Matt Haig discusses his new novel, The Life Impossible and Lord of the Flies at 70.

Graham Norton speaks to Johny Pitts about his new novel, Frankie.

Johny Pitts speaks to Garth Risk Hallberg about his new novel, The Second Coming.

Psychotherapist writer Philippa Perry and Professor of Neuroscience Anil Seth join Harriett Gilbert to talk about books they love.

Anil Seth, who explores consciousness and the self in his book Being You, recommends Klara and The Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, where our near-future world is seen through the eyes of an Artificial Friend. Philippa Perry's choice is A Stranger City by Linda Grant, a novel with a mystery at its heart and is about how lives interweave in the city. And Harriett Gilbert loves the non-fiction book Being Mortal by American surgeon Atul Gawande, which asks what medicine is for in the face of death.

Comment on instagram: @agoodreadbbc Produced by Eliza Lomas for BBC Audio in Bristol

Tom Bullough on writing about the climate crisis, and Richard Wright's lost novel

Columnist at The Times James Marriott and arts journalist for The Guardian Jude Rogers discuss favourite books with Harriett Gilbert.

James picks The Past by Tessa Hadley, a contemporary novel about family, place and the modern world encroaching upon the old; Jude recommends Border Country by Raymond Williams, a semi-autobiographical story of a man returning home to his small village on the Welsh borders, and how it's changed over a century; and Harriett loves A Summer Without Men by Siri Hustvedt, about a woman re-examining her life in after her husband's rejection.

Do you agree with their assessments? Join us on Instagram @agoodreadbbc Produced by Eliza Lomas for BBC Audio in Bristol.

Chris Power talks to Aleksandar Hemon about his new novel The World and All That It Holds

Art historian Kate Bryan and comedian Mark Steel talk to Harriett Gilbert about their favourite books. Kate loves Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency by Olivia Laing, an inspiring collection of essays which make a case for why art matters. Mark is a big fan of Stalin Ate My Homework by Alexei Sayle, a comedic memoir about growing up in a Jewish atheist communist family in Liverpool. And Harriett puts forward Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss, in which a present-day story converges with ancient rituals to provoke a discussion about how far we have come from the “primitive minds” of our ancestors.

Comment on instagram: @agoodreadbbc Produced by Becky Ripley

Bret Easton Ellis

Favourite books chosen by well known guests and presenter Harriett Gilbert

Guest choose favourite books to discuss with Harriett Gilbert

Chris Power discusses one of the most talked about trends in publishing

Monica Heisey talks to Johny Pitts about her debut novel about divorce in your twenties

Writer and broadcaster Gyles Brandreth has chosen EF Benson's entertaining tale of competitive snobbery in the 1920s, Mapp and Lucia. In a contrasting choice, neuroscientist Hannah Critchlow advocates for Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi, a story of a Ghanaian family transplanted to Alabama which takes in neuroscience and opiate addiction. Harriett has gone for a real crowd-pleaser in E. Nesbit's The Railway Children and all three enjoy a bit of nostalgia for the times when children could run free having adventures around the railway. Produced for BBC Audio Bristol by Sally Heaven.

Jane Smiley, and writing gay lives from the past with Tom Crewe and Nell Stevens

Chris Power explores the writing of Katherine Mansfield on the centenary of her death.

Johny Pitts explores the Queen of Crime's connection to the festive season

Chris Power talks to the author of The Golden Mole and Other Living Treasures.

Chris Power discusses a year in books with Ellah Wakatama and Kate Mosse.

Books about tidying, music and addiction, and a desire to write are this week's choices.

Mariana Enríquez

A disgraced university tutor, a dysfunctional family, and a love-letter to literature.

Cormac McCarthy, The Writers, Derek Owusu

Two very-different memoirs and a tale of two women on an adventure feature this week.

VOICES IN THE EVENING by Natalia Ginzburg (trans. DM Low), chosen by Tessa Hadley THE ZONE OF INTEREST by Martin Amis (trans. Jessica Moore), chosen by Sebastian Faulks EASTBOUND by Maylis de Kerangal, chosen by Harriett Gilbert

Two authors pick books they love with Harriett Gilbert.

Tessa Hadley (Late In The Day, Free Love, After The Funeral) takes us to post-war Italy with Voices In The Evening by Natalia Ginzburg. The drama, suffering and fascism are in the past, but traumas surface in the day-to-day, with first loves and lost chances.

Sebastian Faulks (Birdsong, Human Traces, The Seventh Son) chooses The Zone of Interest by Martin Amis, after watching the hit film by Jonathan Glazer and wanting to read the book it was inspired by. The haunting novel follows a Nazi officer who has become enamoured with the Auschwitz camp commandant's wife, and goes inside the minds of the commandant, who lives with his family right next to the concentration camp.

Harriett Gilbert brings Eastbound by Maylis de Kerangal, a gripping novella set on the Trans-Siberian Railway, with a chance encounter between a desperate Russian conscript and a French woman.

