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

Today's episode features Melanie Cheng discussing her new novel Room For a Stranger.

Room For a Stranger throws together an unlikely pairing in Melbourne’s suburbs. Meg Hughes is feeling every bit of her age and does like where things are heading. When her home in Melbourne’s suburbs is broken into, she joins a home share program so as to have some company and protection.

Andy is studying biomedicine, desperate to conceal the fact he feels over his head and might fail. When his father’s cleaning business in Hong Kong begins to struggle financially Andy must give up his apartment and find cheaper accommodation.

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

Today's episode features Meg Keneally discussing her new novels The Ink Stain and Fled.

The Ink Stain is the fourth in the historical Monserrat mystery novels. It takes the reader to colonial Sydney where Monsarrat; a former convict turned investigator must unearth the killer of an outspoken newspaper editor with a story that threatens to topple the colonial administration.

Fled is the story of Jenny Trelawny and is based on the true story of the convict Mary Bryant. Jenny is a highwaywoman transported to the British colony of New South Wales rather than hang in her home of Cornwall. There she attempts a bold plan to steal a ship and sail to freedom!

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

Today's episode takes us back to the Australian Classics Book Club.

This month's classic is Thomas Keneally's A Dutiful Daughter.

Barbara Glover awaits her brother Damien’s tardy return to the family farm. Damien has been away at university while Barbara remains on the farm caring for her invalided parents. The malady that confines the Glover's is not your typical malaise and Barbara has had to perform a type of bureaucratic subterfuge to ensure that no one investigates the farm.

In many ways Barbara’s parents have blamed her and she has taken on this responsibility ever since the night they turned into half human, half bovine centaurs.

Gerii Pleitez is the founder of Kara Sevda Press.

In this special bonus Great Conversation Gerii describes the founding of Kara Sevda Press and the publication of her debut novel On The Sunday, She Created God.

With a manifesto "to find and support Women of Colour writers and artists of all disciplines” and a mission to represent the diversity of Australia's arts community Gerii Pleitex is a force to be reckoned with.

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

Today's episode features Melina Marchetta discussing her new novel The Place on Dalhousie.

The Place on Dalhousie begins in Queensland where Rosie Gennaro has fled her life and is working as a carer when floods ravage the town. Jimmy Hailler is in town volunteering with the SES and the two come together for a few brief nights.

Two years later Rosie is back in Sydney with her young son, living in the house her father built. The house still occupied by Martha, Seb Gennaro’s second wife, the woman Rosie can barely bring herself to talk to.

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

Today's episode features Jaclyn Moriarty discussing her new novel Gravity is the Thing

Gravity is the Thing begins with Abigail Sorensen. Abigail has been invited on an all expenses paid trip on an island off Tasmania’s coast. There she joins a group of strangers to discover ‘the secret’. All any of them know is that for most of their lives they have each received chapters of a mysterious book starting when they were fifteen.

This mysterious Guidebook is more than just a curiosity to Abigail. The first chapter arrived the day before her brother went missing and her whole life she has wondered at the connection…

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

Today's episode takes us back to the Australian Classics Book Club.

This month's classic is Ruth Park's Fishing in the Styx.

Andrew is joined by Alaina Gougoulis, senior editor at Text Publishing and Tegan Bennett Daylight, author of Bombora and What Falls Away.

Ruth Park is the beloved creator of classic Australian works such as The Harp in the South, Playing Beattie Bow and the Muddle Headed Wombat series. Fishing in the Styx is a memoir of Ruth Park’s writing life. From her her arrival in Sydney and marriage to D’arcy Niland, her love and literary partner, through her extraordinary literary life Ruth Park maintained an extraordinary literary output. Fishing in the Styx is a portrait of a writer amongst writers and illustrates the hardship and extraordinary creativity it took to live the writing life in Sydney through the middle twentieth century.

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

Today's episode features Peggy Frew discussing her latest novel Islands.

Islands is the story of a family; Helen and John, their daughters June and Anna. A family who like any other love and quarrel and are not perfect in the ways that you can only be with loved ones.

And then one night, fifteen year old Anna doesn’t return home and the family’s lives are inexorably defined by that moment forevermore.

Michaela McGuire is the Artistic Director of the Sydney Writers Festival.

In this special bonus Great Conversation, Michaela joins Andrew to discuss the launch of the 2019 Festival program and the significance of the theme Lie To Me.

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

Today's episode features Dervla McTiernan discussing her latest thriller The Scholar.

As the Scholar begins there’s been a hit and run outside Galway University and a young woman is dead. Cormac Reilly’s partner Dr Emma Sweeney discovers the body. But calling Cormac first leads to a world of trouble as the investigation is threatened by their personal involvement. When an ID card on the body shows the victim to be a billionaire heiress, it’s quickly apparent this is more than a simple accidental death...