This week’s episode is a delight for anyone who loves to learn about historical events through the lens of fiction. Author Defne Suman brilliantly evokes the sprawling multicultural city of Smyrna through the lives of four families during the early 20th century as the Ottoman Empire is on the brink of collapse. In the first English edition of The Silence of Scheherazade, the writing is utterly beautiful - the sign of not only a talented author, but a skilled translator as well. The story spans 1...
Aug 16, 2021•13 min
We can’t wait for you to discover Harriet Evans’ gripping novel The Beloved Girls! Catherine, a successful barrister, vanishes from a London train station on the eve of her anniversary. But how and why? The answer lies buried in the past, in the events of the hot, seismic summer of 1989. At Vanes - a mysterious West Country manor house - a young girl, Jane Lestrange, arrives to stay with the gilded, grand Hunter family. She’s to take part in their curious ritual involving the bees kept in the cr...
Aug 02, 2021•15 min
Welcome back to the podcast! We scour the literary world for the best books to share with you and this episode's reading comes all the way from Accra, Ghana, as Lesley Lokko (supported by a beautiful dawn chorus of birds!) shares her new book, Soul Sisters, with us. It’s a rich, intergenerational tale of love, race, power and secrets that centres on the lifelong friendship between two women: Scottish Jen McFadden and South African-born Kemisa Mashabane, known to her friends as Kemi. The ties tha...
Jul 27, 2021•17 min
If you read one book this summer (although why would you read just one?!), you wouldn't be going wrong by making it The Stranding by Kate Sawyer. In the words of Marian Keyes, it’s 'GORGEOUS and original and captivating', and we love the extract Kate generously shares with us in this podcast episode! Ruth lives in the heart of London. Working, drinking, falling in love: the rhythm of her vivid and complicated life is set against a hum of darkening news reports from which she deliberately turns a...
Jul 13, 2021•14 min
Georgia Pritchett knows a little something about living with anxiety. From worrying about the monsters under her bed as a child (Were they comfy enough?), to embracing womanhood, (One way of knowing you have crossed from girlhood to womanhood is that men stop furtively masturbating at you from bushes and start shouting things at you from cars. It's a beautiful moment) worry has accompanied her at every turn. This memoir is a joyful reflection on just how to live - and sometimes even thrive (some...
Jun 28, 2021•14 min
To celebrate Pride Month we wanted to gift you an exclusive release of this special private Salon, with the one and only Garth Greenwell! Garth and Damian talked writing, queerness and 'Cleanness', in this online Salon last year. Garth originally charmed us all at a Salon at The Savoy in 2016 with his debut novel 'What Belongs to You'. He reads his prose as beautifully as he writes it. His subsequent book, 'Cleanness', places its arms around the shoulders of his handsome sensuous debut and confr...
Jun 27, 2021•1 hr 2 min
After Robbie Fehler’s sudden death, his wife and daughters unite in their struggle to save their pest control company’s finances and the family’s future. To survive, they must overcome a political chasm that threatens a new civil war as the values that once united them now divide the very foundation they’ve built. Through alternating point-of-views, grief and regret gracefully give way to the enduring strength of the hive. The Hive by Melissa Scholes Young is published by Turner Publishing and a...
Jun 21, 2021•19 min
A photograph is hung on a gallery wall for the first time since it was taken two decades before. It shows a slaughter house in rural Ireland, a painting of the Virgin Mary on the wall, a meat hook suspended from the ceiling - and, from its sharp point, the lifeless body of a man hanging by his feet. The story of who he is and how he got there casts back into Irish folklore, of widows cursing the land and of the men who slaughter its cattle by hand. Note: Damian mentions that The Butchers was sho...
Jun 07, 2021•14 min
In a holiday house by the sea, in a big, messy family, one teenager watches as brothers and sisters, parents and older cousins fill hot days with wine and games and planning a wedding. Enter the Goddens - irresistible, charming, languidly sexy Kit and surly, silent Hugo. Suddenly there's a serpent in this paradise - and the consequences will be devastating. The Great Godden by bestselling author Meg Rossoff is published by Bloomsbury and available in hardback now or from 10th June in paperback i...
Jun 03, 2021•13 min
As we continue to highlight young adult fiction books throughout the month of May, we invite you to enjoy a spine tingling reading by international bestselling author Krystal Sutherland. House of Hollow is a dark and twisted modern fairytale about a glamorous trio of otherworldly young women, who share the secret of what really happened to them all those years ago. Everyone knows who the Hollow sisters are, because one day they simply disappeared, and when they came back one month later, with no...
