Eliza Henry-Jones is the author of novels including In the Quiet (2015), Ache (2017), P is for Pearl (2018) and How to Grow a Family Tree (2020). She’s made award lists including the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, Indie Awards, ABIA Awards and CBCA Awards. Eliza’s latest novel is Salt and Skin. Luda has arrived with her children Darcy and Min, to the storm-bruised islands of northern Scotland. The family have fled Australia in a storm of grief and recrimination seeking to find a new home and purpose to their lives.

Chris Flynn is the author of Mammoth, Here Be Leviathans, The Glass Kingdom and A Tiger in Eden. Chris is Editor-in-Residence at Museums Victoria, and his writing can also be found in a range of publications across the world. Chris has a new short story collection out Here Be Leviathans. It continues his incredible ability to capture the uncanny and give voice to anyone, or anything.

This year we're reviving an old tradition; the Final Draft Xmas Gift Guide. Got a hard to buy for person in your life? Hoping a slightly sardonic radio segment has the answers? You're in luck then because this year we are selecting the perfect book to give to your loved ones.

When Josh goes missing in Europe Mila follows him to try and uncover what has happened and what she has lost. There she meets Kyle, and together the two follow in Josh’s footsteps and try to make sense of his final days…

In a nondescript street in Clarke (a city since the seventies) Barney Clarke (no relation) is woken by a knock on the door. A veritable platoon of police have arrived to execute a search warrant on his house and backyard. Next door Leonie observes the police’s arrival, thinking to herself that they are six years too late to help her missing friend Ginny Lawson.

The Whitewash is the unofficial history of the rise and fall of Brood Empire detailing not only the film’s unseemly demise but its origins in the anals of racist representation of Asia and Asians throughout 20th century filmmaking.

Anthony Sharwood is a Walkley Award-winning journalist. He loves the high country as evidenced in his 2020 book From Snow to Ash, and his 2021 book The Brumby Wars. The Brumby Wars chronicles the history of the ongoing battles between supporters of wild horses in the Australian Bush (known as Brumbies) and those who see the destruction they cause to fragile ecosystems and want to see them controlled.

Today I’m joined on the show by Sulari Gentil. In her new novel The Woman in the Library Sulari Gentill is crafting a new novel about bestselling Australian crime author Hannah Tigone, who is crafting a new novel about neophyte Australian crime writer Winifred Kincaid who just might be crafting a novel about yet another crime writer except that she’s gotten herself stuck in a real life mystery!

Abbie isn’t a bad mum. Like so many parents she is exhausted, overworked, trying her best when one day someone takes advantage and steals her daughter Sarah from a busy street market. Six years later and Abbie has another life. She can never move on from that tragic day but she is trying. That is until a phone call offers the tantalizing hope; knowledge of Sarah. All Abbie has to do is blow up her life… Vikki Wakefield is a celebrated author of young adult fiction. After You Were Gone is her first foray into ‘adult’ fiction and fans of her writing will recognise the tense realism and sharply drawn characters that infuse her work.

Paul Daley's new novel Jesustown is a compelling narrative that forces a lens up to colonial and contemporary attitudes towards First Nations Peoples. As Patrick Renmark lands in the remote former mission town of Jesustown, he is a broken man. He accepts he is the author of his own destruction; an affair that blew up into the public eye has caused a cascade of events that have destroyed his entire world. With nowhere else to turn, Patrick begrudgingly accepts the commission to tell the story of his Grandfather Nathaniel Renmark. A commission that sees Patrick returning to Jesustown and facing another shame that drove him away decades before.

Year Six is meant to be a time of change; taking on new challenges a conquering. Hero has always struggled to live up to her name, but this time she has to remind herself it’s not about her. Her friend Aria is being bullied by the biggest doofus in the school and it’s up to Hero and Jaz to help him. Aria can’t talk, at least he doesn’t talk at school and that means there’s a lot Hero doesn’t know about him yet. Aria’s past is a part of the reason. He arrived in Australia having lost so much. There’s nothing Hero can do to change the past but maybe together they can all conquer the future. Join me as we discover Maryam Master’s No Words...

