In My Good Books

This week on In My Good Books, I'm joined by debut author Divya Maniar to discuss After Care, a darkly compelling novel exploring reality TV, influencer culture, social media and our desperate need to be seen.

Grace was once a reality TV star, but two years after appearing on a dating show, her fame is fading and the brand deals are drying up. When a former castmate and rival dies, Grace suddenly finds herself back in the spotlight. But just how far is she willing to go to stay there?

Divya and I chat about her fascination with reality television, the inspiration behind her bcomplicated protagonist and the uncomfortable questions the novel raises about fame, validation and our own relationships with social media.

And, of course, we finish with some book recommendations!

Books mentioned:

• Motherhood – Sheila Heti

• A Female Life on Planet Earth – Laleh Khadivi

• Mother Ghost – Natalie Gregory

If you love literary fiction, morally complicated characters and stories that make you question the world around you, this is an episode you won't want to miss.

What happens when a former police officer turned executive coach becomes caught up in a dangerous investigation involving corruption, religion and the British royal family?

This week on In My Good Books, I'm joined by acclaimed crime writer Leye Adenle to discuss Fall From Grace, the first book in his new crime thriller series featuring Bobby Fatukan.

Leye and I discuss the inspiration behind Bobby, the challenges of writing a character who questions his own judgement, and his determination to create a crime thriller that readers simply cannot predict.

We also talk about the extraordinary journey to publication, his experiences at international book festivals, and what's coming next for Bobby and his Amaka thriller series.

Plus, Leye shares some brilliant crime fiction recommendations, including:

• Lightseekers and Gaslight by Femi Kayode

• My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

You can find Leye's Substack here to read some of his short stories.

If you love complex characters, unpredictable plots and crime fiction that does something different, this is an episode you won't want to miss.

This week, I’m joined by Lord Peter Hain, whose extraordinary career has taken him from anti-apartheid activism to more than 20 years as an MP and roles in Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s governments – including Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

Peter’s latest thriller, Smuggler Kingpin, takes readers into the world of tobacco and gold smuggling across Zimbabwe and South Africa, where organised crime, corruption and political power collide.

We talk about the real-world criminal networks that inspired the novel, the research involved in writing about a secretive and dangerous world, and how Peter’s own experiences – including surviving a letter bomb sent by apartheid agents – inform his fiction.

Peter recommends four books spanning Westminster, geopolitics, espionage and the Cold War: Get In by Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund, Surviving Chaos by Mark Leonard, A Duty of Care by Gerald Seymour and Code to Zero by Ken Follett.

Come with me to Bloody Scotland 2026 for a special episode recorded behind the scenes at Scotland’s International Crime Writing Festival in Stirling.

I spent the weekend in the very busy festival green room, grabbing authors for quick conversations between their events and getting a taste of what Bloody Scotland is really like behind the scenes.

Mark Billingham looks back on his long history with the festival, from the infamous Scotland v England crime writers’ football match to interviewing Richard Osman, and tells me about his latest Declan Miller novel, The Shadow Step – as well as giving us a tantalising first look at his next standalone novel.

I also get to sit down with one of my favourite crime writers, S.A. Cosby, to talk about King of Ashes, his love of The Wire, memorable encounters with readers and what he's writing next.

C.M. Ewan takes us aboard the Eurostar for his latest thriller I Spy and talks about writing page-turners in confined settings, his writing routine and the advice he’s been sharing with aspiring writers.

Then I bring together all five authors shortlisted for the 2026 McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year – Tariq Ashkanani, Gavin Bell, Philip Miller, Frances Crawford and Zoë Rankin – before the winner is announced. We talk about their shortlisted novels, what the recognition means to them and those final nervous hours before the ceremony.

There are also conversations with Ajay Chowdhury, whose writing career began with a Bloody Scotland competition, about his standalone thriller Eden Falls and its timely exploration of AI; and Luca Veste, who reflects on more than a decade of Bloody Scotland memories and introduces his new Liverpool crime series beginning with Liar Liar.

Plus, some of my bookish friends share their own favourite moments from the weekend and why they think Bloody Scotland is such a special festival.

Expect crime fiction, new books, writing chat, festival stories, awards, plenty of laughs – and all the noise and chaos of a green room packed with crime writers.

If you love crime and thriller books, author interviews or book festivals, this is your chance to come behind the scenes at Bloody Scotland with me.

Michael Robotham is one of the world’s most acclaimed crime writers. Across a career spanning 20 novels, his books have sold millions of copies around the world, he’s twice won the CWA Gold Dagger, and his Joe O’Loughlin and Cyrus Haven series have made him one of the biggest names in crime fiction.

But Tell Me Something True, Michael’s 20th published novel, takes him right back to where it all began. Set in the small Australian town of Yulara, Tell Me Something True follows Arlo Hackett, who returns home after serving 12 years in prison for his involvement in a terrible crime. The town doesn’t want him back, but as hostility towards him grows, Arlo begins questioning what really happened all those years ago.

In this episode, Michael and I talk about why the time was finally right to revisit his first manuscript, what it was like reading the work of his 22-year-old self, and why this became his first novel set in Australia.

We also talk about Michael’s unusual approach to writing. He doesn’t plot his novels in advance, describing the process as being like an acrobat working without a safety net — a method that allows him to be surprised by his own stories and, he hopes, surprise his readers too.

Michael also discusses how his journalism career shaped his writing, why he believes opening pages are more important than ever, the challenge of writing crime fiction in an age of mobile phones, the importance of giving readers an emotional payoff, and the story of the childhood letter to Ray Bradbury that first made him dream of becoming a writer.

Plus, we hear what’s coming next from Michael and get his latest book recommendations.

Books recommended by Michael:

The Truth About Ruby Cooper by Liz Nugent

The Hunter by Tana French

Whistler by Ann Patchett

Tell Me Something True by Michael Robotham is out now.

What if girls in a remote Cornish village started mysteriously dying on their 17th birthdays?

This week on In My Good Books, Susie is joined by crime writer Roz Watkins to talk about her dark and atmospheric new standalone thriller, The Wicked Girls.

Ruby is approaching her 17th birthday, but in her village that has become a terrifying prospect. Girls are dying on the day they turn seventeen, and no one knows why. Is it suicide contagion? A Victorian curse accidentally unleashed when a group of girls unearthed a creepy one-eyed doll? Or is the truth even more disturbing?

Roz talks about where the brilliantly unsettling premise came from, the challenge of creating both a great hook and a satisfying twist, and why she likes her apparently supernatural mysteries to have a rational explanation — even if a few spooky question marks remain.

We also explore some of the darker real-world themes behind the novel, including suicide contagion, toxic masculinity and the online world inhabited by teenagers. Roz discusses the responsibility of writing about suicide without glamorising it, the disturbing research she undertook for the novel and why anger can sometimes help fuel her writing.

Finally, Roz shares two books that have thoroughly unsettled her and that she thinks In My Good Books listeners should read next.

Roz's recommendations:

Little Darlings by Melanie Golding

The Old You by Louise Voss

This week on In My Good Books, I’m joined by Jo Cheetham to talk about her debut novel Love and Rent, a funny and painfully relatable story about money, class, friendship, relationships and what it really means to be independent.

Jo’s first book, Killjoy, told the extraordinary true story of how she went from reluctantly attending a protest to becoming part of the No More Page Three campaign that took on one of Britain’s biggest newspapers and won. Now she’s made the move from memoir to fiction with a book she describes as an “anti-romantic comedy”.

Love and Rent follows Hannah, a woman in her thirties who is happily single and determined to live an independent life. The problem? Despite working full time, her wages barely cover her rent and bills. Then she unexpectedly finds herself in a relationship with Oscar – an awkward, wealthy and very posh man whose experience of money, security and opportunity couldn't be further from her own.

Jo and I chat about the real-life experiences that inspired Hannah’s financial situation, why ordinary working people struggling to make ends meet are so often missing from fiction, and what happens when two people enter a relationship from completely different financial worlds.

Jo recommends:

Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by Barbara Comyns

We also chat about Yesteryear and our mutual inability to stop reading it.

What can the books we read tell us about queer history, and what happens when important stories are allowed to disappear?

In this episode of In My Good Books, part of the Reading Is Political series, I'm joined by author Layla McCay to talk about The Queer Bookshelf: A Reader's Guide, her celebration of the LGBTQ+ books that have shaped literature, culture and queer lives across centuries.

Layla explains why a conversation at an LGBTQ+ book group made her realise that some of the most important books in queer literary history were at risk of fading from cultural memory, and why she wanted to create an accessible guide for readers looking to explore them.

We also discuss representation within queer fiction, the stories that are still underrepresented, why so many adults are discovering queer YA novels they never had access to growing up, and whether publishing has moved from expecting queer stories to focus on trauma towards a different set of stereotypes.

And, appropriately for an author who has written an entire book about books, Layla shares a brilliant selection of recommendations:

The Outrage – William Hussey
Boy Like Me – Simon James Green
Stone Butch Blues – Leslie Feinberg
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name – Audre Lorde
Claudine at School – Colette
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet – Becky Chambers

In this episode of In My Good Books, I’m joined by Cathryn Kemp to talk about her new historical novel They Can’t Burn Us All, which takes us to 17th-century Iceland and a notorious real-life witch trial where the story of witchcraft looked very different from elsewhere in Europe.

We look at some of the bigger questions running through They Can’t Burn Us All - misogyny, power, jealousy, sisterhood and the way communities can turn against their own. Cathryn explains why writing about the past gives her the distance to explore issues that remain uncomfortably relevant today, and why researching the witch trials left her with more rage rather than fewer questions.

Cathryn recommends The Wax Child by Olga Ravn, Burial Rites by Hannah Kent, Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, Still Life by Sarah Winman and The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff.

They Can’t Burn Us All by Cathryn Kemp is out now.

This week on In My Good Books, I’m joined by The Secret Barrister to talk about their first novel, The Cut Throat Trial, now out in paperback. But who is The Secret Barrister?

Despite selling more than a million books, appearing regularly in the media and becoming one of the best-known voices on the British criminal justice system, the identity of The Secret Barrister remains one of publishing’s best-kept secrets.

Drawing on years spent working inside the criminal justice system, The Secret Barrister takes us behind the scenes of a murder trial, showing not only what happens in front of the jury but the legal arguments, tactical decisions and private conversations happening when the jury isn’t in the room.

We talk about why The Secret Barrister decided to move from bestselling nonfiction into fiction, why a cut-throat trial offered the perfect structure for a novel, creating multiple narrators with very different versions of the same events and the challenge of keeping the reader guessing about who – if anyone – is telling the truth.

Books recommended by The Secret Barrister:

You Don’t Know Me by Imran Mahmood

Based on a True Story by Sarah Vaughan