Each week we bring you a sample of the books we’re reading, the films we’re watching, the television shows we’re hooked on or the music we’re loving.

Stella Charls is reading The Dry by Jane Harper

I’ve always thought of myself as a slow reader, until I picked up The Dry. It’s a cliché, but I mean it when I say I could not put this book down. For two days my copy seemed glued to my hands, and I felt myself flipping through pages at alarming rates, as the tension built with each chapter.

This debut is a pacy, riveting mystery, that begs to be inhaled by the reader. Harper is a master of the cliff-hanger, and each reveal caused me to squeal in delight and interrupt my partner with vital updates. However to race too quickly through this book would be a disservice to Harper’s cast of characters, and her evocative prose. The Dry presents an incredible portrait of a small, drought-stricken Australian town whose inhabitants were so real to me (often in a frightening way), they practically walked off the page.

My advice – buy yourself a copy, and one for everyone you live with, then persuade them to read alongside you. The pressing urge to discuss this novel with everyone in sight is inevitable!

Lian Hingee is reading What is Not Yours is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi

I know you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover and all that, but Helen Oyeyemi’s collection comes in such a stunning package that it’s difficult not to. Fortunately, the contents are as strange and beautiful as the book itself – a collection of loosely linked stories that transcend time and place. These stories have the feel of fairytales, but they’re more fey and wild; refusing to be fastened down by narrative, time or place, and as slippery as eels. Oyeyemi plays with the reader’s presumptions, leading them down familiar paths and then abandoning them to make their own way through to ambiguous conclusions. Once I stopped trying to assert my own expectations on the stories I was able to give myself up to Oyeymi’s beautiful prose and enjoy the ride.

Chris Gordon is reading Out of the Ice by Ann Turner

I’m reading Ann Turner’s excellent new thriller, this time set in the Antarctic ice lands where penguins and killers and conspiracy theories run wild. It’s perfect fodder for these cold winter nights, coupled with mugs of hot chocolate and bed socks. Turner’s skill for creating suspense means this book won’t last a week – I must know what happens.

I’m also freaking myself out by watching The Americans, which follows two KGB spies in an arranged marriage who are posing as a ‘typical’ American family.

The story is compelling for a few reasons. The sets are vintage 1980s – the fashion, the soundtrack, the cars, the computer games, the politics. It’s all as loud, and as unnerving as I remember, and this excellent television series honours that time in minute detail. At first, the plot itself seemed quite radical and outrageous to me, until I started to read more about the Cold War and the extremes America and Russia went to in this strange game of chess. The show brings to life the violence, the mistrust and the stupidity of it all with great skill.

My bloke and I have had to limit ourselves to just one episode a night. Though we cannot watch it just before bedtime; I’m concerned I’ll have nightmares of spies in unnerving wigs committing brutal crimes just around the corner from my sedate suburban life.

Alan Vaarwerk is listening to A Moon Shaped Pool by Radiohead

As with most of Radiohead’s recent albums, it’s taken me a few listens to properly wrap my head around A Moon Shaped Pool – the pulsing strings of album opener ‘Burn The Witch’ are immediately catchy, but others on the largely slow-paced and serene album require more time.

Once it has worked its way into your head, though, there’s magic to be found – the country-ish guitars of ‘Desert Island Disk’, the jazz brushes of ‘Present Tense’ and the exquisite piano and strings of ‘Daydreaming’, a song that I think will end up alongside ‘Pyramid Song’ as one of their best ever. It’s thrilling to hear ‘True Love Waits’, a song that’s existed as a guitar ballad for around 20 years, finally on an album as a haunting and discordant piano piece, one which turns a heartfelt tale of loyalty and affection into a heartbreaking lament.

If you’re a Radiohead fan and haven’t been won over by A Moon Shaped Pool yet, stick with it – it’s a grower.