The Book Show

Canadian author, Emily St John Mandel, says the pandemic changed her as a writer. Her latest, Sea of Tranquility, was written during lockdown in New York and while it's a standalone novel, also features links to her previous books, Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel.Also, Goan-Anglo-Indian Australian writer Michelle Cahill's novel, Daisy and Woolf, is a literary homage and post-colonial critique of Virginia Woolf’s classic Mrs Dalloway.

Here Goes Nothing is the last in what Steve Toltz calls his trilogy of fear which began with A Fraction of the Whole. This latest book is narrated by a ghost who discovers there is an afterlife hierarchy and he is at the bottom. Also, Irish writer Audrey Magee on her second novel The Colony which is colonisation in microcosm and Toni Jordan's sixth novel, Dinner with the Schnabels, billed as a family dramedy.

Booker winner Douglas Stuart's second novel, Young Mungo, is again set in gritty working class Glasgow, but also explores blossoming queer love.And, two debut novels also exploring queer identity with Indyana Schneider's 28 Questions and Omar Sakr's Son of Sin.

We meet some of the most remarkable mothers in recent fiction, with authors including Dawn French, Douglas Stuart, Anne Enright, Lisa Taddeo, Larissa Behrendt and Alice Pung. These literary mums can be loving, neglectful and sometimes cruel – and they often reveal something about the author’s own relationship with their mother or children. Other featured authors include George Haddad, Craig Sherborne, Lydia Kiesling and Kate Mildenhall.

Jennifer Down doesn't turn away from uncomfortable truths in her Stella Prize shortlisted novel, Bodies of Light, about the systemic failures of the residential and foster care systems in the 70s and 80s. Also, we revisit our interview with Jonathan Franzen who talks about faith and family, which are two themes in his latest book, Crossroads.

Hannah Kent reflects on her time as an exchange student in Iceland and how it allowed her to pursue writing, and Michelle Johnston tells Claire Nichols about her novel, Dustfall, for the international literary event called Literature Live Around the World which was hosted by the Bergen International Literary Festival in Norway.

Pulitzer-prize winner, Jennifer Egan, is "interested in the ways technology interacts with our psychologies". Her new novel, The Candy House, plays with a deliciously dangerous idea: what if you could externalise your memory?And two books set in small town Australia: Mandy Beaumont's The Furies and Yumna Kassab's provocatively titled Australiana.

The Icelandic sagas have long been a source of fascination for Kári Gíslason and his latest novel, The Sorrow Stone, gives new life to an old Icelandic saga.Also disability advocate and writer Liel Bridgford explores disability representation in fiction with Kay Kerr and Jessica Walton, and Robert Lukins on his second novel Loveland set in Nebraska about two women who've experienced controlling marriages and asks whether trauma is inherited.

For his latest novel, Moon Witch, Spider King, Marlon James says "I was trying to connect with my own mythological history as a black man in an African diaspora, in a former British colony". Also, friendship in fiction with Susan Johnson, Juhea Kim and Paige Clark, and Perth writer David Whish-Wilson's writing space.

'I have a full and beautiful life', says Irish writer Marian Keyes, 'The only thing I can't do is drink'. And the experience of addiction and recovery is something she's given to the main character in her book Again, Rachel, a sequel to Rachel's Holiday. Also, Michael Trant writes a book on his tractor, Jane Caro explores coercive control in The Mother and Rhett Davis's debut novel, Hovering.