Final Draft - Great Conversations

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

Today's episode introduces a new podcast about books and mystery, Death of the Reader.

Death of the Reader of the Reader takes you on a Murder Mystery World Tour. Presented Sundays at 9PM by Felix Shannon and Benjamin Herder you’ll be treated to the history and mystery of classic detective fiction; from classic British puzzles in the Golden Age of Detective Fiction to the weirdest of foreign detective fiction, and explore everything in the grizzly world of the 'locked room'.

Catch more Death of the Reader here...

https://player.whooshkaa.com/shows/death-of-the-reader

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 Madeleine St John's A Pure Clear Light.

It is nineteen nineties London and St John invites us into the home of the Beaufort’s; Simon has recently begun an affair, while Flora is flirting with a return to religion…

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

Today's episode features Sulari Gentill discussing her new Rowland Sinclair mystery All the Tears in China.

Book nine of the Rowland Sinclair mysteries sees Rowland and his Scooby gang of crime fighting artist friends travelling to Shanghai. Ostensibly they are there to represent the Sinclair family’s interests at trade negotiations, but it also helps to get Rowland out of Australia where he is only one step away from being disappeared by the various conservative forces he has crossed.

In 1935 Shanghai Rowland discovers a world larger than he has ever known. When a body is discovered in his penthouse suite Rowland will discover his family fortune and connections only get him so far here and he cannot rely on his older brother to pull strings when he’s in a jam.

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

Today's episode features Judith Brett discussing her new history From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage.

From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage offers the reader a history of Australia’s electoral systems from the period before Federation and describes how we came to be a nation that not only enforces compulsory voting but celebrates it.

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

Today's episode features Omar Sakr discussing his new collection The Lost Arabs.

The Lost Arabs explores identity, family and social life; with Omar delving into what it means to be Arab Australian, to be gay and how these identities are never just personal. The collection is deeply personal but also social look at the ways in which identity and community are structured, then legitimised or denied.

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

Today's episode features Gomeroi poet Alison Whittaker discussing her new collection Blakwork.

Blakwork collects Alison’s poetry and essay covering personal and social biography, satire and critique. It explores Alison’s life as a First Nations woman, and her experiences as a poet and a lawyer.

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.

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.