We love historical fiction and this week’s featured title, Hex by Jenni Fagan, is simply bewitching. Edinburgh, December 1591. On this, the last night of her life, in a prison cell several floors below, convicted witch Geillis Duncan receives a mysterious visitor – Iris, who says she comes from a future where women are still persecuted for who they are and what they believe. Hex is a visceral depiction of what happens when a society is consumed by fear and superstition, exploring how the terribl...
Jun 01, 2022•18 min
We’re thrilled to feature the latest book from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Queenie on the podcast! Candice Carty-Williams’ novel People Person is about five half-siblings with abandonment issues brought together by crisis in a story of heart, humour, and homecoming. The tension will have you turning the page and the characters will have you laughing to yourself into the wee hours of the morning as you finish this novel in one sitting. So settle down to enjoy a juicy excerpt, read beau...
May 24, 2022•11 min
This week’s reading comes to us from Dolen Perkins-Valdez, the New York Times bestselling author of Wench. Her timely new novel, Take My Hand, will get under your skin and stay with you long after the last page. Montgomery, Alabama. 1973. Civil Townsend works at the Family Planning Clinic and has big plans to make a difference in her community, helping Black women make their own choices for their lives and bodies. But when she discovers the injections they’re giving young women are still experim...
May 18, 2022•16 min
Abi Morgan OBE is the BAFTA and Emmy-winning playwright and screenwriter who created the BBC's rave series The Split, The Iron Lady, Suffragette, The Hour and much more. She shifts from screen to page for her first book This Is Not A Pity Memoir, and we were thrilled to have the world premiere at a very special Literary Salon. Poignant and heart-breaking but resolutely unwilling to rely on sentimental platitudes, Abi's memoir about a tragic change in her family circumstances is a profoundly powe...
May 17, 2022•45 min
Prepare for some sparkling literature that you need to read this summer. That Green Eyed Girl by Julie Owen Moylan has everything we love in a book: a character-driven plot, a dual timeline, and a mystery that gradually unfolds making for a page-turning novel. Ava is a young girl struggling to cope with an absent father and a mother suffering from a debilitating mental illness. She’s managing to keep it together, but only just. And then a parcel appears on her doorstep with a photo of a young wo...
May 10, 2022•13 min
This week we’re featuring Poguemahone: a wild, free-verse monologue, steeped in music and folklore, crammed with characters, both real and imagined. It’s an epic 600-page book by twice Booker-shortlisted author Patrick McCabe that takes place in the 1970s, in Northwest London, and in the fractured mind of Una Fogarty. This is a really exciting literary novel that plays with form - the kind of book we love to feature on our show. Published by Unbound and available now in all good bookshops. We re...
May 03, 2022•13 min
EXTRA SPECIAL EPISODE ALERT! Enjoy this full-length Literary Salon with Douglas Stuart! We held a very special evening with Douglas in conversation with Damian at an in-person Salon in Brighton - it was an incredible conversation, and we're still thinking about it. So join us as we celebrate Douglas' brilliant new novel 'Young Mungo', the story of two boys, two tribes and two Scotlands. Catholic James and Protestant Mungo live in the violent, macho world of Glasgow’s council schemes. They dream ...
Apr 28, 2022•1 hr 26 min
As the weather warms, we’re bringing you a sun-drenched mid-century novel from the international bestselling author Adriana Trigiani. In 'The Good Left Undone', we’re treated to a family saga that spans a century, taking us from Italy to the UK and back again. Through the generations, the Cabrellis have been subject to the tides of history and it is up to Matelda, the matriarch nearing the end of her life, to pass on their legacy before it’s too late. Trust Adriana to offer up lush descriptions ...
Apr 26, 2022•14 min
If you love a whodunnit then we’ve got just the thing to satisfy that craving. A Tidy Ending by Joanna Cannon is a novel about Linda, an ordinary middle-aged housewife who keeps herself to herself. That is, until her husband Terry starts keeping strange hours just as a string of young women begin disappearing. There’s something nasty lurking behind the net curtains on Cavendish Avenue… A darkly funny, character-driven mystery from the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Trouble with Goats and...
Apr 19, 2022•14 min
You may have noticed the rise in popularity of compelling novels written across dual timelines. We say: the more the merrier! This week we’re spotlighting one such novel, Edgware Road. It explores the story of Khalid, an immigrant father and gambler who goes missing in 1981. In 2003, his daughter Alia, now a young academic at Oxford, is on a mission to discover who her father really was. A family mystery, a daughter’s journey, and the exploration of what it means to be an immigrant in London are...
Apr 11, 2022•13 min
In times of need we turn to literature. Maggie’s Gee’s timely modern fable The Red Children is our featured title this week, and just the tonic we all need to make sense of confusing times. Set in a world in crisis, this original, gripping story about migration and global warming restores belief in the power of human kindness. Do yourself a favour and buy this book! Published by Telegram Books, an imprint of independent publisher Saqi Books, and available now. We recommend buying from your local...
Apr 05, 2022•13 min
You know we love a debut, and this week’s featured novel is startlingly good. Something gleeful and malevolent is moving in Lia’s body, learning her life from the inside out. A shape-shifter. A disaster tourist. It’s travelling down the banks of her canals. It’s spreading. Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies is a story of coming-of-age at the end of a life. Utterly heart-breaking yet darkly funny, Maddie Mortimer’s astonishing debut is a symphonic journey through one woman’s body: a wild and lyrical ...
Mar 29, 2022•16 min
We have a remarkable novel to share with you this week. At Certain Points We Touch by Lauren John Joseph is lyrical, sexy, and will appeal to readers of Garth Greenwell’s Cleanness, which, if you haven’t read the book, is highly rated by everyone at the Literary Salon! At Certain Points We Touch is a story of first love and last rites, conjured against a vivid backdrop of London, San Francisco and New York - a riotous, razor-sharp coming-of-age story that marks the arrival of an extraordinary ne...
Mar 22, 2022•14 min
A daughter. A cult. A wild unravelling. Lily Dunn reads from her compelling memoir, Sins of My Father . When Lily was just six years old, her father left the family home to follow his guru to India for the promise of enlightenment with the cult of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Since then he has been a mystery to her. In her quest to understand him, she asks how we can reconcile unconditional love with irreparable damage. ‘I was obsessed. A memoir which combines the emotional and the cerebral in tellin...
Mar 14, 2022•14 min
This week’s episode is for our listeners who love historical fiction. Mother’s Boy by Patrick Gale is a finely wrought novel that centres around Cornwall, class, desire and two world wars. Based on the life of poet Charles Causley, Mother’s Boy is the story of a man who is among, yet apart from, his fellows. Charles is being shaped for a long, remarkable and revered life spent hiding in plain sight. As an intensely private young man, Charles joins the navy with the new rank of coder. His escape ...
Mar 07, 2022•11 min
Soon, the lockdown would start. People would die alone, without any proper ceremony. Charlotte's death would be washed away, the first drop in a downpour. Nobody knew it then but hers would be the last good funeral of the year. It was February 2020, when Ed O'Loughlin heard that Charlotte, a woman he'd known had died, young and before her time. He realised that he was being led to reappraise his life, his family and his career as a foreign correspondent and acclaimed novelist in a new, colder li...
Mar 01, 2022•12 min
While the nights are still long and we’re experiencing some unusually stormy weather, what better way to make the most of this atmosphere than by reading a thriller? On today’s episode of the podcast, we’re featuring Ashley Audrain’s genre-busting The Push. An international bestseller, Ashley has crafted a page-turning psychological drama about a woman whose worst fears come true when she becomes a mother. ‘Gripping, clever, vividly realised… the ending left me flabbergasted.' The Guardian The P...
Feb 22, 2022•11 min
Exciting news! In this week’s episode of the podcast we feature rising star Charmaine Wilkerson with her debut novel Black Cake. It’s a truly captivating book about estranged siblings reunited after the death of their mother, encouraged to heal old wounds and share a slice of black Caribbean cake, ‘when the time is right.’ This one will get you right in the feels. And watch out for the upcoming television series which is being produced by none other than Oprah herself! 'A story as meaningful as ...
Feb 08, 2022•12 min
It's LGBTQ+ History Month in the UK! We’re celebrating with the release of an episode featuring Jon Ransom’s debut novel The Whale Tattoo. It’s a fine work of queer literature that we’re excited to share with you. When a giant sperm whale washes up on the local beach and tells Joe Gunner that death will follow him wherever he goes, Joe knows that the place he needs to go is back home. But his return throws sea salt in old wounds and dredges up rumours bubbling beneath the placid surface of this ...
Feb 01, 2022•14 min
We have a dazzling memoir featured on the show this week! The Go-Between is a coming-of-age story that shines a light on the life of a young, creative boy growing up in 1980’s Birmingham. Osman Yousefzada grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, in a red-light district amidst divided immigrant communities. Despite these humble beginnings, he is now an internationally celebrated fashion designer who dresses the stars. Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez - all love his artistry. This is his remarka...
Jan 26, 2022•11 min
Welcome to our 200th podcast episode! In this episode we're sharing a beautifully written and uniquely told novel about a tragic event in history: the 1966 Aberfan Disaster where a landslide buried a school. William Lavery, a newly certified embalmer, offers up his services to the grieving families. As William soon discovers, giving so much to others can sometimes help us to heal ourselves. This book does so many things, and it does them powerfully. It's a story about masculinity, trauma, and ab...
Jan 18, 2022•14 min
Welcome back listeners to a new year of unmissable books that we can’t wait to share with you. This week we’re bringing you a reading from Irish author Megan Nolan’s sensational novel Acts of Desperation - one of the biggest books of the year! In Megan’s visceral novel about love, loss and self-effacing obsession, she tells the story of an unnamed narrator’s descent into a toxic relationship with the man of her dreams. But their relationship is short-lived when he goes back to his ex-girlfriend ...
Jan 06, 2022•12 min
We were so happy to launch Amor Towles’ international bestseller A Gentleman in Moscow back in 2017 (you can listen to that event here on the podcast) and we’re delighted to be sharing a reading from his new book The Lincoln Highway in this week’s episode! Already a New York Times bestseller, readers are discovering Amor’s imaginative coming-of-age novel about a young boy in the 1950’s embarking on the journey of a lifetime. The book combines everything we’ve come to expect from Amor’s writing: ...
Nov 01, 2021•13 min
If you enjoy a dark thriller with romance and comedy thrown in, then tune in to this week’s episode featuring a reading by award-winning Finnish author and master of Scandi-noir, Antti Tuomainen. This non-stop novel follows Henri, an insurance mathematician who inherits a theme park. This dose of chaos might be just what his perfectly ordered life is missing - if he can survive the loan sharks, that is. The Rabbit Factor is published by Orenda Books, an indie press that specialises in literary a...
Oct 27, 2021•15 min
We're delighted to bring you an exclusive reading from the timely and arresting debut novel, In Every Mirror She’s Black. Three Black women are linked in unexpected ways to the same influential white man in Stockholm, as they build their new lives in the most open society, run by the most private people. This multi perspective story is told through the lives of Kemi, a successful marketing exec, Brittany-Rae, a former model turned flight attendant, and Muna, a refugee establishing her residency ...
Oct 18, 2021•11 min
Coming to us all the way from South Korea, Lemon, written by multi-award winning author Kwon Yeo-sun, is a short novel translated by Janet Hong. While the plot centres around the tragic and unsolved murder of a beautiful adolescent, Kim Hae-on, the story is about the people in her life who are left to grapple with grief in their own personal ways. Told from three perspectives over the course of two decades, we are privy to the inner life and turmoil of Kim’s younger sister, Da-on, who has experi...
Oct 11, 2021•15 min
Have we got a chilling book in store for you! In this week’s episode, debut author A.J. West brings us a haunting historical novel entitled The Spirit Engineer. This reading is a particularly special treat as actor Dickon Farmar treats us to a fantastic performance. Belfast, 1914. Two years after the sinking of the Titanic, high society has become obsessed with seances. William Jackson Crawford is a man of science and a sceptic, but one night with everyone sitting around the circle, voices come ...
Oct 05, 2021•17 min
BIG NEWS about our Autumn Season revealed for your ears only! Listen in to find out who our very exciting guests are and how YOU can get priority tickets before anyone else. We can't wait to be back with you IN PERSON for our UK events this season! Or you can still join us online, of course. Our newsletter subscribers are always first in line for tickets, so sign up *now* (link below) to avoid the tragedy of missing out. The special newsflash with priority tickets drops at 9am on Thursday 30th S...
Sep 29, 2021•10 min
Sold by her mother. Enslaved in Pompeii's brothel. Determined to survive. Her name is Amara. Welcome to the Wolf Den… We’ve seen this book in just about every bookshop and we’re so glad to be hosting Elodie for an episode of the Literary Salon’s podcast. By day, Amara walks the streets with the Wolf Den's other downtrodden women, finding comfort in their dreams and the laughter that they share. For the streets of Pompeii are alive with opportunity. Out here, even the lowest slave can secure a re...
Sep 28, 2021•13 min
We're thrilled to bring you this new episode featuring Dinner Party by Sarah Gilmartin - a brilliant coming-of-age page-turner about the complications of sibling relationships and the trauma of family secrets. To mark the anniversary of a death in the family, Kate plans a dinner party - from the fancy table settings to the perfect Baked Alaska waiting in the freezer (yum!). But by the end of the night, old tensions have flared, the guests have fled, and Kate is spinning out of control. Set betwe...
Sep 12, 2021•14 min
