Our July novel for the Latin American Book Club is The Sound of Things Falling by Columbian author Juan Gabriel Vásquez. First published in Spanish in 2011, it explores the drug trade in Bogota.

English novelist Nicola Barker joins us to discuss her new book, we visit a house about to be demolished but is being painted inside by street artist Rone, talk to Hugh Brunt who is about to conduct the music score of Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 film, There will be Blood at the Melbourne International Film Festival and contemplate what a self portrait means with Tjungkara Ken, a finalist in the Archibald portrait prize.

The Great Wave off Kanagawa by the 19th century Japanese artist Hokusai is now on display at the National Gallery of Victoria, we discuss the life and work of Dr G Yunupingu, one of Australia's greatest contemporary musicians, who has died aged 46, Trapper, a new theatre work for young adults, pits four performers against each other, and we compare the film adaptation with the novel, A Monster Calls, by young adult author Patrick Ness.

Improvisational jazz and spoken word poetry project: Daydreamer Wolf. Between life and death: the strange, funny world of Coma Land. Bell Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. An eight year old listener responds. The 2017 Helpmann Awards.

Irish author Colum McCann's writing tips in Letters to a Young Writer, a visit to the artists in the APY lands and Anna Spargo-Ryan's novel The Gulf.

Join us for the best of Books and Arts to celebrate the work of Jane Austen, after the 200th anniversary of her death.

Today we ask, does the latest dystopian nightmare TV adaptation of Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale ignore some crucial aspects of American repression, explore the consequences of ageing with Hunif Kureishi, discuss the implications of exhuming some of surrealist artist Salvador Dali's remains, and speak to sculpture and needlecraft artist Sera Waters about the dark side of domesticity.

1917: The Great Strike, a new public exhibition on at Sydney's Carriageworks, commemorates the centenary of one of Australia's largest industrial conflicts, Mark O'Flynn reimagines the existence of Australian writer Eve Langley in his Miles Franklin shortlisted novel The Last Days of Ava Langdon and young playwright Disapol Savetsila discusses his debut play Australian Graffiti, which is on now at Sydney Theatre Company.

Dennis Glover on his new novel, that shows that George Orwell's entire life was a preparation for the writing of 1984;

Rick Gekoski's novel Darke, story of a misanthrope; and Australian contemporary art is on show in Berlin in a group exhibition curated by artist Del Kathryn Barton.

Legacy, cultural history, novels, music and immortality of Jane Austen's work. And maybe some rollerblading.