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.

Emily Howes returns to the Radio 2 Book Club to discuss her new novel, Mrs Dickens; a fictional story about the life of Kate Hogarth - who was married to the author Charles Dickens for 22 years.

Sara chats to Emily about writing women back into history, who were written out in their own lifetime, and the challenges that come with writing real-life figures in fiction.

We also hear a clip from the audiobook - and get some great book recommendations too.

Emily was last on the Book Club back in 2024 for her debut novel, 'The Painter's Daughters' - and you can hear that chat on BBC Sounds too!

Here's a little more info on 'Mrs Dickens': London, 1835. Nineteen-year-old Kate Hogarth falls in love with the young journalist Charles Dickens. In the early days of their marriage, Charles is infatuated with his bride and Kate delights in her new life, the balm to her husband's irrepressible spirit. But as he finds fame as a novelist and the family rise through the ranks of Victorian society, Kate becomes increasingly aware of his frustration that real people cannot be manipulated as easily as his characters.

Meanwhile, in the East End slums, a young orphan named Anne Brown has lost everything, but is determined to make her way in the world. A chance encounter with the Dickens family transports her to the heart of the household, opening up a world of privilege, travel and remarkable company. But her newfound freedom has come at a cost she cannot always ignore.

As the years go by and the family expands, the cracks in the Dickens's marriage deepen. Kate seeks comfort and companionship in her trusted servant, but whilst Anne has come to care deeply for Mrs Dickens, her loyalties are tested to breaking point as Charles takes control of their future . . .

Vibrant, witty and deeply moving, Mrs Dickens traces a long marriage in all its tenderness, grief, romance and fury. It illuminates the life of a complex, forgotten woman whose voice often went unheard, but whose story deserves to be told.

Sara welcomes international bestselling author, Douglas Stuart, to the Book Club.

They discuss his beautiful new novel - John Of John - and his inspirations behind the story. Douglas tells Sara about his epic trip to the Scottish Islands, the people he met there - and what he learned about sheep farming and textile making (all of which made it into this new book).

He also chats about exploring the theme of masculinity and how not growing up with a father figure helped shape and create the central relationship in his novel.

Douglas also gives a great book recommendation - and - plays us a short extract from the audiobook too.

Here's a little more info on 'John Of John': Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry home to the island of Harris to find that not much has changed except for him. In the windswept croft where he grew up, Cal resumes his old life, caught between the two poles of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, weaver, and pillar of their local Presbyterian church, and his Glaswegian grandmother Ella, who has kept a faltering peace with her son-in-law for decades.

While Cal wonders if any lonely men might be found on the barren hillsides of home, John is dismayed by his son’s long hair and how he seems unwilling to be Saved. As the seasons pass, everything is poised to change as the threads holding together the fragile community become increasingly entangled.