Novelist Lee Cole joins Tom’s Book Club to discuss his novel Fulfillment, a sharp and quietly powerful story about family, class and the fault lines of contemporary American life.

The novel follows half-brothers Emmett and Joel, who couldn’t be more different: Emmett is a single, blue-collar warehouse worker, while Joel is a married academic and published writer. When the two find themselves back together in their Kentucky family home for the first time in years, old tensions begin to surface — just as Joel’s wife, Alice, starts to yearn for a different kind of life.

In this extended conversation, Cole discusses the importance of humour in his work, writing about the textures and tensions of contemporary America, and the challenge of stepping back from the analytical mindset and actually living in the moment.

Fulfillment is out now in paperback.

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Writer and peacebuilding practitioner Dr Nussaibah Younis joins Tom’s Book Club to discuss her debut novel Fundamentally.

The novel follows Nadia, an academic who escapes a painful breakup by taking a UN job in Iraq, where she’s tasked with helping to deradicalise ISIS brides. Amid the bureaucratic absurdity of aid work, she forms an unexpected bond with Sara, a young British woman who joined ISIS at just fifteen — a relationship that begins to challenge Nadia’s assumptions, loyalties and sense of belonging.

In this extended conversation, Younis talks about drawing on her own experience working in Iraq and about the decision to adapt that material into fiction. She also reflects on humour, politics, and what novels can do that policy papers cannot.

Fundamentally comes out in paperback this week.

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Writer and foreign policy specialist Chloe Dalton joins Tom’s Book Club to talk about her debut book Raising Hare, a tender and unexpected story about caring for a wild leveret and the fragile bond between humans and nature.

In this conversation, Dalton reflects on finding a newborn hare alone in the countryside and the experience of raising it by hand. She discusses attention, responsibility, and what it means to coexist with the natural world, as well as how the book came to be written.

Raising Hare is Chloe Dalton’s debut and is out now in paperback.

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