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The Bookshelf

ABC Australia

What are you reading, loving or being challenged by? We review the latest in fiction for dedicated readers and for those who wish they read more.

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  • 24 episodes
  • weekly
  • Avg 57 min
  • English

Episodes 24

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  • Friday · 1 hr 1 min

    Emily St. John Mandel and John Boyne alongside a Booker-longlisted debut

    Kate and Cassie take a look at bestselling author Emily St. John Mandel's latest, Exit Party, an epic that follows a doppelgänger and a man who disappears from a Los Angeles party in 2031, leading to a journey across parallel worlds and fractured timelines. Internationally-bestselling crime writer Michael Robotham is in to discuss The Weight of Angels by John Boyne; and Graham Akhurst, novelist, academic and Director of Indigenous Studies at the University of Technology  on Turkish writer Kenan

  • September 11 · 54 min

    New Fiction: Donal Ryan, Emma Cline, Max Easton and Sebastian Barry

    We step into Irish bestseller Donal Ryan's world in Where Are the Kings, a tender coming of age story about a boy navigating grief. Inside a fracturing mind in Emma Cline’s Booker Longlisted novel Switzy, read with novelist Madeleine Gray. A chronicle of DIY activism, collectives and autonomous living in Sydney's west in Australian writer Max Easton’s Now, Autonomy, read for us by singer-songwriter Tim Rogers, and a newer world emerges in the wake of the American Civil War in Sebastian Barry’s n

  • September 4 · 54 min

    New Fiction from Melissa Harrison and Malcolm Knox + Mandy Sayer's Top 3

    Kate and Cassie with regular reviewer Tom Wright discuss new releases including Melissa Harrison’s The Given World and Malcolm Knox’s The Second Child. Plus, novelist and memoirist Mandy Sayer on her Top 3 Australian books ahead of Radio National's Top 100 Australian Books Countdown. Mandy Sayer's Top 3 Australian Books Christina Stead, The Man Who Loved Children (1940) Robin Dalton, Aunts up the Cross (1965) David Malouf, Johnno (1975)  Other books mentioned A.B. Facey, A Fortunate Life Georg

  • August 28 · 54 min

    Top 100 Australian Books from Byron Writers Festival

    Voting in Radio National's Top 100 Books countdown is about to open and this year we're celebrating Australian books. As you think about your own Top 10, Kate and Cassie bring together a trio of award-winning writers (including last year's Top 100 Books winner!) to reveal the Australian books they have loved and been influenced by: Trent Dalton, Claire Thomas and Steve MinOn, with a surprise appearance in the audience from Grimmish and Griefdogg author Michael Winkler. Books mentioned Storm Boy

  • August 21 · 1 hr 5 min

    Anjet Daanje's extraordinary The Stork and the Dromedary + Liane Moriarty returns with Big Little Truths

    Anjet Daanje's The Song of Stork and Dromedary, translated from the Dutch, explores the intimate work of death and care in the eighteenth century. Liane Moriarty returns to the world of Big Little Lies with Big Little Truths, reuniting readers with the coastal suburb of Pirriwee and her cast a decade on,  just with a little more menopausal rage, teenage angst, and a severed finger. Joining us are regular reviewer Beejay Silcox, along with Cheryl Akle from Better Reading. Plus, critic and publish

  • July 24 · 54 min

    From Covid-era China to the world of Frida Kahlo and Colson Whitehead's latest

    Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead’s latest novel Cool Machine is a vivid portrait of Black New York in the 1980s. The book reunites readers with furniture salesman and part-time fence Ray Carney. Kate Evans and regular reviewer, critic and essayist Beejay Silcox discuss. Also this week, Isabelle Li’s The Northern Tomb offers an intimate and richly textured portrait of life in Northeast China during the Covid pandemic, while Claire Berest’s Frida brings the passion, colour and compl

  • July 17 · 1 hr 2 min

    Art, apocalypse and country people

    Dave Eggers explores the messy intersection of art, friendship and growing up in Contrapposto, while Daniel Mason's Country People follows an academic family into a Vermont landscape full of stories and believers in worlds beneath the earth. Then Maria Takolander's The End of Romance imagines life after collapse. Joining Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh are our regular reviewers, novelist Madeleine Gray and musician Tim Rogers.  Plus, playwright and novelist George Kemp shares three favourite A

  • July 10 · 59 min

    Laura McPhee Browne, Leïla Slimani, Kris Kneen & Bruce Pascoe's favourite Aus books

    This week on The Bookshelf, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh discuss new novels including Laura McPhee-Browne's Worry Doll, a story of desire, obsession and uncertainty; Leïla Slimani's I'll Take the Fire, the acclaimed French-Moroccan writer's rich, politically charged exploration of family, memory and identity; and Kris Kneen's Rite of Spring, an eerie island novel where strange creatures lurk in the mist. Joining the program are regular reviewers, bestselling crime writer Michael Robotham and

