
The Bookshelf
What are you reading, loving or being challenged by? We review the latest in fiction for dedicated readers and for those who wish they read more.
Latest Episode
A simmering summer in Greece, rare snails, dystopia with a twist: new fiction by Amy Taylor, Leif Enger and Maria Reva (21.08.2025)
Previous Episodes
- AI in America, a kidnapping in Corsica, the transformative power of boxing: books by Gary Shteyngart, Darrow Farr, and Lucas Schaefer 14.08.2025
- People turning into trees, mythical rivers rising...new novels by Rhett Davis and Gurnaik Johal (plus, Irish fiction with Colm Tóibín) 07.08.2025
- 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award assessed 31.07.2025
- Parties, scandals, sex, love: new novels by Nell Zink, Amy Bloom and the controversial James Frey 24.07.2025
- New Australian crime + hungry ghosts and a great white whale 17.07.2025
- Sydney Writer's Festival: The State of the Art of the Novel 10.07.2025
- Mystery in new fiction from Ben Okri, Sameer Pandya and Anjet Daanje 03.07.2025
- Sweat, sport and sharp Australian satire; And the 2025 International Booker Prize winner 26.06.2025
- Popular fiction across space and time, and queer bush doof thriller in Thomas Vowles' Our New Gods 19.06.2025
- Reading James Joyce's Ulysses for Bloomsday (and new fiction galore) 12.06.2025
- New fiction from Gail Jones, S A Cosby and Seán Hewitt 05.06.2025
- A vibrant gay coming-of-age story set in Geraldton 29.05.2025
- Sydney Writers' Festival: Top 100 Books launched with Alan Hollinghurst, Catherine Chidgey, Mariana Enriquez, Afra Atiq 23.05.2025
- On stage at Melbourne Writers' Festival with Hannah Kent and Beejay Silcox 15.05.2025
- A woman falls through the cracks of time in the first of Solvej Balle's seven-novel-series 08.05.2025
- A beach holiday told four ways in Luke Horton's Time Together 01.05.2025
- James Bradley's Landfall reveals a flooded, baked and dilapidated city 24.04.2025
- The Bookshelf Easter Special: Irish writer Niall Williams 18.04.2025
- A love triangle set against the beauty of Montana in Eric Puchner's Dream State 17.04.2025
- Folk horror, dreams under surveillance, lonely in Guatemala 10.04.2025