The Bookshelf

Join Kate and Cassie as they explore new fiction alongside guests: musician Tim Rogers (You Am I) and novelist Madeleine Gray (Green Dot, Chosen Family). Three American novels, each tackling big ideas in very different ways - from the political absurdity and humour of Jess Walter’s So Far Gone, to the mockumentary-style tensions of Patmeena Sabit’s Good People, to the darkly comic moral maze of Jonathan Miles’ Eradication.
BOOKS
Jess Walter, So Far Gone, Harper
Jonathan Miles, Eradication, Riverrun
Patmeena Sabit, Good People, Virago
GUESTS
Tim Rogers, singer-songwriter and actor. Frontman of You Am I.
Madeleine Gray, novelist whose books are Green Dot and Chosen Family
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED
Larry McMurtry, works
Bertie Blackman, Bohemian Negligence
Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts
Nussaibah Younis, Fundamentally
Niamh Campbell, Make Strange
Ellena Savage, The Ruiners; Blueberries
Alexandra Vasti, Ladies in Hating
Katherine Mansfield, works
Ian Penman, Three Piece Suite
Zadie Smith, The Fraud
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
CREDITS
Presenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh
Producer, Kate Evans and Sarah Corbett
Sound engineer, Antonia Gauci and Harvey O'Sullivan
Arts editor, Rhiannon Brown

Madeline Cash’s buzzy debut Lost Lambs pairs an off‑kilter storytelling sensibility with a sharp exploration of displacement and identity. George Saunders returns with Vigil, offering his moral curiosity in a novel that probes what it means to pay attention to the world. George Kemp’s Soft Serve delivers a charming and quietly affecting debut about growing up in a small town; and Steven Carroll’s The Afterlife of Harry Playford continues his investigations of history and memory.
BOOKS
Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs, Doubleday
George Saunders, Vigil, Bloomsbury
George Kemp, Soft Serve, UQP
Steven Carroll, The Afterlife of Harry Playford, Fourth Estate
GUESTS
Michael Robotham is an international crime writer and former journalist whose books include The Secrets She Keeps, Good Girl Bad Girl, and his latest, White Crow. His next novel — his first to be set in Australia — will be published in October.
Roanna Gonsalves is a writer and teacher of creative writing whose short‑story collection The Permanent Resident won wide acclaim. Her novel The Servants will be published later this year.
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED
Kurt Vonnegut, works
Joseph Heller, works
Thomas Pynchon, works
Jonathan Franzen, works
Paul Murray, The Bee Sting
DBC Pierre, Vernon God Little
Shaun Prescott, The Town
Stephen King, works
Liz Nugent, The Truth About Ruby Cooper
Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
Deborah Adelaide, When I Am Sixty-Four
Tim Ayliffe, Dark Desert Road
Katie Kitamura, Audition
CREDITS
Presenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh
Producer, Kate Evans and Sarah Corbett
Sound engineer, Roi Huberman
Arts editor, Rhiannon Brown

Kate and Cassie read award-winning Australian author Michael Mohammed Ahmad’s bold new novel Bugger, while reviewers Hannah Kent and Tom Wright take on Jennette McCurdy’s provocative new book Half His Age — from the former child actor whose memoir I'm Glad My Mom Died shook readers worldwide — and Nina McConigley’s How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder...does it live up to the name?
BOOKS 
Michael Mohammed Ahmad, Bugger, Hachette 
Jennette McCurdy, Half His Age, Fourth Estate 
Nina McConigley, How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder, Fleet 
GUESTS 
Hannah Kent, novelist, screenwriter, and memoirist, whose books include Burial Rites, The Good People, Devotion, and Always Home, Always Homesick 
Tom Wright, Artistic Associate at Belvoir St.Theatre 
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED
Jim Butcher, Twelve Months: The Dresden Files 
Sita Walker, In a Common Hour 
Jonas Jonasson, The Distinctly Competent District Councillor  
Catherine Newman, Wreck 
India-Rose Bower, We Call Them Witches 
Amie Kaufman, Red Star Rebels 
Yxavel Magno Diňo, The Firefly Crown 
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
Kiran Desai, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
Olga Ravn, The Wax Child 
Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
Travis Baldree, Brigands and Breadknives 
Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths
CREDITS
Presenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh
Producer, Kate Evans and Sarah Corbett
Sound engineer, Micky Grossman and Ann Marie Debettencor
Arts editor, Rhiannon Brown

Kate and Cassie are back for a big year of books, beginning with Booker-Prize winner Julian Barnes' Departures, a novel about looking back, facing the future, and coming to the end of life. Plus, regular reviewers Tony Birch and Beejay Silcox join us for discussions on This, My Second Life by British novelist Patrick Charnley, and Iluka, by Australian author Cassie Stroud.
BOOKS
Julian Barnes, Departure(s), Jonathan Cape
Cassie Stroud, Iluka, HQ Books
Patrick Charnley, This, My Second Life, Hutchinson Heinemann
GUESTS
Tony Birch, poet, novelist and short story writer whose books include Dark as Last Night, Shadow Boxing, Women and Children and The White Girl. His latest is Pictures of You. He is also a Professor of Australian literature at the University of Melbourne
Beejay Silcox, critic, writer and regular interviewer at writers festivals.
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED
Lily King, Heart the Lover
Anne Enright, Attention
Melissa Lucashenko, Not Quite White in the Head
Bryan Washington, Palaver; Family Meal
Souvankham Thammavongsa, Pick the Colour
Charlotte Wood, The Weekend
Ann Patchett, Tom Lake
Jonathan Tropper, And Then We Came To the End
Maggie Shipstead, Seating Arrangements
Emily O'Grady, Feast
Hayle Felicity, Our Brother Nick and the Tolling Bell
Elizabeth Strout, My Name is Lucy Barton
Joe Hill, King Sorrow
Haldor Laxness, Independent People
Dani Netherclift The Shape of Absent Bodies
George Eliot, Middlemarch
Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
Eric Puchner, Dream State
CREDITS
Presenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh
Producer, Kate Evans and Sarah Corbett
Sound engineer, Roi Hubermann and Ann Marie Debettencor
Arts editor, Rhiannon Brown

Novelist and memoirist Maggie O'Farrell in conversation with Kate Evans at the 2025 Sydney Writers Festival. Her nine novels include After You'd Gone, the Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, This Must be the Place, Hamnet and the Marriage Portrait . . . and her extraordinary memoir is I Am I Am I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death.