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Come with me to Bloody Scotland 2026 for a special episode recorded behind the scenes at Scotland’s International Crime Writing Festival in Stirling. I spent the weekend in the very busy festival green room, grabbing authors for quick conversations between their events and getting a taste of what Bloody Scotland is really like behind the scenes. Mark Billingham looks back on his long history with the festival, from the infamous Scotland v England crime writers’ football match to interviewing Richard Osman, and tells me about his latest Declan Miller novel, The Shadow Step – as well as giving us a tantalising first look at his next standalone novel. I also get to sit down with one of my favourite crime writers, S.A. Cosby, to talk about King of Ashes, his love of The Wire, memorable encounters with readers and what he's writing next. C.M. Ewan takes us aboard the Eurostar for his latest thriller I Spy and talks about writing page-turners in confined settings, his writing routine and the advice he’s been sharing with aspiring writers. Then I bring together all five authors shortlisted for the 2026 McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year – Tariq Ashkanani, Gavin Bell, Philip Miller, Frances Crawford and Zoë Rankin – before the winner is announced. We talk about their shortlisted novels, what the recognition means to them and those final nervous hours before the ceremony. There are also conversations with Ajay Chowdhury, whose writing career began with a Bloody Scotland competition, about his standalone thriller Eden Falls and its timely exploration of AI; and Luca Veste, who reflects on more than a decade of Bloody Scotland memories and introduces his new Liverpool crime series beginning with Liar Liar. Plus, some of my bookish friends share their own favourite moments from the weekend and why they think Bloody Scotland is such a special festival. Expect crime fiction, new books, writing chat, festival stories, awards, plenty of laughs – and all the noise and chaos of a green room packed with crime writers. If you love crime and thriller books, author interviews or book festivals, this is your chance to come behind the scenes at Bloody Scotland with me.

Michael Robotham is one of the world’s most acclaimed crime writers. Across a career spanning 20 novels, his books have sold millions of copies around the world, he’s twice won the CWA Gold Dagger, and his Joe O’Loughlin and Cyrus Haven series have made him one of the biggest names in crime fiction. But Tell Me Something True, Michael’s 20th published novel, takes him right back to where it all began. Set in the small Australian town of Yulara, Tell Me Something True follows Arlo Hackett, who returns home after serving 12 years in prison for his involvement in a terrible crime. The town doesn’t want him back, but as hostility towards him grows, Arlo begins questioning what really happened all those years ago. In this episode, Michael and I talk about why the time was finally right to revisit his first manuscript, what it was like reading the work of his 22-year-old self, and why this became his first novel set in Australia. We also talk about Michael’s unusual approach to writing. He doesn’t plot his novels in advance, describing the process as being like an acrobat working without a safety net — a method that allows him to be surprised by his own stories and, he hopes, surprise his readers too. Michael also discusses how his journalism career shaped his writing, why he believes opening pages are more important than ever, the challenge of writing crime fiction in an age of mobile phones, the importance of giving readers an emotional payoff, and the story of the childhood letter to Ray Bradbury that first made him dream of becoming a writer. Plus, we hear what’s coming next from Michael and get his latest book recommendations. Books recommended by Michael: The Truth About Ruby Cooper by Liz Nugent The Hunter by Tana French Whistler by Ann Patchett Tell Me Something True by Michael Robotham is out now.

What if girls in a remote Cornish village started mysteriously dying on their 17th birthdays? This week on In My Good Books, Susie is joined by crime writer Roz Watkins to talk about her dark and atmospheric new standalone thriller, The Wicked Girls. Ruby is approaching her 17th birthday, but in her village that has become a terrifying prospect. Girls are dying on the day they turn seventeen, and no one knows why. Is it suicide contagion? A Victorian curse accidentally unleashed when a group of girls unearthed a creepy one-eyed doll? Or is the truth even more disturbing? Roz talks about where the brilliantly unsettling premise came from, the challenge of creating both a great hook and a satisfying twist, and why she likes her apparently supernatural mysteries to have a rational explanation — even if a few spooky question marks remain. We also explore some of the darker real-world themes behind the novel, including suicide contagion, toxic masculinity and the online world inhabited by teenagers. Roz discusses the responsibility of writing about suicide without glamorising it, the disturbing research she undertook for the novel and why anger can sometimes help fuel her writing. Finally, Roz shares two books that have thoroughly unsettled her and that she thinks In My Good Books listeners should read next. Roz's recommendations: Little Darlings by Melanie Golding The Old You by Louise Voss

