Regular listeners of the Service95 Book Club podcast know, as well as our new monthly read author interviews, we love revisiting some of Dua’s most memorable conversations.

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner is such a universal mother-daughter story, it will always deserve a second, third, even fourth read – making this illuminating conversation between Dua and Michelle from April 2024 worthy of a second, third, even fourth listen.

Some of you may already know Michelle as the uber-cool singer and guitarist of the American cult indie band Japanese Breakfast. Here, she also proves herself to be a first-class memoirist, writing with raw honesty about her teenage relationship with her Korean mother and how recreating the traditional dishes her mother used to make helped her process her grief following her death from cancer. Ultimately, it’s a story about love, something everyone can relate to.

Buy the book at Bookshop.org, Waterstones and Barnes & Noble

Get in touch:     

📩 Email us – [email protected]     

📲 Follow @service95bookclub on Instagram for updates     

📚 Subscribe to the Service95 Book Club newsletter – introduced each month by Dua – at www.service95.com     

And don’t forget to hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 

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Jean-Baptiste Del Amo joins Dua for this special Service95 Book Club episode and answers questions from our Service95 community. 

In this episode, he reflects on the emotion he most wants readers to confront in The Son of Man, and why discomfort can open the door to deeper understanding. How does he portray brutality without crossing into excess? Where is the line between honesty and spectacle?  

The conversation also explores fate and free will. Are his characters trapped in cycles shaped by history, family and violence, or do they have the power to choose differently? How much of our lives is inherited – and how much is ours to reclaim? 

Jean-Baptiste also offers insight into his creative process: how he knows when a novel is finished, when to stop revising, and which writers have influenced his voice the most. Don’t miss it. 

Buy the book at Bookshop.org, Waterstones, and Barnes & Noble   
  
Get in touch:       

📩 Email us – [email protected]       

📲 Follow @service95bookclub on Instagram for updates       

📚 Subscribe to the Service95 Book Club newsletter – introduced each month by Dua – at www.service95.com       

And don’t forget to hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts   

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This month on the Service95 Book Club With Dua Lipa podcast, Dua sits down with French author Jean-Baptiste Del Amo to discuss his novel The Son of Man. A dark and unsettling psychological thriller, the book explores themes of inherited violence, patriarchy, masculinity and love. As Dua puts it: “I have to give a trigger warning - this book is dark, even for me!” 

In a Service95 exclusive, Jean-Baptiste reads a powerful excerpt from the novel, in which the father figure, one of the book’s three protagonists, speaks to his son about his own dark understanding of love, loyalty and betrayal. 

Whether or not you’ve read The Son of Man yet, this reading offers insight into the emotional and psychological forces driving the story. It also showcases Jean-Baptiste’s evocative writing style, from his depiction of the intensity of nature to the looming mountains of the French Pyrenees, where much of the novel is set. 

Buy the book at Bookshop.org, Waterstones, and Barnes & Noble 

Get in touch: 

📩 Email us – [email protected] 

📲 Follow @service95bookclub and @service95 Instagram for updates 

📚 Subscribe to the Service95 Book Club newsletter – introduced each month by Dua – at https://service95.com 

And don’t forget to hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 

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This month, Dua sits down with acclaimed French novelist Jean-Baptiste Del Amo to discuss his haunting novel The Son Of Man – a tense, unsettling exploration of masculinity, patriarchy, and the cycles of violence passed from father to son. Set largely in an isolated mountain house in rural France, the novel follows a family upended by the sudden return of a father whose past trauma slowly reveals itself in devastating ways.

“This is a dark book, even by my standards,” Dua says. “And yet, there’s also real beauty here.”

During the interview, Jean-Baptiste tells Dua why he wanted The Son of Man “to talk about all the fathers and all the sons,” and how he used the narrative to confront how violence is learned, inherited, and repeated. He also speaks of his commitment to writing characters who are rarely centred in French literature, drawing on his background in social work to tell these kinds of stories.

Together, Dua and Jean-Baptiste delve into how the novel’s claustrophobic structure draws you into the story, the author’s decision to focus on just three central characters, and the way small, visceral details signal the father’s unpredictable energy. 

As their conversation unfolds, they reflect on the emotional complexity of the novel’s title and its relevance in today’s world. Against the backdrop of ongoing global conversations about male violence, The Son Of Man asks urgent questions about trauma, responsibility, and whether it’s possible to break inherited chains of behaviour.

Buy the book at Bookshop.org, Waterstones, and Barnes & Noble 
 
Get in touch:     

📩 Email us – [email protected]     

📲 Follow @service95bookclub on Instagram for updates     

📚 Subscribe to the Service95 Book Club newsletter – introduced each month by Dua – at www.service95.com     

And don’t forget to hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts 

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Regular listeners of the Service95 Book Club podcast know, as well as our new monthly read author interviews, we love revisiting some of Dua’s most memorable conversations — and this is a firm favourite. 

This time from the archive, we’re diving back into Dua’s conversation with George Saunders about his experimental novel Lincoln In The Bardo, Dua’s Monthly Read for October 2024. Set in the cemetery where President Abraham Lincoln is mourning his young son Willie, it’s a story of intense personal grief, told against a backdrop of the American Civil War.  

Dua and George discuss how he told such an unforgettable story through the eyes of a group of bickering ghosts, and explore the concept of the Bardo, a transitional state between life and death. Together, they read a poignant extract from the book. It’s a glimpse into the mind of one of today’s most compassionate writers — and not one to miss.  

