In this episode of Tom’s Book Club, Tom speaks to journalist and author Sophie Elmhirst about Maurice & Maralyn: A Whale, a Shipwreck, a Love Story, the remarkable true story that captured readers and critics alike.

Winner of the Nero Gold Prize last year, Maurice & Maralyn is a gripping and deeply human work, exploring the extraordinary lives of a British couple stranded on a raft in the middle of the Pacific for 118 days. As this year’s Nero Awards ceremony approaches next week, we’re revisiting this standout conversation.

Sophie discusses how she uncovered the story, the challenges of shaping real lives into compelling narrative, and what drew her to Maurice and Maralyn in the first place.

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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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Booker Prize-winning novelist George Saunders joins Tom’s Book Club to talk about his new novel Vigil and his long-standing fascination with the space between life and death.

In this extended conversation, Saunders discusses writing Vigil, a novel that follows the final hours of KJ Boone, a powerful oil tycoon and architect of climate-change denial, as he’s visited by a series of ghosts. The conversation also touches on storytelling, the pressure that comes with success, and the role music has played in his writing life.

George Saunders is the author of Lincoln in the Bardo (winner of the Booker Prize), Tenth of December, and Liberation Day, and teaches creative writing at Syracuse University.

Vigil is out now in hardback.

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