This week on In My Good Books, I’m joined by Jo Cheetham to talk about her debut novel Love and Rent, a funny and painfully relatable story about money, class, friendship, relationships and what it really means to be independent. Jo’s first book, Killjoy, told the extraordinary true story of how she went from reluctantly attending a protest to becoming part of the No More Page Three campaign that took on one of Britain’s biggest newspapers and won. Now she’s made the move from memoir to fiction with a book she describes as an “anti-romantic comedy”. Love and Rent follows Hannah, a woman in her thirties who is happily single and determined to live an independent life. The problem? Despite working full time, her wages barely cover her rent and bills. Then she unexpectedly finds herself in a relationship with Oscar – an awkward, wealthy and very posh man whose experience of money, security and opportunity couldn't be further from her own. Jo and I chat about the real-life experiences that inspired Hannah’s financial situation, why ordinary working people struggling to make ends meet are so often missing from fiction, and what happens when two people enter a relationship from completely different financial worlds. Jo recommends: Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by Barbara Comyns We also chat about Yesteryear and our mutual inability to stop reading it.

What can the books we read tell us about queer history, and what happens when important stories are allowed to disappear? In this episode of In My Good Books, part of the Reading Is Political series, I'm joined by author Layla McCay to talk about The Queer Bookshelf: A Reader's Guide, her celebration of the LGBTQ+ books that have shaped literature, culture and queer lives across centuries. Layla explains why a conversation at an LGBTQ+ book group made her realise that some of the most important books in queer literary history were at risk of fading from cultural memory, and why she wanted to create an accessible guide for readers looking to explore them. We also discuss representation within queer fiction, the stories that are still underrepresented, why so many adults are discovering queer YA novels they never had access to growing up, and whether publishing has moved from expecting queer stories to focus on trauma towards a different set of stereotypes. And, appropriately for an author who has written an entire book about books, Layla shares a brilliant selection of recommendations: The Outrage – William HusseyBoy Like Me – Simon James GreenStone Butch Blues – Leslie FeinbergZami: A New Spelling of My Name – Audre LordeClaudine at School – ColetteThe Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet – Becky Chambers

In this episode of In My Good Books, I’m joined by Cathryn Kemp to talk about her new historical novel They Can’t Burn Us All, which takes us to 17th-century Iceland and a notorious real-life witch trial where the story of witchcraft looked very different from elsewhere in Europe. We look at some of the bigger questions running through They Can’t Burn Us All - misogyny, power, jealousy, sisterhood and the way communities can turn against their own. Cathryn explains why writing about the past gives her the distance to explore issues that remain uncomfortably relevant today, and why researching the witch trials left her with more rage rather than fewer questions. Cathryn recommends The Wax Child by Olga Ravn, Burial Rites by Hannah Kent, Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, Still Life by Sarah Winman and The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff. They Can’t Burn Us All by Cathryn Kemp is out now.

This week on In My Good Books, I’m joined by The Secret Barrister to talk about their first novel, The Cut Throat Trial, now out in paperback. But who is The Secret Barrister? Despite selling more than a million books, appearing regularly in the media and becoming one of the best-known voices on the British criminal justice system, the identity of The Secret Barrister remains one of publishing’s best-kept secrets. Drawing on years spent working inside the criminal justice system, The Secret Barrister takes us behind the scenes of a murder trial, showing not only what happens in front of the jury but the legal arguments, tactical decisions and private conversations happening when the jury isn’t in the room. We talk about why The Secret Barrister decided to move from bestselling nonfiction into fiction, why a cut-throat trial offered the perfect structure for a novel, creating multiple narrators with very different versions of the same events and the challenge of keeping the reader guessing about who – if anyone – is telling the truth. Books recommended by The Secret Barrister: You Don’t Know Me by Imran Mahmood Based on a True Story by Sarah Vaughan

