World Book Club welcomes Karin Slaughter to answer your questions about her brutal, heart-rending thriller, The Good Daughter. 28 years after the murder of their mother, another horrific crime forces sisters Sam and Charlie Quinn to confront the truth about the night that shattered their family so long ago. Karin will be asking your questions about her attitude to violence in her novels, the dynamics of sisterhood, and why saving public libraries is more important than ever in the modern world....
Jun 01, 2026•1 hr 5 min
Harriett Gilbert welcomes John Connolly to World Book Club to answer your question on his beautiful, but twisted fairy tale - The Book of Lost Things. Set in the Second World War. The novel tells the tale of twelve-year-old David, who mourns the death of his mother while shut up in his attic bedroom with only his books for company. But those books have begun to whisper to him, tempting him... As his family falls apart, David is drawn into a world peopled by heroes and monsters of fairytale and m...
May 01, 2026•1 hr 3 min
Octavia Bright talks to Ragnar Jónasson about his shocking thriller, The Darkness. When Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdóttir is unceremoniously told she is being forced into early retirement, she is given the chance to work on one last Cold Case, anything she likes. The case she chooses to revive is centred on the death of a Russian asylum seeker, a 27-year-old woman who had been found dead on the icy shore a year before. As Hulda reopens the case, she discovers that another young woman disa...
Apr 01, 2026•1 hr 2 min
Harriett Gilbert welcomes the French author Laurent Binet to the World Book Club studio to answer your questions about his acclaimed novel HHhH. The book tells the story of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, one of the chief architects of the Holocaust, and the daring mission carried out by Czech resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied Prague. At the same time, Binet places himself into the narrative, obsessively questioning how history should be told, where fact ends and fiction begins, and w...
Mar 02, 2026•58 min
Harriett Gilbert welcomes master of suspense, the Canadian author Linwood Barclay in the World Book Club Studio, to answer your questions about his thriller 'Take Your Breath Away'. The story centres on Andrew Mason, whose wife Brie vanished six years ago, making him the prime suspect. But just as he’s beginning to rebuild his life, a mysterious woman resembling Brie suddenly appears, forcing him to uncover the truth about what happened to his wife, uncovering secrets and lies at every turn. Lin...
Feb 02, 2026•1 hr 4 min
Harriett Gilbert welcomes bestselling author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni into the World Book Club studio to discuss her internationally acclaimed novel, The Palace of Illusions. A luminous reimagining of the ancient Indian epic, the Mahabharat, The Palace of Illusions traces the life of Princess Panchaali—better known as Draupadi—from her miraculous birth in fire to her destiny as the wife of five brothers cheated of their father’s kingdom. Swept into their quest to reclaim their birthright, Panc...
Jan 01, 2026•1 hr 7 min
Harriett Gilbert welcomes bestselling author Philippa Gregory into the World Book Club studio to discuss her celebrated historical novel, The Other Boleyn Girl. This novel, about to celebrate its 25th anniversary, is a vivid portrayal of ambition, love, and betrayal in the Tudor Court, told from the perspective of Mary Boleyn, sister to the ill-fated Anne. As Mary becomes the mistress of King Henry VIII, Anne sets her sights on the throne. Set against the splendour and peril of sixteenth-century...
Dec 01, 2025•55 min
Harriett Gilbert welcomes Nigerian author Oyinkan Braithwaite into the World Book Club studio to discuss her internationally bestselling debut, My Sister, the Serial Killer — a darkly comic thriller that has captivated readers around the globe. This is the story of two sisters, Korede, the responsible and overlooked older sibling, and Ayoola, the beautiful younger sister with a deadly secret. When Ayoola’s boyfriends keep turning up dead, Korede finds herself in an impossible position — torn bet...
Nov 01, 2025•51 min
Harriett is joined by Silvia Moreno-Garcia to discuss her chilling bestseller Mexican Gothic. The story begins when Noemí Taboada, a glamorous socialite from 1950s Mexico City, receives a desperate letter from her cousin Catalina, claiming her new husband is poisoning her. Unsure if Catalina is mad or truly in danger, Noemí rushes to High Place - a decaying English manor transplanted to the Mexican mountains. But is she to be the rescuer, or the unwitting prey of the evil that festers in the bon...
Oct 04, 2025•1 hr 7 min
Join us for a special episode of World Book Club as we journey into the fog-shrouded moors of Devon to explore The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle—arguably the most iconic and enduring novel in the Sherlock Holmes canon. First published in 1902, this gothic masterpiece has captivated readers for over a century and remains a cornerstone of detective fiction. Harriett Gilbert is joined by internationally bestselling crime writer Denise Mina whose books include Three Fires, and The ...
Sep 06, 2025•1 hr 2 min
Harriett Gilbert talks with Juhea Kim about her debut novel Beasts of a Little Land. Set during the turbulent years of Japanese-occupied Korea in the early 20th century, this sweeping historical epic traces the lives of two unforgettable characters: Jade, a young girl sold to a courtesan school, and JungHo, the orphaned son of a hunter who becomes swept up in the Communist resistance. Over five decades, their paths cross and recross as they navigate war, occupation, and revolution. Rich with lyr...
Aug 02, 2025•59 min
On this episode of ‘World Book Club’ Harriett Gilbert speaker with with Graeme Macrae Burnet about his riveting historical crime novel ‘His Bloody Project’. Set in a remote Scottish community in the 1800s, the story centres on a brutal triple murder and the person who admits guilt for the bloody deed - a 17 year old boy. This boy, Roderick Macrae, is shy, intelligent, and remarkably articulate. Could he really be responsible for such a grisly crime? Or was he out of his mind? Told via a fascinat...
Jul 05, 2025•49 min
In this episode of World Book Club, Harriet talks with one of the world’s best-loved sci-fi and fantasy authors, the four time Hugo award winner N.K Jemisin. Which of her plethora of books did we choose? Her 10th novel, and love letter to New York, ‘The City We Became’. The story takes place in a world in which major cities become sentient, living beings. After New York is attacked by an otherworldly enemy, five people, champions representing each of the city’s five boroughs, must band together ...
Jun 07, 2025•56 min
Harriett Gilbert talks with Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah about his hauntingly beautiful novel Paradise. It tells the story of Yusuf, a 12 year-old boy living in East Africa at the beginning of the 20th Century. Sold off to settle his father’s debts, Yusuf embarks on a journey across the African continent. Through his naive and innocent eyes, the journey starts out as an adventure, but every wonderous thing Yusuf sees, every glimpse of paradise, is polluted by violence, the growing influence ...
May 03, 2025•49 min
Harriett Gilbert talks with Michelle de Kretser about her eighth novel, Scary Monsters, which won the 2023 Rathbones Folio Fiction Prize. This diptych novel consists of the tale of two immigrants, one in the past, and one in a dystopian future that seems all too possible. Which story to start with? That’s the reader’s decision. In the past, Lili. Her family migrated to Australia from Asia when she was a child. Now, in the 1980s, she teaches in Montpellier, in the south of France. Her life revolv...
Apr 05, 2025•49 min
Harriett Gilbert is joined by one of the boldest writers of her generation, Ottessa Moshfegh, to delve into her second novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation. This twisted Sleeping Beauty story is told from the perspective of an unnamed protagonist, a twentysomething art school graduate who, after the death of her parents, quits her gallery job to heal her pain by drugging herself into a year-long hibernation. Her only ties to the waking world are the bodega which she routinely slouches to for cof...
Mar 01, 2025•58 min
Novelist Meg Rosoff joins Harriett Gilbert to answer listeners' questions about one of her best-loved novels, How I Live Now. It is the story of Daisy, an American teenager shipped off to live with her aunt and cousins in England. What is at first an idyllic escape into English countryside life is shattered at the onset of War, when England is suddenly occupied by an unknown enemy. Daisy finds herself struggling to survive and keep her new family safe as they face violence, fear and starvation, ...
Feb 01, 2025•49 min
World Book Café heads to Oslo to Europe’s largest Literature House to find out if Norway is the best place in the world to be a writer? Octavia Bright is joined to discuss the highs and lows by the internationally bestselling novelist and climate activist Maja Lunde. Johan Harstad prize winning novelist and the first in-house writer at the National Theatre in Oslo, Gunnhild Oyehaug whose witty and experimental short stories and novels have won her fans around the world and Oliver Lovrenski whose...
Jan 25, 2025•49 min
A special programme from the largest public literature house in Europe, Litteraturhuset in Oslo. Harriett Gilbert is joined by one of Scandinavia’s most successful crime writers, Anne Holt. Her novel 1,222 is a tense, twisty story set during a snowstorm in an isolated mountain hotel, a reference to the fact that the hotel is one thousand, two hundred and twenty-two metres above sea level. It features her series detective Hanne Wilhelmsen, no longer in the police force due to being paralysed by a...
