Simon Mayo's Books of the Year

Booker Prize winning author, Yann Martel, chats to Simon and Matt about his new novel 'Son Of Nobody'.
They talk about The Iliad - one of his inspirations behind the book - as well as how we understand ancient history in 2026, and how we should tell those stories.
The novel explores how stories become facts, the price we pay to share them and how we live – then, now and always.
Here's a little more info on 'Son Of Nobody'

Harlow Donne has devoted his life to the Classical world. When a chance comes up to study an obscure collection of papyrus fragments at Oxford University, he seizes it. Though it means leaving his daughter and fracturing marriage back home in Canada, this is the kind of career break he desperately needs.

In the depths of the Bodleian Library, Harlow discovers a lost account of the Trojan War, a glimpse into the founding of Western civilization itself. He names the epic poem The Psoad, after its protagonist, a Greek commoner identified as Psoas of Midea but known to all as ‘son of nobody’.

As sole translator and interpreter of the Psoad, Harlow dedicates the poem and its modern footnotes to his daughter, Helen. Under his gaze, the text unlocks echoes of Ancient Greece into the present day, and a personal message to his beloved child appears. Despite the three-thousand-year gap between the two, a thread hasn’t frayed: the universal song of homesickness and regret, of ambition and grief.

Author Francis Spufford joins Simon and Matt for a natter about his processes, favourite authors, the ordering of his bookshelves and much more.
We also learn who he'd invite to his fantasy dinner party!

Francis Spufford joins Simon and Matt for a natter about his new novel, 'Nonesuch'. They talk about his fascination with The Blitz, his inspirations for the fantasmical parts of the story and how he melded two genres together.
They also discuss craft, research, bending history - and the finished manuscript sitting on his computer which he isn't allowed to publish until 2034.
Here's a little more about the novel:
It's the summer of 1939. London is on the brink of catastrophic war. Iris Hawkins, an ambitious young woman in the stuffy world of City finance, has a chance encounter with Geoff, a technical whizz at the BBC's nascent television unit.
What was supposed to be one night of abandon draws her instead into an adventure of otherworldly pursuit - into a reality where time bends, spirits can be summoned, and history hangs by a thread. Soon there are Nazi planes overhead. But Iris has more to contend with than the terrors of the Blitz. Over the rooftops of burning London, in the twisted passages between past and present, a fascist fanatic is travelling with a gun in her hand.
And only Iris can stop her from altering the course of history forever.

International bestselling crime writer, Kathy Reichs, joins Simon and Matt for a chat about her latest Temperance Brennan novel.
They discuss taxidermy (Simon makes makes his feelings known!), forensic pathology, autopsies, animals, the origins of evil and what Kathy has learnt after writing and publishing so many books.
Here's a little more info on Kathy's latest novel, 'Evil Bones':

Small animals have been turning up throughout Charlotte, North Carolina, mutilated and displayed in the same bizarre manner. Now it seems the perp is upping the ante. When Temperance Brennan visits the latest crime scene, she finds that the victim is a dog. Somebody’s pet.

Vowing to find whoever is responsible, Tempe is disturbed to learn from a forensic psychologist that the escalating pattern of aggression suggests even more macabre discoveries to come. And then it happens. A woman is found disfigured and posed in a manner that mimics the earlier killings. As Tempe follows the horrifying clues to a shocking conclusion, she finds herself forced to confront an increasingly terrifying question.

Bestselling author, Jennifer Niven, joins Simon and Matt to talk about the authors she admires, her writing process and the job she would have liked to do if she wasn't an author.
Simon and Matt also surprise Jennifer with a question from bestselling author Jennie Godfrey...