The Bookshelf

• A beach holiday told four ways in Luke Horton's Time Together

  Old friends gather together on the coast in Australian writer Luke Horton’s Time Together, Kate and Cassie take a look. Plus, Jo Harkin’s The Pretender, set during the time of the Tudors' ascent it tells the story of a little-known real-life figure; and Laura Elvery’s Nightingale, a re-imagining of the life of Florence Nightingale.BOOKS Luke Horton, Time Together, Scribe Jo Harkin, The Pretender, Bloomsbury Circus Laura Elvery, Nightingale, UQP GUESTS Jane Caro, social commentator, activist, and writer. She has written thirteen books, including three set in the Tudor period, and two crime novels – The Mother and her latest, Lyrebird Michael Cathcart, historian and broadcaster, and host of Radio National’s Stage Show OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDCecil Woodham Smith, Florence NightingaleSarah Wynn Williams, Careless PeopleEric Hoffer, The True BelieverAthol Fugard, Blood KnotCREDITSPresenter: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullaghProducer: Kate Evans, Sarah CorbettSound engineer: Roi Huberman, Tim Jenkins, Micky GrossmanExecutive producer, Rhiannon Brown

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• James Bradley's Landfall reveals a flooded, baked and dilapidated city

  Cities that are both flooded and on alert for the next storm in James Bradley’s Landfall. The body of a saint, dreamily and weirdly listening to everyone around her in Western Australia, in Josephine Rowe’s Little World. And from Malaysia, Tash Aw's The South, in which a family has left the city to head to a failing orchard, a story of longing, promise, generations, and misunderstandings  BOOKS James Bradley, Landfall, Penguin Josephine Rowe, Little World, Black Inc Tash Aw, The South, Fourth Estate GUESTS Tegan Bennett-Daylight, novelist, teacher, and essayist, whose books include Bombora, What Falls Away, and The Details. Her latest, How to Survive 1985, is a YA novel that will be published in May  Rosa Ellen, producer and presenter with Radio National’s Arts team OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDWilla Cather, worksDavid Szalay, FleshGretchen Shirm, Out of the Woods  Yuko Tsushima, Territory of Light  Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Kappa Kazuo Ishiguro, A Pale View of HillsCREDITSPresenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullaghProducer, Kate Evans and Sarah CorbettSound engineer, Craig Tilmouth and Isabella TropianoExecutive producer, Rhiannon Brown

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• The Bookshelf Easter Special: Irish writer Niall Williams

  Irish writer Niall Williams with Kate Evans at the 2025 Adelaide Writers Week — with a focus on his Faha novels, History of the Rain, This is Happiness and (his latest) Time of the Child.Williams is also a screenwriter, playwright and travel writer — and his first novel, Four Letters of Love, has just been released as a film.He also appeared onstage at AWW with Kate and Cassie, for a special edition of the Bookshelf on books, reading, and influences, with English writer Charlotte Mendelsohn and Australian writer Brian Castro.

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• A love triangle set against the beauty of Montana in Eric Puchner's Dream State

  Families, secrets, mysteries, war...Kate and Cassie read Eric Puchner’s Dream State, an American saga that spans fifty years and is set against the expansive beauty of Montana; mysterious encounters and marital strife between an actor and an art critic in New York in Katie Kitamura’s Audition, and a World War II story set in an apartment block in Brussels in Alice Austen’s 33 Place Brugmann.BOOKSEric Puchner, Dream State, SceptreKatie Kitamura, Audition, Fern PressAlice Austen, 33 Place Brugmann, BloomsburyGUESTSMark Mordue, music writer, journalist, poet – whose books include Boy on Fire: The Young Nick Cave. He’s also director of the Addi Road Writers Festival – a community festival in Sydney’s Marrickville – coming up on Saturday 17 MayGretchen Shirm, novelist and literary critic – whose books include Having Cried Wolf, The Crying Room and her latest (published this month), Out of the WoodsOTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDJohn Irving, The World According to GarpSvetlana Alexievich, worksT.S. Eliot, GerontionLucy Sante, I Heard Her Call My NameHan Kang, We Do Not PartJames Bradley, LandfallClinton Heylin, Behind the Shades RevisitedPatrick Holland, OblivionBret Easton Ellis, Less than ZeroCREDITSPresenter, Kate Evans + Cassie McCullaghProducer, Kate Evans + Sarah CorbettSound engineer, John Jacobs + Dylan PrinsExecutive producer, Rhiannon Brown

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• Folk horror, dreams under surveillance, lonely in Guatemala

  Cassie McCullagh is on leave this week, so Kate Evans and guests read Lucy Rose’s The Lamb, Laila Lalami’s The Dream Hotel, and Rachel Morton’s The Sun was Electric Light (with interview extracts from Lucy Rose on body horror and Cumbrian folk traditions, and from Rachel Morton on her move from poetry to prose).BOOKS Rachel Morton, The Sun was Electric Light, UQP Lucy Rose, The Lamb, Weidenfeld & Nicolson Laila Lalami, The Dream Hotel, Bloomsbury GUESTS Roanna Gonsalves, writer, academic, teacher of creative writing. Her collection of short stories, The Permanent Resident, was published in India and South Asia as, Sunita De Souza Goes To SydneyAnnie Coulthard has worked in radio and publishing – and is a dedicated reader OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDMargaret Atwood, The Handmaid's TalePhilip K. Dick, The Minority ReportFranz Kafka, worksMichelle de Krester, Questions of Travel; Theory and PracticeChristopher Isherwood, worksMelanie Cheng, The BurrowAndrew Michael Hurley, Starve AcreElizabeth Jane Howard, We Are For the DarkSanya Rushdi, HospitalJessie Tu, The HoneyeaterFiona McFarlane, Highway 13; The Sun Walks DownEileen Chong, We Speak of FlowersCREDITSPresenter: Kate Evans Producer: Kate Evans, Sarah CorbettSound engineer: Simon BranthwaiteExecutive producer: Rhiannon Brown

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