Jan 01, 2025•49 min
The Scottish-American writer Douglas Stuart talks about his Booker Prize winning Shuggie Bain. The powerful, heartbreaking story of a young boy's love for his addict mother, and a mother's chaotic love for her son. Photo credit: Martyn Pickersgill
Dec 05, 2024•49 min
Ahead of its 20th anniversary early next year, the author Kate Mosse talks to Harriett Gilbert and readers from around the world, about her globally bestselling novel, Labyrinth. It’s a historical thriller set between medieval and contemporary France where the lives of two women, living centuries apart, are linked in a common destiny. In 13th century Carcassonne, seventeen-year-old Alaïs is given a mysterious book by her father which he claims contains the secret of the Grail. While 700 years la...
Nov 01, 2024•49 min
In this month’s edition of BBC World Book Club bestselling American writer Elif Batuman discusses her acclaimed debut novel. ‘The Idiot’ follows Selin, a Turkish-American fresher at Harvard in the mid-1990s, delving into her experiences as she navigates the challenges of university life, grappling with identity, language, and the complexities of relationships, romantic and otherwise. Selin becomes infatuated with Ivan, an older Hungarian mathematics student, and their relationship unfolds primar...
Oct 01, 2024•50 min
German author Ewald Arenz answers readers' questions about his bestselling novel Tasting Sunlight. It’s the moving story of Liss, a reclusive woman who single-handedly runs her family farm, and teenage runaway Sally who takes refuge there. As they work together, Liss and Sally form an unlikely – and nurturing – friendship. Image: Ewald Arenz (Credit: Tristar Media/Getty Images)
Sep 01, 2024•49 min
In one of the last broadcast interviews, the acclaimed Irish author Edna O’Brien, who died aged 93 in July 2024, is in conversation with Kim Chakanetsa. In this bonus episode, shediscusses her final novel, Girl – which tells the story of a young girl in Nigeria who is captured by the Islamist group Boko Haram – the effects of lockdown and her love of writing and literature from around the world… (Recorded in 2020)
Aug 04, 2024•27 min
Another chance to hear Harriett Gilbert talking to bestselling American writer Paul Auster, who died earlier this year on 30 April 2024. Paul Auster joined Harriett in 2012, with a literary festival audience and readers from around the world, to discuss his acclaimed work The New York Trilogy. In three brilliant variations on the classic detective story, Auster makes the well-traversed terrain of New York City his own. Each interconnected tale exploits the elements of standard detective fiction ...
Aug 01, 2024•49 min
Following the death of the Irish author Edna O’Brien in July 2024, another chance to hear a 2008 World Book Club episode in which she talked to Harriett Gilbert and an audience of readers about her renowned debut novel The Country Girls. Banned in her homeland on publication, it has become one of O’Brien’s most admired and renowned works. Producer: Oliver Jones Image: Edna O'Brien, pictured in 2009 at the Hay Festival (Credit: David Levenson/Getty Images)
Jul 31, 2024•26 min
Toronto is a bustling city on Lake Ontario which is growing at an astonishing rate. Almost a third of Torontonians have arrived in the last decade and more than half were born outside of Canada. The city’s Mohawk name is , which means “the place on the water where the trees are standing". Noah Richler explores the fictional landscape of the city with four of its exciting writers from different generations and backgrounds; Catherine Hernandez, Adrianna Chartrand, Don Gillmor and Deepa Rajagopalan...
Jul 13, 2024•49 min
Kevin Kwan discusses his internationally best-selling novel, Crazy Rich Asians, with readers from around the world. Chinese-American academic Rachel Chu lives a modest and happy life with her boyfriend and fellow academic Nick. But when Nick invites her home to Singapore to meet the family, everything changes – starting with the first class flights. Saturated with wildly wealthy and deliciously dysfunctional super-elites, this ironic and funny rom-com makes a perfect escapist summer read. (Photo...
Jul 06, 2024•49 min
In Miriam Toews’s novel, Women Talking, the women of a remote Mennonite colony are hold secret meetings to talk about the crimes of the men who they live alongside. After years of being told that they were suffering from hysterical delusions, the women “came to understand that they were collectively dreaming one dream, and that it wasn’t a dream at all.” Women Talking is a response to the real life events on a Mennonite settlement in Bolivia between 2005 and 2009. Miriam Toews talks to World Boo...
Jun 01, 2024•49 min
Percival Everett will be discussing his Booker-shortlisted novel The Trees. This powerful and fiercely funny satire centring on revenge and racial justice in America shifts genres between police procedural, magical realism and horror with wit and consummate skill. Percival Everett addresses some of America’s darkest history with an unusual mix of playfulness and political seriousness.
May 04, 2024•49 min
