Krissy Kneen on An Uncertain Grace, a novel about taboos around younger and older sexual desires, Artistic Director and choreographer Stephen Page on Bangarra Dance Theatre's Bennelong, and Josephine Wilson's 2017 Miles Franklin award-winning novel Extinctions.

Tony Jones' first novel, recorder virtuoso Genevieve Lacey plays for us and talks about the contemporary potential of her ancient instrument and Scottish crimewriter Chris Brookmyre reveals what has influenced him for Top Shelf.

Award-winning Melbourne author Chris Womersley's latest novel is set in 1673 in France during the plague, Wayne McGregor on his contemporary ballet Tree of Codes, what's on crime writer Michael Robotham's Top Shelf and Argentine literary star Samanta Schweblin discusses her surreal and unsettling novel Fever Dream.

Michael Rosen follows Émile Zola in exile in London after he was sentenced to prison for his vocal support of Alfred Dreyfus, we travel to remote communities in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara lands of South Australia to find out why these tiny art centres are producing such phenomenal contemporary art and Melbourne based actor, director and playwright Peter Houghton joins us with some surprising favourites on his Top Shelf.

Min Jin Lee's latest novel Pachinko tells the story of a Korean family's search for identity, the Museum of Contemporary Art's exhibition (which is now on at the Heide Museum of Contemporary Art in Melbourne) Jenny Watson: the Fabric of Fantasy covers four decades of the artist's work, British author Claire Fuller discusses the books, films and music that inspired her to become a writer and through stories of their life and family, Ivan Coyote works fearlessly at the edges of gender, queer and identity politics.

We revisit a Murder Monday from last year, which was all about the police: a working cop, a former cop, and two novelists who have police officers as protagonists. Michael Cathcart is joined by Detective Chief Inspector Gary Jubelin, senior homicide detective in the NSW police force; former police officer and true crime writer, Duncan McNab; and novelists Adrian McKinty and Candice Fox.

A conversation with British American writer Tracy Chevalier from the 2017 Melbourne Writers Festival.

A super fan and literary academic gets up close and personal with the thriller writer Lee Child, Legendary jazz musician James Morrison with his Top Shelf picks and a recently released collection of stories from F. Scott Fitzgerald show him in a new light; the flappers and the champagne are gone, and in their place are dark stories of war, sex and suicide.

Lia Hills on her novel The Crying Place that journeys into the Western Desert, an art exhibition by homeless artists in Melbourne and Colson Whitehead on his brutal, playful, novel of slavery, The Underground Railroad, which won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

UK comedians Jenny Éclair and James Veitch tell us about their 2017 Melbourne International Comedy Festival shows, the late satirist John Clarke pens a letter to his younger self, Michael Adams considers whether swearing is a sign of moral failing and bibliophile Stuart Kells on real and imagined libraries and the love of books.