May 18, 2021•12 min
For a change of pace we’re featuring our very first children’s book on the Lit Salon podcast! As a special treat, all this month we’ll be featuring children’s and YA books, selecting titles for kids and adults who are kids at heart. We’re kicking things off with the riveting fantasy novel Feast of the Evernight by Ross Mackenzie (suitable for ages 9+). With the events of the Evernight behind her, Lara must now face a new threat as a series of murders take place and Lara’s friend Double Eight is ...
May 04, 2021•12 min
We’re thrilled to feature another unmissable novel by a debut author exploding onto the literary scene. The Final Revival of Opal and Nev by Dawnie Walton is a novel Cosmopolitan is calling 'an absorbing tale bursting with colour', told through an oral history reminiscent of bestselling novel Daisy Jones & The Six, but with its own unique style and fully realised characters. Back in New York in the early 1970s, Opal Jewel is a black punk artist before her time, before afropunk even existed. ...
Apr 20, 2021•15 min
Welcome to the latest instalment of Salon News! Listen in for all the goss on mystery filming Damian's doing, our new Reading Agency partnership, proof that books make you a better person, and our upcoming Salons - the next few months are promising to be glorious! We start with an incredibly exciting FREE Salon on Thursday 22nd April (8pm UK time), with the iconic architect and designer David Rockwell - the designer of the Oscars, the Hairspray set, numerous theatres, and so much more. Join us l...
Apr 18, 2021•12 min
We're delighted to share an exclusive extract with you from this immersive, sweeping debut! In Lucy Holland’s Sistersong we travel back to 6th century Britain to a kingdom besieged by Saxons and their Christian god. Three sisters are all that stands between the old ways and a world on the precipice of change. Riva, Keyne and Sinne become entangled in a web of treachery and heartbreak, and must fight to forge their own paths while rediscovering the power that lies in the land and within themselve...
Apr 05, 2021•13 min
For those of you who remember our Shoreditch House days, we launched Craig Taylor’s 'Londoners' there to great acclaim. The Canadian journalist is part of our beloved alumni so while we can’t celebrate his follow-up book 'New Yorkers' in person, we’re thrilled to offer our listeners the next best thing. Craig’s new book captures the city’s vibrancy, diversity and resilience no matter what’s thrown at it. The indomitable spirit of its residents in their relentless effort to ‘make it’ shines throu...
Mar 23, 2021•15 min
No one really knows what happened that night. The seas were calm, the doors locked from the inside of the lighthouse and all the clocks were stopped. Somehow they vanished without a trace, leaving their widows and the villagers with so many unanswered questions. Over time the simplest explanations gave way to conspiracy theories and ghost stories, and twenty years on a writer has come to speak with the women left behind to know their stories. In a narrative that alternates between the widows and...
Mar 02, 2021•16 min
We're delighted to share Ali Benjamin's exclusive reading from The Smash-Up with you! A novel with rather more than a soupçon of satire, this timely book hones in on a snapshot of history to probe the depths of the culture wars in America. Zo is swept up in the politics of the #MeToo movement, the Kavanaugh hearings, and her duties to the feminist activism group she formed: All Them Witches. Ethan finds himself caught between his home life and the battle to get his livewire daughter Alex to slee...
Feb 23, 2021•18 min
We’re delighted to be featuring Lesley Storm’s beautiful collection of poems - It's About Time: Poems of an Uncertain Woman. At 67-years-old, Lesley has written a meditation on the passing of time, her reflections living as a trans woman and overcoming adversity, and what it means to her to be a woman. Here are love poems, life poems, elegies, aubades, odes, existential solitude poems, prose poems, joyous poems of fleeting human pleasures, poems compassionate, sanguine and witty, poems delicate ...
Feb 08, 2021•11 min
Welcome to the latest instalment of Salon News! Listen in for all the goss on our upcoming Salon which already promises to be our most-attended online Salon ever! We'll be speaking with Russell T Davies, the writer/creator of It's A Sin, the Channel 4 series that's on everybody's lips at the moment, as well as Queer As Folk, Dr Who, Years and Years and many other gems. And we'll be talking with Ruth Coker Burks, author of the incredible memoir All The Young Men which has just gone into the Sunda...
Feb 08, 2021•11 min
Our latest Salon Exclusive is particularly dear to us. Deborah Orr was a friend of Damian - they grew up in the same corner of Scotland at different times and both wrote memoirs about it. ‘Motherwell’ is Deborah’s memoir and it is as brilliant as the woman herself was. Deborah was a glittering regular at our Salons over the years- maybe you met her there or in the pages of the Guardian, where her interviews and features were legendary. Deborah died before ‘Motherwell’ was published. Her memoir w...