Buy the book at Bookshop.org, Waterstones and Barnes & Noble
 
Get in touch: 

📩 Email us – [email protected] 

📲 Follow @service95bookclub on Instagram for updates 

📚 Subscribe to the Service95 Book Club newsletter – introduced each month by Dua – at www.service95.com 

And don’t forget to hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts 

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Mark Ronson and Dua Lipa come together for a live recording of the Service95 Book Club at New York City’s legendary Hotel Chelsea. 

In this episode, they respond to your questions from the Service95 Book Club community, diving into the allure of reading, curiosity, and the city after dark. What draws us to intense, shadowy novels? If they could bring back one long-lost NYC institution, which would it be? How do they navigate the endless stream of book recommendations when choosing their next read? And what truths does the night reveal that daylight often conceals? 

Buy the book at Bookshop.org, Waterstones, and Barnes & Noble 
 
Get in touch:     

📩 Email us – [email protected]     

📲 Follow @service95bookclub on Instagram for updates     

📚 Subscribe to the Service95 Book Club newsletter – introduced each month by Dua – at www.service95.com     

And don’t forget to hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts 

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This month on the Service95 Book Club podcast, Dua sits down with producer and DJ Mark Ronson to discuss his memoir Night People – a candid look at the music, obsession, and late-night worlds that shaped him long before success felt secure.

In a Service95 exclusive, Mark reads an excerpt from Night People that revisits a formative early lesson in ambition. The passage recalls a moment when, desperate to get a foot in the door, he sells out his best friend Sean Lennon without his knowing, securing a slot for his band at the New Music Seminar. It’s a story driven by hunger, insecurity, and hard-earned self-awareness.

It’s a revealing snapshot of why Night People stays with you – not because it smooths over mistakes, but because it faces them head on.

Buy the book at Bookshop.org, Waterstones, and Barnes & Noble 
 
Get in touch:     

📩 Email us – [email protected]     

📲 Follow @service95bookclub on Instagram for updates     

📚 Subscribe to the Service95 Book Club newsletter – introduced each month by Dua – at www.service95.com     

And don’t forget to hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts 

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This month, for the Service95 Book Club, Dua Lipa speaks with producer, songwriter and DJ Mark Ronson about his memoir Night People: How To Be A DJ in 90s New York City. Part cultural history and part personal reckoning, the book traces Mark’s formative years between London and New York, and how his immersion into NYC nightlife ultimately shaped the 90s DJ scene in the city.

Set in 1990s New York, Night People captures the clubs, characters, and contradictions that shaped Mark’s creative life. He reflects on the idea of “night people,” shaped by his unconventional upbringing and his parents’ nocturnal lifestyle, and how DJing became both an escape and a source of control, validation, and belonging.

Written with candour, the memoir explores ambition, missteps, and the risks involved in pushing musical boundaries — including a defining moment when Mark challenged convention by dropping rock music into a hip-hop crowd.

Ultimately, Night People is a story about devotion to music, craft, and the communities built in dark rooms.

 
Get in touch:     

📩 Email us – [email protected]     

📲 Follow @service95bookclub on Instagram for updates     

📚 Subscribe to the Service95 Book Club newsletter – introduced each month by Dua – at www.service95.com     

And don’t forget to hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 

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Regular listeners of the Service95 Book Club podcast will know that, alongside our new monthly author interviews, we love returning to some of Dua’s most powerful conversations from the past two and a half years.

This time from the archive, Dua revisits her discussion with Brit Bennett, author of Service95 Book Club’s November Monthly Read for 2023, The Vanishing Half. The novel opens up profound questions about identity, class, and the legacies that echo across generations – including perhaps the most challenging question of all: what even constitutes race?

The Vanishing Half follows the Vignes twins, who grow up in a small Southern Black community obsessed with skin tone. As they come of age, their lives split in radically different directions: one sister returns home to raise her dark-skinned daughter, while the other chooses to pass as white, building a life far removed from her past – even from her own family. As their daughters’ lives eventually intersect, Brit weaves a layered exploration of identity, inheritance, and the cost of reinvention across generations.

In this episode, Dua and Brit talk about the nuances of self-invention, the emotional cost of secrecy, and the ways in which family history can shape – and sometimes distort – who we become. Together, they reflect on the complexities of belonging, the fragility of personal truth, and the choices that define our lives. Don’t miss it.
 
Get in touch:    

📩 Email us – [email protected]    

📲 Follow @service95bookclub on Instagram for updates    

📚 Subscribe to the Service95 Book Club newsletter – introduced each month by Dua – at www.service95.com    

And don’t forget to hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 

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This month on the Service95 Book Club podcast, Dua sits down with Norwegian author Ingvild Rishøi to discuss her moving novel Brightly Shining – Dua’s Monthly Read for December – a story shaped by love, chaos, and the stubborn hope that gets a child through tough times.

In a Service95 exclusive, Ingvild reads a passage that captures the novel’s intimate focus on a family stuck in a familiar loop of crisis and shaky fresh starts. We see a dad trying to pull himself together and two daughters who’ve learned how to handle responsibility, exhaustion, and a cautious kind of optimism. 

It’s a little taste of why Brightly Shining stays with you – not because it looks away from hardship, but because it brings out the fragile hope that keeps shining through it.

Buy the book at Bookshop.org, Waterstones and Barnes & Noble 
 
Get in touch:    

📩 Email us – [email protected]    

📲 Follow @service95bookclub on Instagram for updates    

📚 Subscribe to the Service95 Book Club newsletter – introduced each month by Dua – at www.service95.com    

And don’t forget to hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts 

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