Debut novelist, Anna Goldreich, joins Sara in the Book Club to discuss 'The Leveret'.

They chat about her inspirations behind the story, farming, baby hares, grief, queer love and much much more.

Anna is also a keen twitcher - and runs a queer bird watching group in Norfolk - which Sara gets very interested in!

We also hear a clip of the audiobook - and - get a cracking book recommendation too!

Here's a little more about 'The Leveret':

Moving to the countryside is supposed to fix Clare and Phoebe’s relationship. A fresh start, a change of scenery, a chance to heal after the miscarriage of their baby girl.

Instead, Phoebe feels suffocated. Back in the rural community she ran from at seventeen and unable to face the partner she cannot help, she throws herself into work on the family farm. Clare is a stranger in the village, uninitiated and out of place. She spends her days drifting around the cottage, its walls groaning and shifting as she withdraws into a world inside her head.

One day, wandering through the forest nearby, Clare finds a leveret – her own little Isla. A surrogate to lick and love. A way to feel whole again.

But as Isla grows into an adult hare she becomes wild and unruly – a kicking, biting, scratching creature. With Clare’s grasp on reality growing ever more tenuous, Phoebe begins to question whether Isla is the cure for grief Clare is searching for as she desperately clings on to the woman she loves . . .

With this bruisingly tender love story, debut author Anna Goldreich has conjured a hazy dream of a novel about the fantasies we create as a refuge from grief. The Leveret is a heartbreakingly gorgeous and lyrically haunting hymn to queer love and the power to rebuild from the wreckage of a relationship.

Sara heads to Sheffield, for the Crossed Wires Festival, to speak with international bestselling author Lisa Jewell, in front of a live audience.

Lisa chats about her new thriller, 'It Could Have Been Her', as well as her writing inspirations, the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival and how she turned from writing commercial 'women's fiction' to dark psychological thrillers.

She also reads us a short extract of the novel, recommends us some books and takes audience questions too.

Here's a little more info on Lisa's new novel:

Jane Trevally, newly divorced and feeling a little lost, agrees to accompany a man she doesn't know to his house in the darkest corner of Hampstead Heath. She's offered a drink, goes in, and then - a scream and the sound of something falling upstairs - Jane senses she's in a bad place. She runs.

Twenty five years later, Jane finds herself outside the same house, this time to return a small white dog who's been found near her home in the country; a dog whose owner has just been reported missing.

A fleeting glimpse of a haunted looking woman through the window sends Jane on a mission to uncover the house's secrets - secrets more terrifying than she could have ever imagined, especially when she realises it could have been her. .

Fantasy author Sunyi Dean joins Sara for the Book Club, to chat about her new novel and the inspirations behind it.

They chat about Hong Kong, myths, legends, ghosts and dim sum!

We also hear a clip from the audiobook (*which has references to drowning) and get some great book recommendations from Sunyi too.

Here's a little more info on 'The Girl With A Thousand Faces':

Mercy Chan is a triad exorcist with a mysterious past. After washing up on the shores of Hong Kong with no memory during World War II, she found a home in Kowloon Walled City, an infamous, ghost-infested slum full of lost and traumatised civilians. Since the war ended, Mercy has rebuilt her life and found work as a ghost-talker for the local triad, dealing with the angry and bitter spirits who haunt this place.

But the past she can’t remember won’t let her go. An unusually powerful ghost lurks in Kowloon’s waterways, drowning innocents and threatening the district. Unnervingly, it claims to know Mercy – and her forgotten childhood.

As Mercy is drawn into a deadly cat-and-mouse game with this malignant spirit, she begins to realise that the monster she fights within these walls may well be one of her own making.