Produced by Eliza Lomas for BBC Audio Bristol Join the conversation on Instagram @bbcagoodread

Barbara Kingsolver, plus the "Social Novel" with John Lanchester and Ayisha Malik

Comedians Heidi Regan and Neil Delamere discuss their favourite all-time books with Harriett Gilbert. Heidi chooses a non-fiction book on the cult of positive thinking by the late Barbara Ehrenreich, called Smile or Die. Neil suggests a novel by Ronan Hession about two unambitious friends in their thirties; Leonard and Hungry Paul, and Harriett picks the novella Foster by Irish writer Claire Keegan, who has recently been nominated for the 2022 Booker Prize. Producer: Eliza Lomas for BBC Audio, Bristol Join the conversation on Instagram @agoodreadbbc

The comedian Ria Lina - who's appeared on the BBC’s Live at the Apollo, Have I Got News for You and Mock the Week - joins Otegha Uwagba - author of Little Black Book, Whites and We Need to Talk About Money - to talk to Harriett Gilbert about the books they love.

Ria chooses Moll Flanders, the 18th-century classic by Daniel Defoe. Otegha picks the popular romance story Like Water for Chocolate by Mexican author Laura Esquivel and Harriett Gilbert brings a book about motherhood; Making Babies by Anne Enright.

Produced by Eliza Lomas Comment on Instagram at @agoodreadbbc

Chris Power talks to Colm Tóibín about his essays on illness, religion and literature

The poet and the writer choose their favourite books.

Writing Nature

The writers choose the books they love to read.

William Boyd discusses his new novel, The Romantics.

The broadcaster and the comedian choose books they love

Celeste Ng and Grief and modern masculinity with Bobby Palmer and Michael Pedersen

Rita Bullwinkel, Mohsin Hamid and Téa Obreht

Two writers who cover crime, football and music share their favourite books with Harriett

Orhan Pamuk, Patterson Joseph and Torrey Peters.

Maggie O'Farrell, Graphic Novels with Lizzy Stewart and Posy Simmonds, plus Anuradha Roy

Chris Power talks to Ian McEwan about his new book, Lessons.

Alex Clark on novels - past, present and future - about summer and change

Mary Renault's Greek Myths

Octavia Bright talks to Ross Raisin about his new book, A Hunger.

The Ethics of Writing Crime

Writer Salena Godden chooses Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys, a book she's re-read many times and returns to now – older, wiser and with even greater empathy for its protagonist.

Author-illustrator Rob Biddulph recommends When the Sky Falls by Phil Earle, named Children’s Fiction Book of the Year at the 2022 British Book Awards, which brought him to tears and conjures London in the Blitz so vividly.

Presenter Harriett Gilbert picks Mend the Living by Maylis de Kerangal, translated by Jessica Moore, the story of a heart transplanted from one life to another.

Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Sarah Goodman.

Tess Gunty on The Rabbit Hutch; Jackie Kay on the writing of Jamaica Kincaid

Recorded at the Hay Festival

SHUGGIE BAIN by Douglas Stewart ON THE BLACK HILL by Bruce Chatwin AGAINST NATURE by Joris-Karl Huysmans

Harriett Gilbert takes to the stage in the BBC Marquee at the Hay Festival for a special edition of the programme recorded in front of an audience. Actor and writer Doon Mackichan known for her outrageous character Cathy in the sitcom Two Doors Down chooses Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stewart as her good read. It's a touching but heartbreaking tale of a young Glaswegian boy's desperate efforts to save his mother Agnes from the alcoholism that ruins and degrades her. It won the Booker Prize in 2020. As we're in Wales Harriett's fitting choice is Bruce Chatwin's On The Black Hill an account of rural Welsh life in the mid 20th century. It's the story of two brothers' lives over 80 years and their connection to land and community. Bruce Robinson actor, director and writer of the hit film Withnail and I which has been adapted for stage chooses a book that features in the final scene of the film. The I character places two books in a suitcase at the end of the film, one of which is A Rebours - Against Nature by Joris-Karl Huysmans. Bruce confesses that he's not the book's biggest fan but the ensuing discussion provides an entertaining insight into books we might read when we're younger and how differently we feel about them in later life. It's the story of an eccentric recluse Jean des Esseintes in 19th century France who loathes people and creates a fantasy world for himself but ultimately suffers from his self-inflicted pretentious ennui. "I wish I hadn't chosen this book" proclaims Bruce Robinson as he introduces it. "I wish you hadn't chosen it" agrees Doon Mackichan. They then elicit a lot of audience laughter from their deconstruction of this seminal French novel that all three find pretentious.

This is a longer version of the broadcast programme.

Producer: Maggie Ayre

Columnist Melanie Reid adores This is Not About Me by Janice Galloway, a tragicomic account of her turbulent childhood in mid-century Scotland. Presenter Harriett Gilbert thinks John le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a true masterpiece, and sports broadcaster (and famous dog owner) Andrew Cotter recommends The Wild Places by fellow mountain-lover Robert Macfarlane.

Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Sarah Goodman.

Summer Reading and Benjamin Wood

Sophie Hannah and Viv Groskop join Harriett Gilbert to talk about books they love.

Sophie, an Agatha Christie expert and superfan, recommends The Rose and the Yew Tree, a book – misleadingly billed as a romance, she says – that Christie wrote under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. She claims it can rival any detective novel for suspense and intrigue. Will Harriett and Viv agree?

Harriett champions Dame Eileen Atkin’s recent memoir Will She Do? which charts the first 30 years of the actor's life, including her time as a child soubrette, performing in working men’s clubs as ‘Baby Eileen’.

Writer, podcaster and stand-up Viv Groskop recalls her time living in Russia in the 1990s and explains why she thinks The Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov, a 1920s satire about science gone very wrong, will become increasingly relevant in the months and years ahead.

Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Sarah Goodman.