The Book Show

Karen Joy Fowler wades into American Civil War history and the story of John Wilkes Booth, the first presidential assassin, in her novel Booth.Also, Kalkadoon author Megan Albany's comic novel about death and Lloyd Jones's latest allegorical novel, The Fish.

Craig Silvey, Tony Birch and Dervla McTiernan share their love of reading from the Perth Festival Writers Weekend. They share their formative childhood reads, favourite first lines and give some writing advice along the way.

Isabel Allende says her latest novel, Violeta, was inspired by her mother but also by Allende's own life. Also, readers who send fan mail and the writers who reply with Markus Zusak, Anita Heiss, John Marsden and Krissy Kneen, and disability in fiction with Joseph Elliott and Kit Kavanagh-Ryan.

Our Country Friends is a funny book set in upstate New York during the pandemic by US writer Gary Shteyngart and Xochitl Gonzalez looks at the city through a Puerto Rican lens in Olga Dies Dreaming.

From young love and forbidden romance to break-ups and long-term relationships: hear authors wax lyrical about love. Writers include David Nicholls, Amy Bloom, Tayari Jones, Howard Jacobson, Monica Ali, Curtis Sittenfeld, Anita Heiss, Vivian Pham, C.S Pacat and Daniel de Lorne.

Jason Mott's Hell of a Book lives up to its name: it has a snappy title, an eccentric narrator and a Nicolas Cage cameo.Also, two authors who explore older Australian's experiences with Liz Byrski's At the End of the Day and Shankari Chandran's Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens.

Almost 20 years after Brick Lane, Monica Ali is still unpicking the ins and outs of relationships in her novel, Love Marriage.Also, Skimming Stones by Maria Papas was directly inspired by her daughter's own illness and Jack Ellis challenges a myth about childhood in Home and Other Hiding Places.

In her new book To Paradise, Hanya Yanagihara asks what would America be if its foundations were different. Also Katherine Collette's ode to Toastmasters in The Competition and Craig Sherborne's difficult mother in A Grass Hotel.

Two masters of the form, George Saunders and Tsisti Dangarembga, share lessons from their extensive writing careers.

The Booker-winning author Pat Barker's preoccupation with who's allowed to speak and who isn't continues in The Women of Troy, a sequel to The Silence of the Girls, her exploration of women in the Ancient Greek classics.Also, New Animal author, Ella Baxter, on how her writing relates to her artistic practice, and the final in Michael Mohammed Ahmad's trilogy featuring his alter-ego, Bani Adam, with The Other Half of You.