Readers: Books and Conversation with Charlotte McConaghy

Australian writer Charlotte McConaghy’s novels write about the natural world, our relationship to it and the damage we are doing to it. She was our final guest of the year at Petersham Bowling Club speaking about Wild Dark Shore. Her latest book keeps finding readers all over the world – including Reese Witherspoon who chose it for her November Book Club Book of the Month. It was almost named by Amazon Books as Book of the Year so far (back in July 2025). A gothic love story, we meet the Salt family, who are the caretakers of fictional island Shearwater. Shearwater is a remote island where only a few scientists and researchers have lived, studying the marine and bird life and the natural environment. But the Salt family – father Dominic and his three children – are the last inhabitants. As sea levels continue to rise, and research huts are swallowed up by the ocean, it’s no longer safe for them to stay. They have a month before they will be taken off the island forever. But then a stranger, a woman named Rowan, washes up on the shore. Charlotte and I spoke about writing haunted places, gothic stories, environmental disaster, and the fear and love that drive the characters in her writing.