Jan 19, 2021•7 min
Listen in to our exclusive launch of 'Some Body To Love' with Alexandra Heminsley. In this special online Salon we celebrate the brilliant new book from the author of 'Running Like A Girl' and 'Leap In' on her publication day! In her latest memoir Alex takes her body as her subject: we wince at every needle as she reveals what IVF is really like and rejoice with her as she gets the family she's given so much for. When her partner begins to question their gender and starts to transition, this fle...
Jan 15, 2021•48 min
We’re thrilled to introduce you to another stellar debut author - Robert Jones, Jr. And his novel The Prophets. Robert is founder of the social media community Son of Baldwin, which speaks powerfully from a Black queer perspective. Robert famously said: ‘We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.’ The Prophets is one of THE novels to watch out for this year: a beautifully written work of fiction abo...
Jan 04, 2021•15 min
Darien Hsu Gee is an award-winning author of five novels and winner of the 2019 Poetry Society of America's Chapbook Fellowship. We’re always saying we want to share more poetry so we’re thrilled to share this beautiful collection with you that traces the author’s matrilineal heritage through five generations - Other Small Histories. If you enjoyed Darien’s reading, Other Small Histories is available now in a limited print run through the Poetry Society of America (get them while you can!). She ...
Dec 01, 2020•13 min
Douglas Stuart has just won The 2020 Booker Prize for his incredible debut novel 'Shuggie Bain', so to celebrate we're releasing the never-published-before Literary Salon we held with Douglas in June! In a special private event Douglas joined us online all the way from New York, along with viewers from around the world, and treated us to the very first UK reading from Shuggie Bain. Listen in to enjoy his reading and a heartfelt, honest, humorous and thought-provoking interview about the book tha...
Nov 19, 2020•1 hr 3 min
Our recent event with Dolly was our most popular online Salon to date, with hundreds and hundreds of Salonistas joining from all over the world – and we have a an exclusive clip for you to feast your ears on, about the highs and lows of sex with a new flame. Even more excitingly, the whole evening can now be yours forever for the price of a drink! For £5 receive access to a special private YouTube film which you can watch anywhere, any time, as many times as you like. Tickets available here! In ...
Nov 06, 2020•5 min
Welcome to the latest instalment of Salon News! We've had so much excitement recently and so many people wanting to hear what we’ve got coming up, so we've answered your call. Listen in for all the goss on THE RETURN OF OUR TV SERIES, what the last Salon of the year is (and yes there are still some tickets though they're flying!), who's been sharing ghostly stories, and why Damian is putting all his books away... Salon News - so much better than the real news. GRAB TICKETS FOR SALON WITH DOLLY A...
Oct 20, 2020•6 min
We love a debut author and emerging Northern literary talent Eliza Clark is no exception. In Boy Parts we meet Irina who obsessively takes explicit photographs of the average-looking men she persuades to model for her, scouted from the streets of Newcastle. Placed on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, she's offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery, promising to revive her career in the art world and offering an escape from her rut of drugs, alcohol and extreme cinema. The news tr...
Sep 22, 2020•14 min
“Tamara is going to kill her mother, but she isn't the villain…” The Sound Mirror spans three familial generations from British Occupied India to Southern England following the joys and heartaches of Tamara, Claire and Ada. But how do their lives intersect? Through intimately rendered characters, Heidi James has crafted a haunting and moving examination of class, war, violence, family and shame from the rich details of ordinary lives. And we're so delighted to have an exclusive reading from Heid...
Sep 08, 2020•8 min
Premiering at the Literary Salon we have Neil Blackmore’s wildly seductive new novel. Raised in isolation, Edgar and Benjamin Bowen have lived a cloistered life. But now they’re on a Grand European Tour to improve their station in the world they're discovering that climbing the social hierarchy is not without its perils. If you liked The Talented Mr Ripley, you’ll love The Intoxicating Mr Lavelle, an eighteenth century love story between Benjamin and Horace Lavelle - a man whose cruelty is only ...
Aug 13, 2020•13 min
An exclusive treat for our Salonistas: get ready for a sneak peek of SJ Watson’s phenomenal new thriller, Final Cut! SJ continues to push the boundaries of the psychological thriller genre he's celebrated for reinvigorating with his first novel, international bestseller (and film) Before I Go To Sleep. In this new book we meet award-winning documentarian Alex, who's looking for a location to base her next film she receives an anonymous postcard urging her to choose Blackwood Bay. It isn’t long b...
Jul 20, 2020•12 min
