Do you remember the mysterious world of The Girl of Ink & Stars? This time its author Kiran Millwood Hargrave will lead us to a remote island, to a lighthouse, and down into the gloomy depths of the ocean.

Julia and her parents arrive on the island. Her dad works at the lighthouse, while her mom sets out to search for the mysterious Greenland shark. But what begins as an ordinary summer adventure soon turns into something much more dangerous. Her mother’s obsession begins to threaten the entire family, and Julia must venture into places where not even the lighthouse dares to shine.

Come listen to a thrilling and poetic story about the sea, family, obsession, and hope, read by the author herself. Julia and the Shark was illustrated by British artist Tom de Freston. Hosted by Daniela Retková.

Kiran Millwood Hargrave is an internationally renowned British author, poet, and playwright. She has written more than a dozen books for readers of all ages, and her works have been translated into more than thirty languages. Her children’s and young adult books are marked by poetic language, strong female characters, and a blend of history, nature, and fantasy. They include the Geomancer trilogy (2023–2025), A Secret of Birds & Bone (2020), and The Girl of Ink & Stars (2016), which won the Waterstones Children’s Prize and was named the British Book Awards Children’s Book of the Year. She has also written two acclaimed children’s books – Julia and the Shark (2021) and Leila and the Blue Fox (2022) – in collaboration with her husband, the artist Tom de Freston. Her debut adult novel The Mercies (2020), set in seventeenth-century Norway and inspired by a witch trial that took place there in 1621, was a Sunday Times best-seller and won the Betty Trask Award, among other accolades. Her latest novel, Almost Life (2026), is an intimate love story about two women whose lives repeatedly intersect over the course of several decades. It explores love, desire, and the opportunities in life that people fail to seize.