Today a novel about Stalinist Russia and Shostakovich and his opera based on Macbeth. Also a debut American writer who is causing a great deal of excitement with her novel called The Turner House and the next instalment of our African Book Club - this time it's Everyday is the Thief by Nigerian New Yorker Teju Cole.

Today we hear another session from the 2016 Sydney Writer's Festival. This time it's a Zimbabwean writer who has been accused of being Judas in her own country.

Today we hear a session from the 2016 Sydney Writers Festival where three male writers take on their country's brutal histories in wildly different ways.

Geraldine Brooks' new novel takes her to the iron age and into the bloody, complicated and barely-documented life of King David. She spoke to Kate Evans as part of a special event for the Sydney Writers Festival at the Seymour Centre late last year, in front of a large and enthusiastic crowd.

Today philosophers on reading, love and fiction. A queer theorist on life and relationships and an historical novel on scientist and botanical explorer, Alfred Russell Wallace.

Today a circus, a war, a mother and a daughter and a classic Nigerian novel. The circus is the Australian Fitzgerald Brothers Circus , the war is the second World War in Malta and England, the mother and daughter are from Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout and the Nigerian Novel is from 1958 and speaks against colonialism.

Today we look into the sky from a New Jersey paddock to watch the Hindenburg as it's about to land. We also revisit the ghost of poet Ted Hughes and we go back in time, way back in time, to the Dutch Golden Age.

Today convict detectives in colonial Australia from a father and daughter duo. The thrills and spills of a camper van with a little Madness thrown in and a special tribute to the Bronte sisters with a bit of look at Charlotte and Jane Eye.

Today crime fiction from an ex politician and it's not based in Parliament! Also a former magazine writer, who knows all the best gossip, steps back into the golden age of Hollywood and two books that feature girls at the very beginning of their teenage years.

Today a book from the 1890's that informed so many white views on Africa, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Plus we meet an Australian teenager in Lebanon in 1969 just before the country ripped itself apart and then we head off to university to meet a first year student in a book from debut crime writer Aoife Clifford