Catch up on the best books and discussions about them from the last year. A songwriter, a plaintive guitar, time travel and a motel are all in the mix.

Kate and Cassie's review of Willie Vlautin's Horse was originally was originally broadcast on 26 July 2024

Cassie and Jonathan Green's appraisal of Kaliane Bradley's Ministry of Time was originally broadcast on 30 May 2024

Kate, Kate Mildenhall and Beejay Silcox disagreed over Miranda July's All Fours back on 21 June 2024

And bookseller David Gaunt and NZ Festival Director Claire Mabey gave their book recommendations on 26 July 2024

Detectives, tea ladies, journos, psychologists – what's the appeal of the crime series and repeat protagonist? Kate Evans with crime writers Michael Robotham, Tim Ayliffe and Amanda Hampson onstage at the BAD Sydney Crime Festival.

GUESTS

Michael Robotham, internationally bestselling crime writer, whose books include the Joe O'Loughlin series and the Cyrus Haven series. His latest is Storm Child.

Tim Ayliffe, journalist and novelist, whose central character is also a media man. John Bailey is his name – and the latest book in that series is The Wrong Man.

Amanda Hampson is an author of many novels, whose crime novels, set in the 1960s, feature tea ladies. Her latest is The Cryptic Clue.

CRIME SERIES MENTIONED IN THE DISCUSSION

Ian Rankin, Rebus series

Michael Connelly, Bosch and McEvoy series

Anne Cleeves, Vera series

Janet Evanovitch, Stephanie Plum series

Kerry Greenwood, Phryne Fischer series

Stieg Larsson, Lisbeth Salander series

Peter Høeg, Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow

Stephen King's Holly Gibney series

Patricia Cornwall's Kay Scarpetta series

Mick Herron's Slow Horses

Tom Clancy, works

Peter Temple's Jack Irish series

John Le Carre, works

Jack Beaumont, Frenchman series

Walter Mosley, Easy Rawlins series

Adrian McKinty, Sean Duffy series

Sulari Gentill, Rowland Sinclair series

Candice Fox, works

Sujata Massey, Perveen Mistry series

Chris Hammer, works

Candice Fox, works

Don Winslow, works

Presenter: Kate Evans

Producer: Kate Evans + Sarah Corbett

Sound engineers: John Jacobs + Tegan Nicholls

Executive Producer: Rhiannon Brown

The best books of 2024 as selected by Cassie McCullagh, Kate Evans, Jason Steger, Lev Grossman and Michaela Kalowski. Keep scrolling for a full (and somewhat idiosyncratic) list.

GUESTS

Jason Steger, literary journalist. Former literary editor at the Age and SMH; and regular guest on ABC TV's Tuesday Book Club.

Lev Grossman, bestselling American novelist and journalist — whose books include The Magicians trilogy and (his latest), The Bright Sword (an Arthurian tale).

Michaela Kalowski, literary interviewer and the curator of Radio National's Big Weekend of Books

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

(listed according to the person who made the recommendation)

Lev Grossman:

Percival Everett, James

Paolo Bacigalupi, Navola

Tana French, The Hunter

Kate Atkinson, Death at the Sign of the Rook

M.T. Anderson, Nicked

Karl Ove Knausgaard, The Third Realm

Nick Harkaway, Karla's Choice

Cassie McCullagh:

Percival Everett, James

Kaliane Bradley, The Ministry of Time

Francis Spufford, Cahokia Jazz

Ceridwen Dovey, Only the Astronauts

Michaela Kalowski's selection (in categories)

Uplifting (subject matter or style):

Ailsa Piper, For Life

Julia Baird, Bright Shining 

International:

Percival Everett, James

Francis Spufford, Cahokia Jazz 

Australian:

Robbie Arnott, Dusk 

Lexi Freiman, The Book of Ayn

Tim Winton, Juice 

Catherine McKinnon, To Sing of War 

James Bradley, Deep Water 

Julian Borger, I Seek a Kind Person 

Books in Translation:

Greek Lessons by Han Kang

Fantasy:

Kelly Link, The Book of Love

Jason Steger

Uplifting/ positive:

Colm Tóibín, Long Island

Melanie Cheng, The Burrow

Kaliane Bradley, The Ministry of Time

Other highlights

Nick Harkaway, Karla's Choice

Helen Garner, The Season

Samantha Harvey, Orbital

Heather Taylor Johnson, Little Bit

Kate Evans

Positive/ Joy or beauty:

Niall Williams, Time of the Child

Hanif Kureishi, Shattered

Deborah Levy, the Position of Spoons

International:

Francis Spufford, Cahokia Jazz

Alan Hollinghurst, Our Evenings

Richard Powers, Playground

In translation:

Olga Tokarczuk, The Empusium

Australian:

