee, Frank Bongiorno and Geordie Williamson
Vale Peter Temple, Tim Winton's The Shepherd's Hut, Jenny Erpenbeck's Go Went Gone, Sarah Winman and Steven Camden's bookshelves
The Stella Prize shortlist, Danny Denton's The Earlie King and the Kid in Yellow, Dan Sheehan's Restless Souls and Marieke Krügel’s Look at Me
Katherena Vermette's The Break, Ahmed Saadawi's Frankenstein in Baghdad, Stuart Turton's The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and Michael Mohammed Ahmad's The Lebs
Ceridwen Dovey's In the Garden of the Fugitives; Emma Glass', Peach; C J Tudor's The Chalk Man; Caroline Fraser, Prairie Fires
Shaun Prescott's The Town, Julian Barnes' The Only Story, Attica Locke's Bluebird Bluebird and Paul Lynch's bookshelf of inspiration.
Cassie and Kate on A J Finn's The Woman in the Window, Louise Erdrich's Future Home of the Living God, forty years of the Australian Book Review and Claire Tomalin's A Life of My Own
Cassie and Kate on Gail Honeyman, Stanley Johnson and Tayari Jones
Kate and Cassie are joined by writers and critics Ashley Hay and Lev Grossman to discuss new fiction