The Bookshelf

A year on from the death of Frank Moorhouse, we examine the work of this much-loved yet troubled writer with his biographer Catharine Lumby and colleague Angelo Loukakis.

Kate and Cassie read Chris Womersley's Ordinary Gods and Monsters, Jenny Erpenbeck's Kairos and Tan Twan Eng's The House of Doors with critic Declan Fry and novelist Nilima Rao

Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh read Peter Polites' God Forgets About the Poor, Angela O'Keeffe's The Sitter and Guy Guneratne's Mister Mister with poet Madison Godfrey and journalist and novelist Paul Daley

Cassie and Kate read Ann Patchett's Tom Lake, Naoise Dolan's The Happy Couple and Hwang Sok-yong's Mater 2-10 with actor Angourie Rice and novelist Jock Serong

Kate, Cassie and guests examine all six finalists for the 2023 miles Franklin Literary Award.

Kate and Cassie read Colson Whitehead's Crook Manifesto, Elizabeth McCracken's The Hero of this Book and Emily Perkins' Lioness with poet Miles Merrill and literary scholar Bernadette Brennan

Kate Evans and Jonathan Green read Gretchen Shirm's The Crying Room, Richard Ford's Be Mine and Claire Kilroy's Soldier Sailor with historian Peter McPhee and writer Ashley Hay. Cassie McCullagh will be back for the next edition of The Bookshelf.

Kate Evans onstage with writers Colson Whitehead, Eleanor Catton, Richard Flanagan and Tracey Lien at the recent Sydney Writers Festival, on the state of the novel.

Aboriginal, Chinese-Malaysian and Muslim writer and academic Eugenia Flynn co-hosts the Bookshelf this week with Kate Evans, reading Anna Funder's Wifedom: Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life, Priya Guns' Your Driver is Waiting and Jen Craig's Wall with novelists Max Easton (The Magpie Wing) and Amy Taylor (Search History)

What is it about the Greek myths that make them so adaptable, reusable, ever popular – and up for all manner of rewrites?

Interviews with all six shortlisted authors for the 2023 Miles Franklin Literary Award from RN's The Bookshelf and Book Show (in alphabetical order). The shortlist was announced on 20 June; the winner will be announced on 25 July.

Stealing a manuscript, walking your grief along coastal edges and underhand behaviour at an international AIDS conference: Kate and Cassie read Dennis Altman's Death in the Sauna, R F Kuang's Yellowface and Briohny Doyle's Why We Are Here with guests Benjamin Law and Lee Kofman

A story of wandering pilgrims, woman brewers, stonemasons and eels – in the North of England from the 7th century until now; and Métis-Michif women in Canada across the twentieth and into the twenty-first century: Kate Evans speaks with Katherena Vermette about The Strangers (recorded at the 2023 Brisbane Writers Festival) and Benjamin Myers about Cuddy

Naked politicians, roadtrips with the dead, and funny-sad girls in Berlin: Kate and Cassie read Robert Gott's Naked Ambition, Lorrie Moore's I am Homeless if this is not My Home and Pip Finkemeyer's Sad Girl Novel with critics Jessie Tu and Madeleine Gray.

Step aboard this Book Club edition of The Bookshelf which is hopelessly devoted to the genre of Romantic Comedy.

Kate and Cassie recorded this edition of The Bookshelf onstage at the Sydney Writers Festival on Friday 26 May 2023 with writers Shehan Karunatilaka, Jason Reynolds and Grace Chan

Kate and Cassie read Benjamin Myers' Cuddy, Robyn Cadwallader's The Fire and the Rose and Emma Cline's The Guest with mediaeval historian Clare Monagle and novelist Laura McPhee-Brown

Kate and Cassie read Deborah Levy's August Blue, André Dao's Anam and Catherine Lacey's Biography of X with guests writer and curator Sheila Ngọc Phạm and theatre writer Tom Wright. Histories, family stories, identities, doppelgangers, secrets and lies.

