Simon Mayo's Books Of The Year

Columnist and writer Marina Hyde joins Simon Mayo and Matt Williams to talk about the news, politics, her columns and...what the hell is going to happen next!? We're all trying to keep up with the news at the moment and it seems that every day, there's another crisis, resignation or flummoxed MP trying to change the narrative. In her latest book, Marina tries to make some sense of these turbulent times, whilst offering us some humour and valuable insight along the way. On this episode of Books Of The Year, she talks about the ever changing news cycle, how she keeps sane and the things she would never write about. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The last book you really, really enjoyed?Which idea in a book do you wish you’d come up with? Do you work best with deadlines?Which books stand out from your childhood?Short chapters v long chapters. Discuss!Favourite TV or film adaptation of a book?How many books do you read a month?If you could go back to university, what would you study? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Making his 3rd appearance on the pod, best selling author Anthony Horowitz chats about his latest novel. With occasional sound effects from his builders.Anthony has written two highly acclaimed Sherlock Holmes novels, The House of Silk and Moriarty; three James Bond novels, Trigger Mortis, Forever and a Day and With a Mind to Kill; the acclaimed bestselling mystery novels Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders and the Detective Hawthorne novels, The Word is Murder, The Sentence is Death, A Line To Kill, and the latest A Twist of Knife is out now - in which he stars as himself.His new play, a thriller called 'Mindgame', is about to open at the famous Vaudeville theatre in Shoreditch. Not surprisingly, Hawthorne declines a ticket to the opening night.The play is not enjoyed by the critics. In particular, Sunday Times critic Harriet Throsby gives it a savage review, focusing particularly on the writing. The next day, Throsby is stabbed in the heart with an ornamental dagger which, it turns out, belongs to Anthony, and which has his fingerprints all over it.Anthony is arrested by an old enemy . . . Detective Inspector Cara Grunshaw. She's still smarting from her failure to solve the case described in the second Hawthorne adventure: "The Sentence is Death". She blames Anthony for her failure. And now she's out for revenge.Thrown into prison and brutally interrogated, Anthony is the prime suspect in Throsby's murder and as a second theatre critic is found to have died in mysterious circumstances, the net closes in. Ever more desperate, he realizes that only one man can help him.But will Hawthorne take the call?  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The last book you really, really enjoyed Which idea in a book do you wish you’d come up?  Do you work best with deadlines? Short Chapters v Long Chapters. Discuss! Favourite TV or film adaptation of a book? How many books do you read a month? If you could go back to university, what would you study? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

1660. Colonel Edward Whalley and his son-in-law, Colonel William Goffe, cross the Atlantic. They are on the run and wanted for the murder of Charles I. Under the provisions of the Act of Oblivion, they have been found guilty in absentia of high treason.In London, Richard Nayler, secretary of the regicide committee of the Privy Council, is tasked with tracking down the fugitives. He'll stop at nothing until the two men are brought to justice. A reward hangs over their heads - for their capture, dead or alive.Act of Oblivion is an epic journey across continents, and a chase like no other. It is the thrilling new novel by Robert Harris (Fatherland, Enigma, V2) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the greatest authors of his generation answers questions about his favourite books and authors - including Lee Child, Michael Connelly, JK Rowling and Philip Pullman Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Best selling author, multi award winning broadcaster and lifelong Torchy fan SIMON MAYO is interviewed by ITN's Tom Bradby about his new thriller Tick Tock.It starts quietly enough. A tick-tick-ticking you can hear in your ear. Tinnitus, you think. It will pass. But it doesn't. It gets worse - and then you pass it on.Before you know it, it spreads. Elsewhere across the globe, it emerges: small outbreaks at first, but then suddenly it's a plague - and only days later it is killing people.In an increasingly affected north London school, teacher Kit Chaplin is struggling to understand what he is witnessing. Even Lilly Slater, his partner and an eminent vaccinologist, can't work out what's happening. As it spreads, little by little, they are inexorably drawn into the mystery behind the illness. And what they discover will change the world as they know it...Exciting and urgently contemporary, this piercingly insightful novel tells the story of a global catastrophe through the eyes of the three people at the heart of the storm. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Simon and Matt chat to Jonathan Freedland about his new book The Escape Artist.In April 1944 nineteen-year-old Rudolf Vrba and fellow inmate Fred Wetzler became the first Jews ever to break out of Auschwitz. Vrba's mission: to reveal to the world the truth of the Holocaust.In the death factory of Auschwitz, Vrba had become an eyewitness to almost every chilling stage of the Nazis' process of industrialised murder. The more he saw, the more determined he became to warn the Jews of Europe what fate awaited them. A brilliant student of science and mathematics, he committed each detail to memory, risking everything to collect the first data of the Final Solution. After his escape, that information would form a priceless thirty-two-page report that would reach Roosevelt, Churchill and the pope and eventually save over 200,000 lives.But the escape from Auschwitz was not his last. After the war, he kept running - from his past, from his home country, from his adopted country, even from his own name. Few knew of the truly extraordinary deed he had done. Now, at last, Rudolf Vrba's heroism can be known - and he can take his place alongside those whose stories define history's darkest chapter.Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist and former foreign correspondent. He was named Columnist of the Year in 2002, Commentator of the Year in 2016 and won an Orwell Prize for Journalism in 2014. He is the presenter of BBC Radio 4's contemporary history series, The Long View, and is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books. He is the author of 11 books, two of them non-fiction, including his first book, the award-winning Bring Home the Revolution. He has written nine thrillers under the name Sam Bourne, including The Righteous Men which was a #1 Sunday Times bestseller and has sold over 2 million copies worldwide. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mick Herron chats about some of his favourite books and authors which include Francis Spufford, John Steinbeck, Gorky Park and The Wind In The Willows Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2010, with Slow Horses, Mick Herron began a spy series, entitled Slough House, featuring MI5 agents who have been exiled from the mainstream for various offences. With the follow up Dead Lions, he won the Crime Writers' Association 2013 Gold Dagger award. It has recently been turned in to a series on Apple TV featuring Gary Oldman. Bad Actors is the latest in the series. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices