Short story collections reveal the fragile beauty of human experience in Salman Rushdie’s The Eleventh Hour, Liadan Ní Chuinn’s Everyone Still Here, Morgan Talty’s Night of the Living Rez, and Tony Birch’s Pictures of You. Then we shift gears and crank up the suspense with a look at some new crime fiction, including the icy new instalment in the phenomenally successful The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo/Millennium series, the brainchild of late author Stieg Larsson, and now written by Karin Smirnoff; plus, a sharp round-up of some recent Australian releases.

BOOKS 

Short story collections: 

• Salman Rushdie, The Eleventh Hour, Jonathan Cape 
• Liadan Ní Chuinn, Everyone Still Here, Granta 
• Tony Birch, Pictures of You, UQP 
• Morgan Talty, Night of the Living Rez, Scribe  

Crime: 

• Karin Smirnoff, The Girl with Ice in her Veins (translated from the Swedish by Sarah Death), Maclehose Press 
• Michael Brissenden, Dust, Affirm Press 
• Garry Disher, Mischance Creek, Text 
• Chris Hammer, Legacy, Allen & Unwin 
• Kerry Greenwood, Murder in the Cathedral, Allen & Unwin 
• Jane Harper, Last One Out, Macmillan  
• Michael Connelly, The Proving Ground, Allen & Unwin 
• Abir Mukherjee, The Burning Grounds, Harvill Secker 

GUESTS

• Johan Gabrielsson, Host of the Noir Hear This podcast. Documentary maker. His film Climate Changers is available on the streaming platfrom DocPlay, and has an upcoming screening in Sydney

• Professor Sue Turnbull, Crime fiction reviewer, academic, and co-author of Migrants, Television and Australian Stories: A New History

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

• Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, works
• Henning Mankell, works
• John Ajvide Lindquist, The Writing in the Water; The Room in the Ground 
• Christian Kracht, Kracht x 3; The Dead  
• Ulf Kvensler, Sarek
• Sam Guthrie, The Peak

CREDITS

• Presenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh
• Producer, Kate Evans and Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer, Hamish Camilleri and Harvey O'Sullivan
• Arts editor, Rhiannon Brown