The Hobcast Book Show

The rise and rise of Icelandic crime fiction continues, and we at The Hobcast Bookshow are here for it! We're delighted to be joined this week by internationally acclaimed playwright, screenwriter and author Jón Atli Jónasson, whose brilliant novel Broken was published in translation this month by Corylus Books. His plays have been performed in major cities including London, Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Athens...

Every so often, when Rebecca and I put down our microphones after an interview, we turn to each other and say: "That was great." Our interview with New York Times bestseller J.D. Barker is a classic example of that feeling. His journey to the top of the bestseller lists is remarkable. Encouraged by his wife, J.D. sold up everything and they moved to a small duplex in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania while he wrote his debut novel Forsaken....

You'll know by now that we're obsessed with good storytelling here at The Hobcast Bookshow. Our guest this week, author Anne Booth, has a passion for engaging readers, whatever their age. Anne waited until she was 49 before her first book was published, but she's certainly making up for lost time. Her publisher credits include Puffin, Nosy Crow, OUP, Walker Books, Templar, Tiny Owl, Egmont and Lion, and Catnip. Her works range from...

Anyone embarking on writing a book will know how tough a journey that can be, and how many unexpected bumps and hurdles can be encountered. Our guest this week, Rachel Grosvenor, has combined her knowledge as a writer and editor with her training as a certified life coach to become a writing coach. She aims to help her clients through the creative writing process from idea to completion, and help them to balance busy lives with com...

We're thrilled to be speaking to author Alison Stockham again on The Hobcast Book Show. Alison joins us for a third time, to celebrate the recent release of her latest psychological thriller, The Man She Married published by Boldwood Books. Regular listeners will know that Alison has a background in TV and film production, worked with the Cambridge Literary Festival, and is now a full-time author. In this great interview, Alison di...

Can crime fiction rebuild a national identity? Our guest this week, award-winning author Teresa Solana, believes it can certainly help. Teresa has won admirers world-wide for her crime fiction centered on her native Catalonia and Barcelona, which has been translated into eight languages. But she's most proud of her contribution to rekindling the Catalan language, so long repressed under the regime of General Franco following the Sp...

Our guest this week, Scottish crime author Douglas Skelton probably won't mind us saying that he's had an eclectic career, so juggling writing several book series in parallel might be easier for him than it would be for other authors. As we discuss in this wide-ranging interview, Douglas wrote several true crime non-fiction books before switching to crime fiction in 2013. Nominated multiple times for the prestigious McIlvanney priz...

We love speaking to true storytellers on The Hobcast Book Show. Our guest this week, Jayne Chard, fits that description perfectly, even though she published her debut novel, More Than Murder this week. It's the first in a series of cosy crime novels Jayne plans to publish. But Jayne is no stranger to telling crime stories. She is a hugely successful and award-winning TV and film drama producer, with the hugely popular BBC cold-case...

It's fair to say that 2025 has been an unusual and surprising year so, driven largely by events in the United States. Almost as soon as we record our news section for The Hobcast Book Show, it fast becomes out of date as President Trump signs a new executive order or publishes his latest social media post. Upheaval in America is nothing new of course, but for our guest this week, author and film maker Denise Ohio, current challenge...

We're really excited to be bringing you something different in this week's show. We're joined by six students from Toorop Mavo in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, all of whom are taking the Cambridge English course as an additional option to their usual studies. All our guests are around 15 years old, and each read one of our Hobeck books before we interviewed them - choosing between Echo Rock by Robert Daws, and a prequel novella by ...

A few weeks ago we had the pleasure of speaking to veteran entertainment and celebrity public relations expert and author, Peter Berry. He gave us an insight into how difficult it is to mediate between his celebrity clients and the demands of journalists. It's time to hear from the other side of things. Debut author Caroline Westbrook is an entertainment journalist who has faced the challenge of encouraging her celebrity interviewe...

In the second part of our interview with award-winning historical author Chris Lloyd, we discover how unexpected historical research details impact his storytelling and novels. Chris spends three months digging into the minutiae of life in wartime Paris for each of his Occupation Series novels, and is often surprised by what he finds. As he explains, his plans can change dramatically as a result.

Also this week, we discuss this yea...

Some interviews are so fascinating we decide to run them over two episodes. That was certainly the case with our guest this week, Chris Lloyd, winner of the Historical Writers' Association Gold Crown for the best historical novel of the year. The winning title, The Unwanted Dead was the opening novel in his Occupation Series, set in wartime Paris, in which Detective Eddie Giral tries to ensure justice is served despite working unde...

We'd like to introduce you to two words, if you haven't already discovered them, that will change your life. One is stramash, a Scottish noun for "uproar, brawl or tumult." The other, which also features in the back cover blurb of our guest Callum McSorley's second novel, is the brilliant shitemire, which we think succinctly sums up the world at present. As you'll hear, both words feature fairly heavily in our interview with Callum...

Finding time to write can be one of the biggest challenges for any author. That's certainly the experience of our guest this week, Jenny O'Brien, who for years had to find pockets of time in her busy career as a nurse to jot down ideas or write scenes. She tells us she always had a notebook handy, and sometimes used dictation during her breaks on the ward to add to her work in progress. Now the successful author of the popular Dete...

We're always on the lookout for ways to unlock the creative juices, and our guest this week, author Cauvery Madhavan recommends an early morning round of golf to set the mood. Born in India, but based in Ireland since her early twenties, Cauvery draws inspiration from both her homeland and her adopted country for her storytelling. The author of four novels, her most recent work, The Inheritance, was published last year. Set in the ...

Over the course of four years of creating this podcast we've noticed certain themes emerge, not least the challenging path many writers take to final publication. Our guest this week, author Roxie Key, is a good example. As she tells us, she faced dozens of rejections from both publishers and agents before she secured representation and finally a deal with HQ for her debut novel, The Deadly Spark. It's an inspiring tale of persever...

Regular listeners to The Hobcast Book Show will know how obsessed Adrian is about Sir Michael Caine. So imagine his excitement when he found out our guest this week has acted as the great man's P.R. Not only that, but Peter Berry has represented some of the biggest film, TV, and music stars of the past thirty years, not to mention superstar chef Jamie Oliver too. Now Peter has become an author, with the second of his crime novels ...

We often get a little giddy when we anticipate speaking to our guests on the show. That was certainly the case when we perused Colin Bostock-Smith's extraordinary list of comedy writing credits: The Two Ronnies, Not the Nine O'Clock News, The Clive James Show and Metal Mickey to name but a few. Now Colin has turned his hand to crime fiction. His debut novel, Sting of the Nettle was published by Diamond Books last month. It's a cosy...