Use BBC.com or the new BBC App to listen to BBC podcasts, Radio 4 and the World Service outside the UK.

Find out how to listen to other BBC stations

Episode details

Radio 2,15 Sep 2026,28 mins

Val McDermid and Roisin O'Donnell - Live from Radio 2 In The Park

The Radio 2 Book Club

Available for over a year

The Queen Of Crime - Val McDermid - and winner of our Radio 2 Book Club Award - Roisin O'Donnell - join Sara for some good ole book chat. Sara hosts this very special edition of the Radio 2 Book Club from the BBC Sounds Garden at Radio 2 In The Park - Stirling - in front of a live audience. She chats to the authors about their latest novels, their inspirations, why Scotland is such a good setting for crime fiction - and gets some brilliant book recommendations from them too! Roisin is the inaugural winner of our Radio 2 Book Club Award - and managed to bring her trophy, all the way from Dublin, to show off! Apparently airport security had a few questions... Here's more info on our guests' brilliant books: SILENT BONES - BY VAL MCDERMID When torrential rain causes a landslide on a motorway in Scotland, it reveals a crime scene: someone hid a body in the tarmac eleven years before. Journalist Sam Nimmo had been the prime suspect in the murder of his fiancée when he disappeared, and now DCI Karen Pirie and her Historic Cases Unit must find out who buried him, and why. Meanwhile, in Edinburgh, new evidence reopens a closed case and the accidental death of a hotel manager starts to look like murder. But what did Tom Jamieson's book club have to do with his demise - and what will they do to keep their secrets? Karen and her team begin to untangle a web of lies, one that connects their murder cases with Scotland's rich and powerful. They will be tested to their limits - and possibly beyond . . . NESTING - BY ROISIN O'DONNELL On a bright spring afternoon in Dublin, Ciara Fay makes a split-second decision that will change everything. Grabbing an armful of clothes from the washing line, Ciara straps her two young daughters into her car and drives away. Head spinning, all she knows for certain is that home is no longer safe. This was meant to be an escape. But with dwindling savings, no job, and her family across the sea, Ciara finds herself adrift, facing a broken housing system and the voice of her own demons. As summer passes and winter closes in, she must navigate raising her children in a hotel room, searching for a new home and dealing with her husband Ryan’s relentless campaign to get her to come back. Because leaving is one thing, but staying away is another. What will it take for Ciara to rebuild her life? Can she ever truly break away from Ryan’s control – and what will be the cost?

Programme Website
More episodes