Fiona McFarlane, Highway 13

Dylin Hardcastle, A Language of Limbs

Catherine McKinnon, To Sing of War

Robbie Arnott, Dusk

Inga Simpson, The Thinning

CREDITS

Presenters: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullagh

Producer: Kate Evans, Sarah Corbett

Sound engineers: Craig Tilmouth, Ann Marie Debettencor

Executive Producer: Rhiannon Brown

What do Kate and Cassie make of Will Self’s Elaine, a portrait of a frustrated fifties housewife, based on his mother's own diaries. Plus, The City and its Uncertain Walls, the much anticipated new novel by Haruki Murakami with a dreamy library in a parallel universe at its centre; and Rosalia Aguilar Solace’s The Great Library of Tomorrow, another novel set in an alternate world that pays tribute to libraries.

BOOKS

Will Self, Elaine, Grove Press

Haruki Murakami, The City and its Uncertain Walls (translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel), Harvill Secker

Rosalia Aguilar Solace, The Great Library of Tomorrow, Text

GUESTS

Jon Page, long-time bookseller. General Manager, Dymocks, Sydney CBD store 

C.S. Pacat, writer whose books include the Dark Rise and Captive Prince series, and the graphic novel Fence series. 

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

Stephanie Meyers, Twilight seriesSamantha Harvey, OrbitalAsako Yuzuki, ButterGenevieve Cogman, Invisible LibrariesJorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel; Labyrinths Anne Rice, The Vampire ChroniclesChristine Dwyer Hickey, Our London Lives Colum McCann, Apeirogon; Twist

CREDITS

Presenter: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullaghProducer: Kate Evans, Sarah CorbettSound engineer: Craig Tilmouth, Beth StewartExecutive producer, Rhiannon Brown

A focus on literature in translation with special guests Bora Chung and Anton Hur, both of whom are South Korean authors and translators, who translate each others' work, and write outside the system of state-sanctioned literature. Anton translates from Korean into English; Bora translates Russian and Polish works into Korean. In this episode, they describe each others' work, discuss translation, give recommendations, and respond to fellow South Korean writer Han Kang's Nobel Prize in literature.

We also meet Chinese podcaster and translator Yu Shi, who has translated Margaret Atwood and Jeanette Winterson's fiction into Mandarin.

GUESTS

Bora Chung, lecturer, fiction writer and translator from South Korea, who translates from Russian and Polish into Korean. Her books include Cursed Bunny (which was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize), Your Utopia and Grocery List

Anton Hur, novelist and translator. He translates from Korean into English. His books are Toward Eternity and No One Told Me Not To. He also translated the global phenomenon I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokpokki by Baek Se-hee

Yu Shi, Chinese podcaster and translator 

Bora Chung and Anton Hur were in Australia as guests of the Korean Cultural Centre

ALL BOOKS MENTIONEDHan Kang, The Vegetarian; Human Acts; Greek Lessons; We Do Not PartFyodor Dostoevsky, worksBruno Jasieński, worksBruno Schulz, worksOlga Tokarczuk, worksStanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, worksWitold Gombrowicz, worksMargaret Atwood, The Testaments; The Handmaid’s TaleJeanette Winterson, Oranges are Not the Only FruitStephen King, worksPaul Auster, worksMishima Yukio, works

CREDITS

• Presenter: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullagh
• Producer: Kate Evans, Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer: Peter Climpson
• Executive producer: Rhiannon Brown

Derided, disparaged and cursed to the heavens, book critics are depicted as literature’s grand villains – as frustrated creators and gleeful wreckers. But what do critics really do? And why are they necessary for a healthy literary ecosystem? James Jiang, Beejay Silcox and Christos Tsiolkas join Kate and Cassie as part of a panel discussion at Canberra Writers' Festival - five Aussie critics - making the case for criticism.

Niall Williams’ Time of the Child might just be the big ‘feel-good book of the year’—but there’s more to it than that. This is a beautifully written Irish story, full of ordinary lives described in painfully funny detail. Also, Scottish writer Ali Smith and her too-real-to-be-allegorical Gliff; and in Alan Moore's The Great When, we're presented with a hallucinatory vision of an alternative London, anchored in post-World War ll realism.

