Nicholas Bowling is a Costa-shortlisted author, bookseller and former Classics teacher.

Interests include Norse mythology, dead people, writing.

Find him on Twitter: @thenickbowling

A reading list:

His own books Witchborn, In the Shadow of Heroes, Song of the Far Isles and The Undying of Obedience Wellrest. Find out more here.

Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien, Tales of Norse Mythology by H. A. Guerber, We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke; Making the Monster: The Science Behind Mary Shelley's Frankenstein by Kathryn Harkup, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, The Dog of the South by Charles Portis, The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, and anything by Cormac McCarthy, Virginia Woolf, Homer.

Shelf Life is presented and produced by Fleur Macdonald; exec-produced by Melissa Fitzgerald; while the music is by Me for Queen - thank you.

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Teo van den Broeke is a style journalist and author. He's also editorial director for Soho House. Sign up for his newsletter too.

A reading list:

His own book The Closet, Toast by Nigel Slater, How Not To Be a Boy by Robert Webb, Glorious Rock Bottom by Bryony Gordon, Pour Me by AA Gill, Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton.

Inside Vogue by Alexandra Shulman, The Beautiful Fall by Alicia Drake, The Chiffon Trenches by André Leon Talley, Anna by Amy Odell

And anything by Douglas Stuart, Donna Tart, Hillary Mantel, Roald Dahl, Rosa Rankin-Gee, Julian Barnes, Ian McEwen, William Boyd, Alan Hollinghurst, Hanya Yanagihara, Philip Pullman, Toni Morrison etc.

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Tomiwa Owolade is a writer, critic and author of This is Not America.

Find him on Twitter: @tomowolade

A reading list:

His own book: This is Not America

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Black and British by David Olusoga

The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch

Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest by John Updike

The War Against Cliché by Martin Amis

Models: Attract Women Through Honesty by Mark Manson

And of course anything by Christopher Hitchens, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison etc.

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