What if a killer was targeting people who all shared exactly the same address – but lived thousands of miles apart? Gavin Bell joins me on In My Good Books to talk about 138 Main Street, his ingenious new thriller and the first novel he has published under his own name after previously writing as Mason Cross and Alex Knight. The novel begins with a brutal murder at 138 Main Street in an affluent Long Island town. Then another killing takes place at the same address in Illinois. With more than 7,000 Main Streets across the United States, the FBI faces an extraordinary problem: how do you protect thousands of potential targets when you have no idea where the killer will strike next? Gavin tells me where the brilliantly simple idea came from, how a spot of procrastination led him down a Main Street research rabbit hole, and why setting the story across America gave him the geographical scale he needed. We talk about researching locations during lockdown, using property websites and floor plans to construct scenes, and how real places can force a writer to rethink a plot. Gavin will be appearing at Bloody Scotland on Saturday 19 September on Across the Pond, alongside Edel Coffey and Tariq Ashkanani, chaired by me! The panel brings together three writers whose latest novels take readers across the Atlantic to America. Gavin also shares the Bloody Scotland events he doesn't want to miss: In Conversation: Chris Brookmyre and Abir Mukherjee on Friday 18 September at 1.30pm, and Denise Mina Presents: Jane Harper & Jane Casey on Saturday 19 September at 3pm.

New York Times bestselling author Chloe Benjamin joins me to talk about Under Story, her first novel since the international bestseller The Immortalists – and a book I loved so much I read all 500 pages twice before this interview. Under Story follows divorced scientists Laurel and Eli, who are unexpectedly reunited at a research base in Antarctica, where a mysterious visual disturbance known as the Arc is behaving strangely. What follows is a genre-blending novel bringing together relationships, nature, physics, fungi, parallel universes and some enormous questions about what we know – and don't know – about our world. Chloe tells me about the real scientific story that first sparked the idea for Under Story, why the first draft took more than five years to write, and the extraordinary amount of research that went into creating it. We talk about everything from neutrino experiments and theoretical physics to fungi, Antarctica and a women's mushroom conference – as well as how Chloe decided where scientific reality should end and fiction could begin. Chloe also tells me about the forthcoming film adaptation of Under Story, her role as a producer and what it feels like to hand such an intricate story over to a screenwriter. And, of course, we finish with what’s in Chloe’s good books, as she recommends Piranesi and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, The Giver by Lois Lowry and Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others. If you love ambitious literary fiction, speculative and science fiction, books about parallel universes or novels that leave you thinking long after you've finished them, this is an episode – and a book – you won't want to miss.

Janice Hallett joins me on In My Good Books to talk about The Silent Appeal, her new murder mystery and a return to the brilliantly chaotic world of am dram! Since The Appeal was published in 2021, Janice has become one of the most distinctive voices in modern crime fiction, creating ingenious mysteries told through emails, text messages, transcripts and other documents rather than traditional narrative.  Now, The Silent Appeal takes us back to Lockwood, where the Fairway Players are preparing to stage Agatha Christie's The Hollow. But, as you might expect, there's far more happening behind the scenes than amateur dramatics. Janice tells me why she decided to return to the characters from The Appeal, how she keeps track of such a huge cast, and how she gives every character a distinctive personality using only the way they communicate. We talk about the influence of her ten years as a scriptwriter, why she writes her incredibly intricate mysteries chronologically and – perhaps most surprisingly – why she doesn't plan them in advance. We also discuss the danger of an unusual format becoming a gimmick, the unexpected influences behind The Appeal, including narrative video games and Emma Donoghue's Room, and why story and character always have to come before structure. Janice also talks about taking her distinctive storytelling style into children's fiction with A Box Full of Murders and Death at the Museum, writing two books a year, and what her writing schedule actually looks like when edits, short stories and other projects all have to fit around each other. And, of course, I ask Janice what's in her good books. She recommends The Fifteenth Man by William Cook, The Art of Getting Hammered by Joanna Wallace and London Falling. The Silent Appeal is out now. Listen to the full episode of In My Good Books wherever you get your podcasts.

