This week, Mel Cranenburgh spends some time, metaphorically, in New York, New York. Mel speaks to Alice Nelson about her novel The Children's House, which has been described as "a love song to the idea of families in all their mysteries and complexities, their different configurations and the hope that creates them". She is then joined by Madelaine Lucas on the line from New York, whose short story Ruins won the Australian Book Review's (ABR) 2018 Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. Madelaine wrote Ruins while living in Brooklyn but it is very much set in Australia.