A Good Read

John Banville, writing as Benjamin Black, discusses the fourth novel in his Dublin mystery series A Death In Summer. How publishers are responding to the growing demand for short form fiction with writers Kevin Barry and Laura Dockrill on the phenomenon of the low priced short story download. And novelists Mary Hoffman and Lucille Turner look at the implications of writing books about iconic pieces of art.

Margaret Drabble discusses the new collection of her 13 short stories, published between 1966 and 2000. John Crace (the man behind the Guardian newspaper's Digested Reads) recommends books to read while relaxing on a beach and stands up for the classics.

Harriett Gilbert and her guests - actor Bill Paterson and travel writer Dea Birkett - discuss favourite paperback books by Bernhard Schlink, John Steinbeck and Richard Holme.

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

Footsteps by Richard Holmes

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in June 2011.

Mariella talks to award-winning author Amitav Ghosh about River of Smoke - the second book in his Ibis Trilogy set in the waterways around Canton during the events leading up to the start of the First Opium War in 1839. In this week's Reading Clinic, author Joanna Kavenna recommends fiction in which women rise like a phoenix from the ashes. And writer and poet Iain Sinclair explains why Alexander Baron, the British novelist of the Second World War, should be rediscovered and re-read.

Harriett Gilbert and her guests - politician, Lord Chris Smith and novelist, Mavis Cheek - discuss their favourite books by Robert Macfarlane, Frances Kay and Jackie Kay.

Trumpet by Jackie Kay

The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in June 2011.

Journalist and critic James Walton and Lindsey Davis, creator of the ancient Roman detective Falco join Harriett Gilbert to discuss favourite books by Richard Hughes, Nicholson Baker and Georgette Heyer.

A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes

James Walton's choice

Royal Escape by Georgette Heyer

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in May 2011.

Mariella celebrates a renaissance in historical fiction writing with authors Philippa Gregory, Sarah Dunant and Adrian Goldsworthy. The programme also includes an interview with Hilary Mantel, author of Booker prize winning novel "Wolf Hall" about the Tudor politician Thomas Cromwell.

Mariella talks to Frederick Forsyth, forty years after he wrote his ground-breaking novel The Day of the Jackal, one of the first modern international conspiracy thrillers. Authors Louise Welsh and Francis Spufford pay homage to one of the giants of English literature, Robert Louis Stevenson. And how amateur writers across Afghanistan are critiquing each other's work in home-grown literary salons.

Mariella talks to novelists Eoin Colfer and John Boyne about their new books as they cross the divide between writing for children and adults. Jim Crace, author of Booker nominated novel Quarantine, talks about writing his last book in a career which has lasted 25 years. And hot new Irish writer Kevin Barry and critic Suzi Feay discuss the way in which long running television drama series have influenced the contemporary novel.

Mariella talks to Booker winning author Anne Enright about her new novel, The Forgotten Waltz. Dickens fan Roy Hattersley and academic John Bowen examine the literary friendship between Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. And young adult author Patrick Ness talks about picking up the literary baton, after he completed a novel by fellow writer Siobhan Dowd following her death from cancer.