The Bookshelf

Ranking history

About the show

Latest episodes

• New fiction from Barbara Kingsolver, Colm Tóibín and Ayad Akhtar

  October 2, 2026 · 1 hr 2 min

  This week, Kate and Cassie are joined by regulars Hannah Kent and Tom Wright to discuss three books that echo one another across themes of art, beauty, family and transformation. In Barbara Kingsolver's Partita, a young woman longs to…

• Ambition, Rage, Gothic Hunger: New Novels from Min Jin Lee, Louise Kennedy and Catherine Chidgey

  September 25, 2026 · 1 hr 0 min

  In American Hagwon, the bestselling author of Pachinko, Min Jin Lee, explores family, education, ambition and the long shadow of economic upheaval, set between Seoul, Sydney and California. Louise Kennedy's Stations offers a tough and…

• Emily St. John Mandel and John Boyne alongside a Booker-longlisted debut

  September 18, 2026 · 1 hr 1 min

  Kate and Cassie take a look at bestselling author Emily St. John Mandel's latest, Exit Party, an epic that follows a doppelgänger and a man who disappears from a Los Angeles party in 2031, leading to a journey across parallel worlds and…

• New Fiction: Donal Ryan, Emma Cline, Max Easton and Sebastian Barry

  September 11, 2026 · 55 min

  We step into Irish bestseller Donal Ryan's world in Where Are the Kings, a tender coming of age story about a boy navigating grief. Inside a fracturing mind in Emma Cline’s Booker Longlisted novel Switzy, read with novelist Madeleine Gray…

• New Fiction from Melissa Harrison and Malcolm Knox + Mandy Sayer's Top 3

  September 4, 2026 · 55 min

  Kate and Cassie with regular reviewer Tom Wright discuss new releases including Melissa Harrison’s The Given World and Malcolm Knox’s The Second Child. Plus, novelist and memoirist Mandy Sayer on her Top 3 Australian books ahead of Radio…

• Top 100 Australian Books from Byron Writers Festival

  August 28, 2026 · 55 min

  Voting in Radio National's Top 100 Books countdown is about to open and this year we're celebrating Australian books. As you think about your own Top 10, Kate and Cassie bring together a trio of award-winning writers (including last year's…

• Anjet Daanje's extraordinary The Stork and the Dromedary + Liane Moriarty returns with Big Little Truths

  August 21, 2026 · 1 hr 5 min

  Anjet Daanje's The Song of Stork and Dromedary, translated from the Dutch, explores the intimate work of death and care in the eighteenth century. Liane Moriarty returns to the world of Big Little Lies with Big Little Truths, reuniting…

• The Haunting Wild, a Trip to Mars and Dreaming of Escape in 1980's France

  August 14, 2026 · 55 min

  We review the latest in fiction for dedicated readers and for those who wish they read more.