BOOKS

Ali Smith, Gliff, Hamish Hamilton

Alan Moore, The Great When, Bloomsbury

Niall Williams, Time of the Child, Bloomsbury

GUESTS

Garth Nix, sci-fi and fantasy writer whose books include the Old Kingdom series, Angel Mage , and  The Left-Handed Booksellers of London; his latest is a middle-grade novel, We Do Not Welcome Our Ten-Year-Old Overlord

Chris Hammer, crime writer whose books include Scrublands, Silver, and The Tilt. His latest, featuring his characters Nell Buchanan and Ivan Lucic is The Valley 

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDKazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me GoAldous Huxley, Brave New WorldClaire Keegan, Small Things Like TheseFintan O'Toole, We Don't Know OurselvesLarry McMurtry, Lonesome DoveChris Whittaker, We Begin at the EndC.S. Robertson, The Trials of Marjorie Crowe

CREDITS

• Presenter: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullagh
• Producer, Kate Evans, Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer, Craig Tilmouth, Ann-Marie Debettencor
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

The Dressmaker’s backstory, a universe of stars to expand our ideas about nature writing, and fragments and tricks galore: Kate and Cassie read Inga Simpson’s The Thinning, Brian Castro’s Chinese Postman and Rosalie Ham’s Molly with guests Ella Jeffery and Amanda HampsonBOOKSInga Simpson, The Thinning, HachetteBrian Castro, Chinese Postman, GiramondoRosalie Ham, Molly, PicadorGUESTSDr Ella Jeffery, poet and lecturer in Creative Writing at Griffith University, Qld; ABC Radio National ‘Top 5 Arts’ candidate; currently examining insecure housing as a theme in 21st-century literatureAmanda Hampson, novelist whose latest series feature tea ladies in 1960s Sydney . . . solving crime. The first, The Tea Ladies, won the 2024 Danger Award for Best Crime Novel. The second is The Cryptic Clue; and the third – The Deadly Dispute – will be published in April 2025. There will be five in the series.Other books mentioned:Patricia Wrightson, The Nargun and the StarsJohn Marsden, Tomorrow when the War BeganJames Bradley, Deep Water: The World in the OceanRichard Powers, PlaygroundRobert C. O’Brien, Z for ZachariahCormac McCarthy, The Road Miles Franklin, My Brilliant CareerA B Facey, A Fortunate LifeMarcus Clarke, For the Term of His Natural LifeRuth Park, works Helen Garner, WorksJohn Birmingham, He Died with a Felafel in his HandAndrew McGahan, worksBernadette Brennan, Brain Castro’s Fiction: The Seductive Play of Language

CREDITS

Presenter: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullaghProducer: Kate Evans, Sarah CorbettSound engineer: Harvey O'Sullivan, Peter Climpson, Emrys CroninExecutive producer, Rhiannon Brown

The latest from double Miles Franklin Award winner, Michelle de Kretser, Theory and Practice, a novel that evokes the 1980s and Virginia Woolf. Scottish writer Graeme Macrae Burnet plays a French literary game in A Case of Matricide; and summer days under the light of a strange star in Norway in Karl Ove Knausgaard’s The Third Realm.

BOOKS

Graeme Macrae Burnet, A Case of Matricide, Text

Michelle de Kretser, Theory & Practice, Text

Karl Ove Knausgaard, The Third Realm, (Translated from the Norwegian by Martin Aitken), Harvill Secker

GUESTS

Clare Monagle, Professor of Mediaeval History, Macquarie University – who specialises in the history of ideas, and theology in the Middle Ages

Mark Mordue, freelance music writer and poet whose latest book is the biography, Boy on Fire - The Young Nick Cave. He is also co-director of the Addi Road Writers Festival 

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED Daphne du Maurier, RebeccaHelen Garner, worksC.J. Sansom, Shardlake seriesUmberto Eco, The Name of the Rose Jack Gilbert, Collected PoemsJuno Gemes, Until Justice Comes: Fifty Years of the Movement for Indigenous Rights 

CREDITS

• Presenter: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullagh
• Producer: Kate Evans, Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer, Tegan Nicholls, Ann Marie de Bettencor
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

Kate and Cassie read Melanie Cheng’s The Burrow, a pandemic-set novella that details the healing powers of a pet rabbit for a family dealing with tragedy. Plus, Native American writer Louise Erdrich’s The Mighty Red, a beautifully crafted novel about a love triangle and everyday life in a farming community in North Dakota, and the latest from Yuwaalaraay storyteller Nardi Simpson, The Belburd, a poetic montage of life and death.

BOOKS 

Melanie Cheng, The Burrow, Text 

Louise Erdrich, The Mighty Red, Corsair 

Nardi Simpson, The Belburd, Hachette 

GUESTS 

Steph Harmon, Culture Editor, The Guardian 

Tom Wright, theatre writer and adaptor; Associate Director, Belvoir Theatre 

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDNardi Simpson, Song of the CrocodileEmeric Pressburger, The Glass PearlsClaire Kilroy, Soldier SailorAlan Murrin, The Coast Road Dan Hogan, Secret Third Thing

​CREDIT

• Presenter: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullagh
• Producer, Kate Evans, Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer: Craig Tilmouth, Beth Stewart
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown