Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode features Kay Kerr discussing her debut novel Please Don't Hug Me.

High school is tough for everyone, but Erin has to wonder if someone is trying to make it especially difficult. She’s been fired from her job for dropping truth bombs and her clique of friends are the sort you’re sometimes better off without.

Erin’s trying to complete high school and schoolies is the unofficial/official finishing line. Erin is on the autism spectrum but only a few people know. Her best friend Dee is always ready with doughnuts to fix a bad day, and her new friend Aggie just knows the right thing to say. But Erin still has to figure out her world and where she fits in it. She has a one of a kind brain and what she really wants is to talk with her big brother Rudy about how he survived high school.

Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode features Madeleine Watts discussing her debut novel The Inland Sea.

The unnamed narrator of The Inland Sea, has recently left the comfort of university with barely a vague plan for what comes next in her life. She falls into a job as an emergency call centre operator. There she listens day in and day out as disasters befall callers around the country. As she jots down these moments in her notepad she becomes fascinated with the kinds of tragedies that fill her world, little realising the impending climate cataclysm awaiting us all.

Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode features Chris Flynn discussing his new novel Mammoth.

In an auction house in New York a Mammoth and a Tyrannosaurus Bataar while away the hours before their sale by recounting tales of their past. Joined by a prehistoric penguin, the pharaoh Hatshepsut and a pterodactyl the group take us on a journey into our modern world by way of the destruction us bipeds have caused to create it...

Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode features Suzanne Leal discussing her new novel The Deceptions.

The Deceptions is a story that emerges out of the second world war. On the order of the occupying Nazi invaders, Jewish residents of Prague are interred in the fortress town of Terezin, in what would be known as the Theresienstadt ghetto.

Hanah is one of those imprisoned in Theresienstadt; watching and waiting as residents slowly leave on unknowable transports. When a local gendarme begins to show Hanah attention she realises this might be a chance for survival, but at what cost?

Out of these terrible times emerge stories and secrets that continue to reverberate through to our modern day...

Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode features Vivian Pham discussing her debut novel The Coconut Children.

Vince has returned to the streets of his youth, not yet old, but legendary after a two year stint in juvenile detention. It’s Cabramatta in the late 90’s and as the suburb and the schools struggle to contain Vince’s vitality, Sonny can only watch on from afar.

Sonny and Vince were childhood friends. But now Sonny is grappling with her own growing maturity and cannot fathom that the almost mythological figure of Vince might even notice her as she watches from the window next door...

M.J. Tjia is the nom de plume of Mirandi Riwoe.

We featured Mirandi's latest novel Stone Sky Gold Mountain on this week's show and as a special bonus we've dipped back into the archive for a conversation from 2017 between Andrew and Mirandi about her first novel featuring Victorian detective Heloise Chancey, She Be Damned.

She Be Damned opens on Victorian London in its heyday; as the city expands and the population booms London is a city divided. Society doyens need never bother themselves that women are being brutally killed and mutilated across the river in Waterloo. Heloise Chancey lives with a foot in both worlds. Styling herself a courtesan, she works for her intellectual pleasure as a private detective and is drawn into the gruesome murders when the daughter of a gentleman goes missing.

Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode features Mirandi Riwoe discussing her latest novel Stone Sky Gold Mountain.

Stone Sky Gold Mountain transports the reader to the Queensland gold fields of the mid nineteenth century. Siblings Ying and Lai Yue have left their homes in China and travelled to Australia to seek enough money to restore their family.

Ying must disguise herself, passing as a boy, lest her gender see her taken advantage of and brutalised. As a male she discovers freedoms denied her as a woman but also sees the restrictions she lives under. When Ying & Lai Yue realise they cannot survive on mere gold dust they move to Maytown; the settlement established to furnish the goldfields.

In Maytown, Meriam and Sophie live on the outskirts. Meriam longs for her old life and bristles at the town’s treatment of her as the maid of a sex worker.

Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode features Tara Moss discussing her latest novel The Cobra Queen.

The Cobra Queen transports us to New York city where Pandora English is establishing herself in the world of fashion and trying to come to terms with her role as a supernatural saviour in the upcoming apocalypse.

Whilst on a fashion shoot at New York’s Metropolitan museum of Art, Pandora notices strange goings on around an upcoming exhibition on the Pharaoh Hatshepsut. The female pharaoh was nearly erased from the historical record following her death, so why might she be turning up in New York city?

Join me as we discover Tara Moss’s The Cobra Queen

Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode features Karina Kilmore discussing her debut novel Where the Truth Lies.

Chrissy O’Brian is an investigative journalist who’s had to escape her home town after becoming the center of her own story. She’s come to Melbourne to heal, to escape, perhaps to forget. She’s landed a job at the Argus in a time of layoffs and is no one's best friend for the fact. When a puff piece profile interview turns dark and a young woman dies, Chrissy decides to investigate whether her boss gives her the go ahead or not...

Join me as we discover Karina Kilmore ’s Where the Truth Lies

Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode features Terence J Quinn discussing his new book Deadline.

Johnno Bligh’s living a peaceful life in Sydney having survived pirates and prison. Contemplating his next project is headhunted by a Russian Oligarch to head up the British Tabloid UK Today as its editor.

Uprooting his young family and peaceful existence, Johnno heads to London and headlong into conspiracy, terror and treason.