Today I’m going rom-com because after finally seeing a bit of sun over the weekend it’s looking like the rain and cold might be setting in again. And so what better to remind us that despite the rain there’ll be sun again than a genre that always has the sun come out at the end. Nina Kenwood’s Unnecessary Drama is the exact right balance of the aforementioned drama and dappled sunshine to see me through till the next five minutes of spring.

School’s out and Perth’s leavers are descending on the coast. Leonardo doesn’t love that he’s found himself in the back of Jared’s 4WD. They haven’t been friends since high school started but since Leonardo’s so-called friends ditched on him he hasn’t got much choice. So now he’s stuck with Jared, Mason, Valentina and just about every other person who made his life hell at high school When their holiday accommodation decides to turn Leavers away, the group are in search of a new place to party. The Brink is an isolated community, famous for its insularity and not known for welcoming outsiders. When Ryan gets them in with a guy called Machete Max, who rents them some cabins, it all seems too good to be true; a week on Brink Island. No adults, no rules, no consequences. But you know what they say about things that are too good to be true… And there are always consequences.

Moon Sugar is a beautiful expansive novel of love, both for others and ourselves, that melds the corporeal with the fantastic in a way we should all hope to discover.

Neverlanders introduces the reader to a group of homeless kids, the Lost Ones, who are about to have their whole world change when they meet Paco. The Lost Ones are canny and self reliant, they can look after themselves but there’s no sense that their lives are moving forward. Paco wants to offer them a deal; a world just for them, a place where they can thrive. But it’s a world under threat and the Lost Ones will have to learn pretty quickly whether have what it takes to save it…

Salt and Skin is a story about place. It is firmly grounded in our experience of environmental tragedy. Through the evolving stories of Luda, Min, Darcy and Theo we see our own connections and must confront that we don’t live apart from our world but are in fact there in it, even as it crumbles beneath us.

For nearly thirty years Final Draft has found its home at 2ser 107.3. 2ser is a Community Radio Station broadcasting from Sydney, Australia. Today's special bonus episode is a little look at the history of 2ser and a big Happy Birthday for Radiothon.

This week on book club we're helping you with your school holiday fun with some reading recommendations and a fantastic exhibition to share the love of reading with young and old.

The National Young Writers’ Festival is an annual gathering of young writers. A place for them to showcase their work, share ideas, and learn. 2022 sees NYWF as a hybrid festival, with both in person and online events.

Jasmine Seymour is a Dharug woman, a language teacher and language activist. Open Your Heart to Country offers young readers the chance to discover the ideas and language of the Dharug people wrapped up in the spectacular visuals of Jasmine's art.

CBCA Winner Shirley Marr joins us to discuss her book A Glasshouse of Stars, winner of the Early Childhood Prize at the Children's Book Council Awards, as well as her new book All Four Quarters of the Moon

CBCA Winner Andrea Rowe joins us to discuss her book Jetty Jumping, winner of the Early Childhood Prize at the Children's Book Council Awards

Today I have got something truly unique; thought provoking, puzzling, laugh out loud funny. Siang Lu’s The Whitewash might just be the whole package

A woman stumbles out of a bar, unsteady on her feet. A man has followed her out but as he grabs at her it’s clear he’s not there help… A string of drink spiking incidents in bars around Deception Bay points to a serial rapist. So why isn’t anyone joining the dots? Detective sergeant Antigone Pollard has seen this before. It’s the case that drove her out of Melbourne. Can she take on the system that says it’s all a bit of fun and boys will be boys? Can she help the women of Deception Bay protect themselves?

Jesustown is a fascinating examination of colonial legacy and contemporary responsibility. It holds a light up to the crimes of the past and leaves the reader in no doubt that there is much to recompense.