Kate and Cassie read John Kinsella’s Cell Night: A Verse Novel, Jente Posthuma’s What I’d Rather Not Think About and Justin Cronin’s The Ferryman with poet and novelist Omar Sakr and documentary maker Johan Gabrielsson

When Salman Rushdie was attacked in Chautauqua, New York in August last year, Victory City, his latest novel, was already finished. Some say it's not only a return to form, but also uncannily prophetic.

Reading Max Porter's Shy, Han Kang's Greek Lessons and Yan Lianke's Heart Sutra with writers (and writers-in-translation, both) Linda Jaivin and Ennis Ćehić

Reading Pip Williams' The Bookbinder of Jericho, Juan Gómez-Jurado's Red Queen and Nicole Flattery's Nothing Special with writers Ashley Kalagian Blunt and Joanna Horton

Savage explorations of the present, using different literary forms, in two new novels. Kate and Cassie are joined by guests film academic Bruce Isaacs and NZ literary leader Claire Mabey, to read Booker Prize winning novelist Eleanor Catton's latest, Birnam Wood, and American writer Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's Chain-Gang All-Stars.

A journey through the myriad of ways weather presents itself in fiction for this monthly edition of The Book Club.

Reading Julia Langbein's comedic take on Hollywood's ruthless screen industry in American Mermaid, and Stephanie Bishop's The Anniversary, a watery mystery about creative tension and desire.

Reading award-winning novelist Rebecca Makkai's I Have Some Questions For You, along with The Silence Project by Carole Hailey. Plus, an interview with much-loved Irish novelist Sebastian Barry.

Reading Anindita Ghose's bestseller The Illuminated and Is Mother Dead by Norwegian author Vigdis Hjorth with guest reviewers Maria Takolander and Suma Iyer, and an interview with Australian author Alice Nelson.

Novels about infidelity can be cautionary tales but also reveal changing attitudes

Is there a more enduring theme in literature? From the ancient greats to bestseller romances, it's been the subject of both untold anguish and fascination. Why is it that we never seem to tire of this all-too-human experience?

A Sydney WorldPride edition of the Bookshelf, as Kate and Cassie are joined by guests George Haddad and C S Pacat to read Samantha Shannon's A Day of Fallen Night and K Ming Chang's Gods of Want (with comments from both these writers); and Arinze Ifeakandu (God's Children Are Little Broken Things) on queer lives and writing in Nigeria.

Reading Kevin Jared Hosein's Hungry Ghosts, set in 1940s Trinidad (and we hear from the author too); Tom Rob Smith's Cold People, in a reshaped Antarctica, and Cho Nam-Joo's Saha in a corporate city-state, imagined in Korea. Kate and Cassie are joined by writer Shannon Burns and literary facilitator Michaela Kalowski.

Poet Maxine Beneba Clarke and novelist Michael Winkler join Kate and Cassie as they read Ronnie Scott's Shirley, Eleanor Shearer's River Sing Me Home and James Kelman's God's Teeth and Other Phenomena

Unquiet ghosts, disconcerting babies, a shattered bust of a despot and a frontier Western: reading Stefan Hertmans' The Ascent, Ben Hobson's The Death of John Lacey and Laura McPhee Browns Little Plum with guests books writer Nicole Abadee and crime podcaster Ben Herder; and speaking with Paul Dalgarno about the books that shaped his latest, A Country of Eternal Light (hint: hello, Frankenstein)

Kate and Cassie are back with new fiction for 2023: reading Bret Easton Ellis' The Shards and Deepti Kapoor's Age of Vice with guests Geordie Williamson and Sue Turnbull; and Brigitta Olubas on her biography of writer Shirley Hazzard

Hoofbeats, assassins and tracks in the snow. Rereading Gillian Mears’ novel Foal’s Bread; reading Kári Gíslason's The Sorrow Stone; and speaking to Karen Joy Fowler about her novel Booth and the books that shaped it.

A child is lost in a nineteenth-century landscape carved out of both thousands of years of history, and more recent expectations and misunderstandings. An entire community rallies to find him – but their pathways diverge, overtake, retrace and obliterate each other. What a story! Novelist Fiona McFarlane speaks about The Sun Walks Down with Kate Evans.

Reading Steve Toltz's Here Goes Nothing and Ashley Goldberg's Abomination, and speaking to Tracey Lien (All That's Left Unsaid) and Sue Orr (Loop Tracks) about the books that have shaped them.

Stories that are tough and joyful, heartbreaking and beautiful, confronting and worth it: Kate Evans speaks with New Zealand writer Becky Manawatu about her novel, Aue; and to American writer Leila Mottley about Nightcrawling

Reading Canadian Métis writer Katherena Vermette's The Strangers, Irish writer Louise Kennedy's Trespasses, and speaking to Scottish writer Graeme Macrae Burnet about Case Study and the bookshelf that made it

What is it about Irish storytelling: that combination of poetry and pain, brutality and a wicked laugh or ten? All that lyrical toughness, and a sense of a history punctuated by a drumbeat of violence, is on display in Audrey Magee's novel, The Colony. A conversation with Kate EvansOther books and writers mentioned in this conversation:Emily Dickinson, worksMarcel Proust, worksJames Joyce, worksColette, worksPeig: The autobiography of Peig SayersWilliam Butler Yeats, works

Reading Chris Womersley's The Diplomat, Lauren John Joseph's At Certain Points We Touch and Jonathan Bazzi's Fever – with Nigel Featherstone; and talking to Nigerian-English writer Nikki May about her novel Wahala and the bookshelf that shaped her

Two writers who grapple with crime, with very different style and intent, in conversation with Kate Evans. American writer John Darnielle is also a musician (The Mountain Goats), and his books include Wolf in White Van and Universal Harvester. He speaks with Kate about his latest, Devil House. New Zealand crimewriter Charity Norman had an earlier career in England as a barrister, but now prefers fictional mysteries. Her books include After the Fall, The Secrets of Strangers and – the one to which we've attached this conversation – Remember Me

Four novels about islands: reading Emily Brugman's The Islands, Audrey Magee's The Colony and Eliza Henry Jones' Salt and Skin; and speaking to Tom Watson about his novel Metronome

English novelist Patrick Gale specialises in hidden lives, secret stories, and celebrating queer histories. His books include Rough Music, Notes from an Exhibition, and A Place Called Winter: and in his latest and seventeenth novel, Mother's Boy, he fictionalises the life of Cornish poet Charles Causley. He speaks to Kate Evans for a special Summer edition of The Bookshelf

Four writers speak to Kate Evans at the 2022 Melbourne Writers Festival about a particularly significant book, that shaped or defined them in some way: Abbas Nazari, Maya Hodge, Sarah Holland Batt and Chloe Hooper

Bestselling English novelist Philippa Gregory speaks with Kate Evans about the radical politics of the seventeenth century and how best to capture that in fiction.

Kate and Cassie are joined by guests literary editor Jason Steger, books podcaster Dani Vee and crime aficionado Felix Shannon to talk their favourite books of 2022 (and yes, we have indeed listed them all)

Talking cricket in fiction, with a particular focus on Inga Simpson's new novel, Willowman, with RN's sports specialist Warwick Hadfield, historian Marion Stell and journalist and crime writer Michael Brissenden

Reading Philip Salom's Sweeney and the Bicycles, Arinze Ifeakandu's God's Children Are Little Broken Things and Celeste Ng's Our Missing Hearts with Shakespearean scholar Huw Griffiths and novelist Nova Weetman

Walking the streets and exploring the shadows in 1930s Australia, in Fiona Kelly McGregor's Iris; lost towns and lost souls in Shaun Prescott's Bon and Lesley; and a dreamy not-quite-romance in Yumna Kassab's The Lovers with guests novelist Max Easton and literary studied academic Jodi McAlister