Our guest is Kathryn Evans, who has been an actor, a waitress, a celery cutter and newspaper deliverer – she’s even scrubbed the decks of the Mary Rose. Now she combines being an author with being a mum, running a farm, volunteering as co-Regional Advisor for SCBWI, and fencing competitively. Her debut More of Me won the Edinburgh International Book Festival First Book Award – the first YA novel ever to do so. It also won the 2017 SCBWI Crystal Kite Award for GB and Ireland. Beauty Sleep is her latest novel, which was shortlisted for the STEAM prize and won the 2020 CrimeFest Award for a YA novel.
More of Me Teva – what if once a year, you split into two, leaving the younger version of yourself having to watch the new version take over your life.
Beauty Sleep – What if you were dying aged 16 and your only hope of a cure is to be frozen. What would happen if you wake up and it’s forty years later?
The books discussed in the February edition are:
Tim’s selection:
Darkest Evening by Ann Cleeves
Graves End by William Shaw
Midnight Library by Matt Haig
A Thousand Moons by Sebastian Barry
Apeirogon by Colum McCann
A Short History of Falling by Joe Hammond
Slough House by Mick Herron
Bill Gates’ How To Avoid a Climate Disaster
We are Bellingcat by Eliot Higgins
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
To Calais in Ordinary Time by James Meek
The Most Precious of Cargoes by Jean Claude Grimberg for Holocaust Memorial
and of course
Beauty Sleep by Kathryn Evans
Suzie’s books are:
Going Gently by David Nobbs (Reggie Perrin author)
Expectation by Anna Hope
Hot Milk Deborah Levy.
Costa Book of the Year 2020 is The Mermaid of Black Conch
Audiobook: The Dutch House by Ann Patchett read by Tom Hanks
Talking Books is broadcast on the third Monday evening of the month at 8pm on Petersfield’s Shine Radio and than repeated at other times during the month.
Special guest Thomas Harding, a bestselling author whose books have been translated into more than 16 languages. He has written for the Sunday Times, the Washington Post and the Guardian, among other publications. He is the author of HANNS AND RUDOLF which won the JQ-Wingate Prize for Non-Fiction; THE HOUSE BY THE LAKE, which was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award; and BLOOD ON THE PAGE which won the Crime Writers’ Association “Golden Dagger Award for Non-Fiction”. His recent books include LEGACY, FUTURE HISTORY, and a picture book version of THE HOUSE BY THE LAKE.
The books discussed in the January edition are:
Tim’s selection:
Double Agent by Tom Bradby
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Just Like You by Nick Hornby
City of Tears by Kate Mosse
Living Sea of Waking Dreams by Richard Flanagan
Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood
and of course
The House by the Lake by Thomas Harding
Suzie’s books are:
The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper
Winter Kill by Ragnar Jonasson
The Emperors Babe by Bernadine Evaristo
Talking Books is broadcast on the third Monday evening of the month at 8pm on Petersfield’s Shine Radio and than repeated at other times during the month.
Tim and Suzie are joined in One Tree Books by bestselling author Kate Mosse.
Suzie’s backlisted choice is Kate’s ghostly Christmas love story, set after the horrors of the First World War, The Winter Ghosts. With a short extract read by son, actor Felix Mosse.
She is published in over 40 countries. Playwright, broadcaster, defender of live theatre and libraries; champion of women’s creativity. Kate is the Founder Director of the Women’s Prize for Fiction – the largest annual celebration of women’s writing in the world – and sits on the Executive Committee of Women of the World – and she was awarded an OBE in 2013.
Settle with a comforting drink and join Suzie and Kate as they catch up with news.
(L – R) Suzie, Tim, producer John and Kate
The books discussed in the December edition are:
What Tim is reading
The Englishman at War by James Holland
My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
Suzie’s book is:
The Haunting of Alma Fielding by Kate Summerscale
Dancing with the Octopus by Deborah Harding
Also Mentioned were books by Kate Mosse:
The Winter Ghosts
The Burning Chambers and The City of Tears, both due out in January 2021
Talking Books and Talking Books Cafe
The full length programme will be on the middle Monday of every month at 8pm, when Suzie and Tim O’Kelly of One Tree Books will talk about what’s coming up; what they are currently enjoying and past favourites. There will be interviews (and do join in the chat via the website). A new addition is a shorter programme called Talking Books Cafe which will be aired two weeks after the main editions, when Suzie and Tim round up the very latest book news and gossip about film, box sets, tv, audiobooks etc. Both formats are available as podcasts.
Tim and Suzie start their fortnightly catch up. bite-size chunks so you can have a cuppa, grab a biscuit, whatever. It’s pure pleasure – so join in twitter, FB or online.
Starting with TV:
Valhalla Rising
The Crown: fascination with 1980s! memories? Hatreds?
Reality TV
Bake Off
Strictly
Master Chef Professional
Series/box sets:
Life on Mars = Ashes to Ashes
Spooks
Black Books – Bill Bailey, Tamsin Greig, Dylan Moran, Graham Linehan
Schitt’s Creek
Films?
Rams
Reading as a mild sedative?
Olive, Mabel and Me – Andrew Cotter
The Sentinel -Lee and Andrew Child
Talking Books Cafe is broadcast on the first and fourth Monday evening of the month at 8pm on Petersfield’s Shine Radio and than repeated at other times during the month.
Tim’s top picks for Christmas presents and a socially distanced interview with Niall Edworthy, the author of Main Battle Tank and over a dozen other books under a variety of noms de plume, covering military history, biography, sport, general humour, wildlife and gardening. WILL, the Will Greenwood autobiography, was shortlisted for the 2005 Sports Book Awards in the Best Autobiography category. His first novel, Otto Eckhart’s Ordeal, is recently published. Suzie is raving about her current read about a rock group in the Sixties and her Backlisted brings some much-needed laughter.
The books discussed in the November edition are:
What is coming up by Tim
Trio by William Boyd
My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christie Lefteri
Father and Son by Edmund Gosse
Grandmothers by Sally Vickers
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
and of course
Otto Eckhardt’s Ordeal by Niall Edworthy
Suzie’s books are:
Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell
Toward the End of the Morning by Michael Frayn
Talking Books is broadcast on the third Monday evening of the month at 8pm on Petersfield’s Shine Radio and than repeated at other times during the month.
It’s Halloween. Tim hates ghost stories and Suzie loves them. That’s not their only difference of opinion. Tim meets Bob Stone, owner of Write Blend books in Liverpool, and I talk rainbow shelfies and Giles Coren’s end of books with author and bookstagrammer Mel Rogerson.
The books discussed in the October edition are:
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
Summer Water by Sarah Moss
This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangarembga
Never Greener by Ruth Jones
Because of You by Dawn French
100 Great Black Britons by Patrick Vernon OBE and Dr Angelina Osborne
Talking Books is broadcast on the third Monday evening of the month at 8pm on Petersfield’s Shine Radio and than repeated at other times during the month.
Suzie Wilde and Tim O’Kelly discuss what they are currently reading and what to look out for over the coming month.
Suzie Wilde and Tim O’Kelly discuss how they organise their bookshelves and the books they are currently reading. Tim talks about A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth while Suzie discusses Deadland by William Shaw and Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage by Tim Robinson.
Other books mentioned are:
Normandy ’44 by James Holland
Humankind by Rutger Bregman
V2 by Robert Harris
The Golden Rule by Amanda Craig
The Mission House by Carys Davies
Summerwatre by Sarah Moss
Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler
Talking Books is broadcast monthly on Monday evenings at 8pm on Petersfield’s Shine Radio and is repeated throughout the month.