  • July 3 · 53 min

    Melbourne Writers' Festival with Hannah Kent and Beejay Silcox

    A live recording from the 2025 Melbourne Writers Festival, with guests Hannah Kent and Beejay Silcox. Hannah Kent, Always Home, Always Homesick (Picador) Eimear McBride, The City Changes Its Face (Faber) Susan Choi, Flashlight (Jonathan Cape) Edward St Aubyn, Parallel Lines (Jonathan Cape) Caryl Phillips, Another Man in the Street (Bloomsbury) Guests Hannah Kent is the author of the novels Burial Rites, The Good People and Devotion. Her latest book is the memoir, Always Home, Always Homesick

  • June 19 · 53 min

    Zan Rowe and Madeleine Gray review: Chris Ames/Fiona Mozley/Niamh Campbell

    Cassie McCullagh is joined by Jonathan Green this time, for a wide-ranging hour of new fiction, from Australia and beyond. First, Fiona Mozley’s unsettling Awake Awake, where a young woman begins to suspect her grandfather may have killed Adolf Hitler, Zan Rowe weighs in. Then, Irish writer Niamh Campbell’s Make Strange, a quietly eerie novel about a four-year-old asking impossible questions, including whether she’s lived before...Madeleine Gray gives her verdict. And we begin with a striking ne

  • June 12 · 54 min

    Michael Robotham and Roanna Gonsalves review: Andrew Sean Greer/Ilka Tampke/Michael Pedersen

    From a sun-drenched Tuscan reset with a side of style advice (Andrew Sean Greer's Villa Coco via Michael Robotham), to Ilka Tampke’s How To Love the World, a tender take on parenting and the pull of the bush (guided by Roanna Gonsalves), and throw in a windswept lighthouse on the edge of the world with Michael Pedersen’s Muckle Flugga. ~ OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED Charles Bukowski, works Andrew Sean Greer, Less Graham Greene, Travels with My Aunt Patrick Dennis, Auntie Mame Steve Toltz, works Ilka

  • June 5 · 54 min

    Hannah Kent and Tom Wright review: Maggie O'Farrell/Ann Patchett/Christine Balint

    Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh are joined by regulars Hannah Kent and Tom Wright to talk new fiction from three major voices: Maggie O’Farrell’s Land, an expansive novel set in famine-era Ireland that traces memory, myth and the imprint of history on place; Ann Patchett’s Whistler, a sharp story of family, lost fathers and the long shadow of childhood; and Christine Balint’s A Single Witness, which follows a teenage girl confronting her community and the law in 18th-century Italy. ~ OTHER BOOK

  • May 29 · 54 min

    Beejay Silcox & Bernadette Brennan review: Doireann Ní Ghríofa/Chloe Wilson/Deborah Levy

    Kate Evans is joined by Bernadette Brennan and Beejay Silcox to talk three striking new releases: Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s Said the Dead, a haunting, archive-rich exploration of a derelict Irish asylum; Chloe Wilson’s The Thornbacks, a darkly comic debut of morticians, dating apps and unsettling female entanglements; and Deborah Levy’s My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein, a playful meditation on literary life in Paris.  ~ OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED Amitav Ghosh, Ghost-Eye Susan Choi, Flashlight  S.A.

  • May 22 · 54 min

    Launching ABC Radio National’s 2026 Top 100 Books countdown at SWF

    The Bookshelf comes to you from a sold out session at Sydney Writers’ Festival, for a conversation that brings together an exceptional line-up: acclaimed novelist and poet Tony Birch, Miles Franklin Award-winning author Siang Lu, and internationally celebrated writer Lily King. Together, with Cassie, Kate and special guest Claire Nichols from The Book Show, they mark the launch of ABC Radio National’s 2026 Top 100 Books countdown, this year turning the spotlight on the very best of Australian wr

  • May 15 · 54 min

    Madeleine Gray & Tim Rogers review: Wayne Marshall/Ellena Savage/Lena Dunham/Douglas Stuart

    We head by rackety ferry to Scotland in John of John, the latest, quietly devastating novel from Shuggie Bain author Douglas Stuart. Henry Lawson reimagined - brawling poets, strange tunnels, time loops, and a warped tussle between city and bush in Wayne Marshall’s Henry Goes Bush, reviewed by You Am I's Tim Rogers. From there, novelist Madeleine Gray turns her eye to Lena Dunham’s sharp, self‑aware memoir Famesick, before moving to Ellena Savage’s The Ruiners, which shifts between a Melbourne l

  • May 8 · 54 min

    Elizabeth Strout returns, Caro Claire Burke's Yesteryear and more new fiction

    This week’s Bookshelf features the latest from Elizabeth Strout, creator of Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton, returning with a stand‑alone novel called The Things We Never Say. We’re also reading an ambitious, genre‑bending novel that moves from 1980s gaming culture to far‑future space travel, and Daniel Kehlmann’s The Director, a German novel in translation that explores film, power and propaganda. Joining us to review are Geordie Williamson - critic, publisher and writer; and Robert Forster -

Showing 1–20 of 24 episodes