In My Good Books

Susie Green
  • 5.0 (1)
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In My Good Books is the podcast for UK readers who love crime fiction, thrillers, and literary fiction. Hosted by Susie Green, each episode features relaxed, in-depth conversations with authors and fellow readers about the stories that stay with us, the books we can’t stop recommending, and the creative process behind the page. Whether you’re looking for your next gripping read or curious about how your favourite authors craft their stories, this podcast is here to inspire, entertain, and help you discover your next great book. New episodes every week, follow to never miss an episode!

  1. 11h ago

    144: What If Turning 17 Could Kill You? Roz Watkins on The Wicked Girls

    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

  2. 4d ago

    143: Jo Cheetham: Love and Rent – The Anti-Romantic Comedy About Love, Money and Class

    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.

  3. Sep 14

    142: Layla McCay: The Queer Bookshelf – A Literary Guide to Queer History | Reading is Political

    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

    142: Layla McCay: The Queer Bookshelf – A Literary Guide to Queer History | Reading is Political

  4. Sep 10

    141: Cathryn Kemp: They Can’t Burn Us All, Iceland’s Witch Trials & Historical Fiction

    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.

  5. Sep 7

    140: The Secret Barrister: The Cut Throat Trial, a Gripping Legal Thriller – But Who Are They Really?

    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

  6. Sep 6

    139: Gavin Bell: 138 Main Street – A Killer Premise and a Deadly Manhunt

    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.

  7. Sep 3

    138: Chloe Benjamin: Under Story – From The Immortalists to an Epic Literary Sci-Fi Novel

    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.

  8. Aug 31

    137: Janice Hallett: The Silent Appeal, Crime Fiction & the Art of Misdirection

    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.

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About

In My Good Books is the podcast for UK readers who love crime fiction, thrillers, and literary fiction. Hosted by Susie Green, each episode features relaxed, in-depth conversations with authors and fellow readers about the stories that stay with us, the books we can’t stop recommending, and the creative process behind the page. Whether you’re looking for your next gripping read or curious about how your favourite authors craft their stories, this podcast is here to inspire, entertain, and help you discover your next great book. New episodes every week, follow to never miss an episode!

Information

  • Creator
    Susie Green
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    145
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Susie Green
  • Show Website
    In My Good Books

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