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Jane Gardman
Mariella is joined by Jane Gardman. A celebrated writer of books for both younger readers and adults alike, Jane's latest book of short stories lightly sketches stories of decrepitude and death, hauntings and liberations. From the single mothers of the Milly Ming to the aspiring youth doctor on a trip to London during the Blitz, from the grumbling barristers of Privilege Hill to the four elderly women friends attending a college reunion in their twilight years these diminutive tales prove that size is not a reliable indicator when it comes to the power of the emotional punch.

Reading Clinic
Open Book offers advice to a listener who’s been trying to convince her friends to read science fiction. Roger Luckhurst, senior lecturer in English at Birkbeck College, is at hand.

War of Words over War and Peace
Feuds and spats aren’t uncommon in the book world, but it’s not often that a literary quarrel arises over a novel written in the nineteenth century. That’s exactly what’s happened in the US – the novel in question is War and Peace, which has just been published there in a new translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Earlier this year, a much shorter version by the British translator Andrew Bromfield came out, and these rival versions have provoked some major literary mud-slinging. Mariela talks to our man in New York, the ´óÏó´«Ã½â€™s Andrew Purcell.

Classic Fiction from another Perspective
Why are writers so keen on retelling classic works of fiction from a different angle? With the release of Rhett Butler's People and Mr Darcy's eponymous diary, Open Book speaks to Peter Kemp, Fiction Editor of the Sunday Times and to Maya Slater, author of Mr Darcy’s Diary.