Bestselling author Sarah Vaughan joins me for the latest episode in my Bloody Scotland 2026 series to talk about her new psychological thriller, Based on a True Story. Sarah tells me why she wanted to make Based on a True Story a glossier, more playful departure from novels including Anatomy of a Scandal, Little Disasters and Reputation, and why the Cornish setting was so important to her. We talk about the novel’s surprising influences, from Agatha Christie and Daphne du Maurier to King Lear,  Macbeth and Succession, and why Sarah decided to put a powerful matriarch and her three very different daughters at the centre of the story. We also discuss the complicated relationship between parents and children when a child becomes part of a parent’s work, the real-life experiences of Christopher Robin Milne that helped inspire the novel, influencer culture and the ethics of parents sharing their children online. Sarah also talks about what happens when a writer’s novels start being adapted for television, and how working as an executive producer on adaptations of her books has changed the way she thinks about pacing, chapter endings, point of view and setting when she writes. Plus, we look ahead to Bloody Scotland and Sarah shares the events she’s hoping to catch while she’s in Stirling. Sarah Vaughan will appear alongside Evelyn Clarke and Sarah Lotz on Writes and Wrongs at 12 noon on Friday 18 September at the Golden Lion Hotel. Sarah’s Bloody Scotland picks include Denise Mina Presents Lucy Foley at 3pm, where Lucy will discuss her new Miss Marple novel Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel; The Kill Switch: Robert Peston at 5pm; Twists and Turns with Gilly Macmillan, Dorothy Koomson and Claire Douglas at 6.45pm; and Richard Osman with Mark Billingham at 8.15pm.

Matt Coyne, better known to millions of parents as Man vs Baby, joins me to talk about his new novel, The Trouble With Sister Francis a funny and nostalgic story about friendship, community and growing up. Matt takes us back to the 1980s and the working-class Sheffield estate that helped inspire the novel, introducing us to Sister Francis, a swearing, smoking, unconventional nun, and the four boys who find refuge in the boys’ club she is trying to revive. We chat about how much of the book was inspired by Matt’s own childhood and his big Irish Catholic family, why nostalgia can be such rich territory for fiction, and the challenge of turning personal memories into a story that connects with readers who weren’t there. And, as always, we finish with some book recommendations: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers — Mary RoachThe List of Suspicious Things — Jennie GodfreyOn the Edge, Stepping Up & Well, That Escalated Quickly — Sarah TurnerSkulduggery Pleasant — Derek Landy

Sarah Pinborough joins me for a special Bloody Scotland 2026 episode to discuss her haunting new novel, They Say a Girl Died Here. Known for bestselling novels including Behind Her Eyes, Sarah has built a reputation for writing books that constantly surprise readers. In this conversation, we explore how an early novella evolved into one of her most emotionally resonant novels, why she's drawn to isolated small-town settings, and how memory, trauma and family relationships became the emotional heart of the story. We also chat about adapting her own work for television, why she's no longer chasing the "big twist", the pressure of writing unforgettable opening chapters, and how horror films continue to inspire her writing. Sarah will appear on the panel: The Stuff of Nightmares She also recommends: How to Clean a Crime SceneFemme Fatales with Liz Nugent, Andrea Mara and Harriet TyceS.A. Cosby's event If you're heading to Stirling this September, make sure you check them out.

This week I'm joined by Joanna Wallace to celebrate the publication of her brilliantly entertaining new novel, The Art of Getting Hammered. Joanna's debut novel, You'd Look Better as a Ghost, introduced readers to one of crime fiction's most unforgettable protagonists: Claire, the artist, pub worker and part-time serial killer. Now Claire is back, and this time she finds herself investigating drink spiking, mysterious deaths, and another killer operating on her patch - all while trying to stick to her own very unusual moral code.  Joanna also shares two brilliant book recommendations: The Silent Appeal by Janice Hallett Man and Dog: A Love Story by Tony Parsons  If you enjoy crime fiction that's dark, funny, brilliantly original and packed with memorable characters, this is an episode you won't want to miss.

Jonathan Trigell joins me for this episode of Reading Is Political to discuss the re-release of his award-winning novel, Boy A. First published in 2004, Boy A became one of the defining British novels of its generation, winning both the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Waverton Good Read Award before being adapted into the acclaimed BAFTA-winning film starring Andrew Garfield. More than twenty years later, the novel has been re-released for a new generation of readers and its themes feel just as relevant today.  Our conversation explores why society continues to struggle with ideas of crime, punishment, rehabilitation and forgiveness. We discuss whether children who commit terrible crimes are judged differently from adults, the role of the media in shaping public opinion, and how social media would completely change Jack's story if Boy A were written today. Jonathan's book recommendations: • GB84 — David Peace • If We Tolerate This: How the British Establishment Made the Far Right Respectable — Daniel Trilling • Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York — Andrew Lownie • Lost Boys: Undercover in the Manosphere — James Bloodworth • Fieldwork As A Sex Object — Meena Kandasamy  • The Road — Cormac McCarthy • The House at Pooh Corner — A. A. Milne