The Book Show

Writers (and bookworms) Craig Silvey, Tony Birch, and Dervla McTiernan talk about their reading lives, in this special episode recorded at the Perth Festival Writers Weekend.

Ruth Ozeki, Shehan Karunatilaka and Jennifer Down share the backstory to their award winning books.

Australian novelist Heather Rose lost her brother in a tragic accident when she was just 12 years old. In her memoir Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here, she shares how her grief and curiosity led her on a lifelong search for the extraordinary. Also, Wiradjuri activist-turned-author Yvonne Weldon on her love story Sixty-Seven Days and Thomas Keneally tackles a tricky subject in his historic novel Fanatic Heart.

City-saving superheroes, cheese-bingeing record store employees and a chemist turned TV chef with NK Jemisin, Katharine Pollock and Bonnie Garmus.

Booker winner George Saunders on his short story addiction, Inga Simpson on the great Australian cricket novel and pandemic fiction for kids.

Alex Miller and Patricia Cornwell talk about ageing and fiction and their novels A Brief Affair and Livid, and we explore the line between fact and fiction with historical novelists Jock Serong, Eleanor Limprecht and Sienna Brown.

Actor Joseph Paterson shines a spotlight on Black British history, Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk's Ottoman Empire saga and Australian Fiona McFarlane goes in search of a lost boy in 1883.

Graham Norton, Diana Reid and Holly Throsby discuss why they enjoy writing about women in fiction. Graham Norton's fourth novel Forever Home is about a woman saying a slow goodbye to her partner (and wondering about a weird smell in the basement). Diana Reid's second novel Seeing Other People unapologetically explores the anxieties of young, educated women in Sydney and musician Holly Throsby's novel Clarke is partly inspired by the case of Lynette Dawson, who famously went missing from her family home in the 1980s.

Ian Rankin's detective John Rebus has been part of the literary world for 35 years and now his 24th Rebus novel has just landed, A Heart Full of Headstones. Discover the hard centre of Victoria Hannan's new novel Marshmallow and find out what an ear prostitute is with Singaporean writer Clarissa Goenawan's Watersong.

Barbara Kingsolver explains her connection to Charles Dickens and why her latest Demon Copperhead is set in Appalachia, USA. Sophie Cunningham's almost 20 year grapple with her latest book This Devastating Fever and apples, orchards and rabbits in Tasmanian author Robbie Arnott's third novel, Limberlost.