The hit true crime podcast that captured a nation.

Join Hedley for a behind-the-scenes look into The Teacher’s Pet. Explore the crime, podcast and investigation that saw justice brought to the cold case of Sydney nurse Lynette Simms.

UNDER PRESSURE. Anxiety is on the rise, perhaps unsurprisingly; it’s not easy balancing everyday adolescent problems with bigger-picture environmental and societal shifts.

Graham Akhurst (Borderland), A.J. Betts (One Song) and Erin Gough (Into the Mouth of the Wolf) write thrilling, funny and heartbreaking books that reflect our modern times. Their characters deal with natural disasters, lost connection to Country and community, imposter syndrome and more. Hear them discuss writing for today’s young readers and beyond.

SAD GIRL? BAD GIRL? MAD GIRL? She may be self-absorbed, adrift or unhinged, but the ‘sad girl’ is taking the publishing industry by storm.

Debut novelists Nadine J. Cohen (Everyone and Everything), Madeleine Gray (Green Dot) and Jessie Stephens (Something Bad is Going to Happen) have all created unforgettable protagonists who are fallible, at times unlikeable and painfully relatable.

Hear from these exciting debut novelists as they discuss making and breaking this emerging genre’s rules, and how they crafted compelling portraits of present-day womanhood. In conversation with The Guardian’s Steph Harmon.

EAT YOUR WORDS. Join us in western Sydney’s newest art space, Parramatta Artists’ Studios Granville for an immersive night of eating, stories and conversation featuring some of Australia’s most exciting storytellers. This event is produced by The Finishing School in partnership with Parramatta Artists’ Studios.

BROMANTIC COMEDY. Rom-coms are literary comfort food for starry-eyed readers. But in a plot twist, the genre’s newest devotees are blokes, who are turning the notion of chick lit on its head.

James Colley’s heartwarming and quintessentially Australian The Next Big Thing maps a love triangle between a boy, a girl and a four-metre-high regional tourist attraction. Jonathan Seidler’s latest novel, All The Beautiful Things You Love, recounts a relationship through flashbacks as a recently split couple sell their stuff on Facebook Marketplace.

Hear from the hopeless bromantics who have fallen hard for romance fiction, joined on stage by self-confessed genre junkie Rudi Bremer (ABC RN’s Awaye!).

HOW TO CATCH A KILLER. If you thought you knew the backstory of The Teacher’s Pet, the gripping whodunnit podcast downloaded by over 28 million listeners, think again.

Two-time Gold Walkley Award–winning investigative journalist Hedley Thomas’ book takes readers behind the scenes of the podcast investigation with a blow-by-blow account of one of the most intriguing and enduring murder mysteries of our time.

Get the scoop as Hedley reveals to Matthew Condon how fresh leads, old evidence and a groundswell of public attention on a scandalous cold case finally saw justice delivered after nearly four decades.