Writers Kathryn Heyman and Aoife Clifford join Cassie and Kate as they discuss the tawdry and damaged in James Ellroy's Widespread Panic and Lisa Taddeo's Animal; while there's ice cold drama and poetry in Jon McGregor's Lean Fall Stand

Extended interviews by Kate Evans with writers Taylor Jenkins Reid (Malibu Rising and Daisy Jones and the Six) and Dawnie Walton (The Final Revival of Opal and Nev), following on from the recent music-and-fiction Book Club, and finding the 'bookshelf that made me' for both these writers

Double J's Zan Rowe and music journalist and novelist Barry Divola join Kate and Cassie as they talk music in books, focusing on Dawnie Walton's The Final Revival of Opal and Nev and Patti Smith's Just Kids (with bookish recommendations from musicians Amy Shark, Robert Forster and Emma Swift)

Travel to places both real and imagined with writers Heather Rose, Maxine Beneba Clarke, Richard Fidler and Tegan Bennett Daylight, in conversation with Kate Evans onstage at the Sydney Writers Festival

Kate and Cassie are joined this week by poet and music writer Mark Mordue, singer-songwriter Darren Hanlon and Music Show colleague Andrew Ford; and the books discussed are Taylor Jenkins Reid's Malibu Rising, Kate Sawyer's The Stranding and Helen Oyeyemi's Peaces - with a side serving of music on the page.

Novelist Meg Mason (Sorrow and Bliss) and journalist Michael Dulaney join Cassie and Kate as they discuss Briohny Doyle's Echolalia and Angelike Schrobsdorff's You Are Not Like Other Mothers; and English writer Elizabeth MacNeal reveals the books and ideas that shaped Circus of Wonders

Kate and Cassie are joined by reviewer Dr Ruth Wilson, whose PhD on Jane Austen and education was awarded last year, when she was 88 years old. Together, they read Joan Silber's Secrets of Happiness and Alice Pung's One Hundred Days

Crime writer Michel Robotham and playwright Joanna Murray Smith join Kate and Cassie to discuss the work of Patricia Highsmith, high priestess of dark psychological thrillers. With cameos by Highsmith herself, her biographer Richard Bradford, crime writer and singer Jane Clifton, and featuring critiques from members of the ABC Book Club Facebook Group

Ahead of this week's RN Book Club on Patricia Highsmith, her biographer Richard Bradford answers questions from readers and members of the ABC Book Club Facebook Group. An intriguing woman, and a writer who places you inside the perspective of her dark and disquieting characters

Kate and Cassie read Michael Mohammed Ahmad's The Other Half of You, Cassandra Austin's Like Mother and Suyi Davies Okungbowa's Son of the Storm with writers Monica Dux and Eugen Bacon