The Bookshelf’s best: Four standout novels from the past year
Jun 26, 202653m
We review the latest in fiction for dedicated readers and for those who wish they read more.
Hosted by ABC Australia · 🇺🇸 US · EN · 514 episodes
Established thought leaders with verified media credentials.
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.
ABC Australia hosts The Bookshelf, a arts show with 514 episodes published.
We review the latest in fiction for dedicated readers and for those who wish they read more.
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 grandfat
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
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, my
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 T
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
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 tu
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‑bend
In this episode, superstar reviewer Hannah Kent tackles the rugged terrain of a journey that edges towards the Tibetan border in Deepa Anappara's The Last of Earth, and theatre writer Tom Wright ponders extraterrestrial
This week The Bookshelf leans into the wild as Kate Evans and guests are circled by stories of wolves, wild boar and witches, along with the final year of celebrated poet Sylvia Plath and a sensual story of food and obse
In this episode, Kate and Cassie are joined by celebrated novelist Madeleine Gray and rock icon Tim Rogers for a wide-ranging discussion looking at three works of contemporary fiction: Indian writer Amitav Ghosh’s Ghost
Memory, lost conversations and almost-fathers-and sons in Ben Lerner's Transcription; children divided by the throw of a dice, and that's just the start of it, in Steve Toltz's A Rising of the Lights; no such thing as un
What does it mean to write using an 'ethical imagination'? Colum McCann onstage with Kate Evans at the 2025 Melbourne Writers Festival, on his novels Twist, Apeirogon, TransAtlantic, Let the Great World Spin and many mor
This week The Bookshelf revisits the Trojan War from the ground up in Yann Martel’s Son of Nobody, moves through friendship and loss in Debra Adelaide’s When I Am Sixty‑Four, and dives into queer Sydney in the 1940s with
A rich mix of voices and stories in short fiction from acclaimed Native American writer Louise Erdrich; essays and memories from two‑time Miles Franklin Award winner Alex Miller; bleakly funny childhood tales by English
What if the most talked‑about streaming show of the moment was a mirror reflecting your most private fears and failures? That unnerving question sits at the heart of John Lanchester’s Look What You Made Me Do, a sharp no
A Bookshelf festival special featuring Kate Evans onstage with writers Jock Serong and Emily Maguire on historical fiction, from the 2025 Sydney Writers Festival. GUESTS Emily Maguire is a novelist and essayist whose boo
Statues come alive and London is re-imagined in Francis Spufford's Nonesuch, and surprising parallels in two Australian novels of secrets, shame, land and time in M L Stedman's A Far-Flung Life and Eva Hornung's The Mins
In this episode, we travel from the Swiss Alps to the quiet strangeness of Danish suburbia and the fierce edges of American literary drama. We begin with the visceral intensity of Gabriel Tallent’s latest novel, Crux, wh
Emerald Fennell's film adaptation of Wuthering Heights has been marketed as " the greatest love story ever told ", which is not typically the description given to the original novel. What does this adaptation achieve, an
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The Bookshelf is hosted by ABC Australia. The show is categorised under arts (books) and has published 514 episodes.
The Bookshelf has published 514 episodes.
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