Join us at Paddington Berkelouw Books on 1st October 2026 at 6:00pm as we welcome Malcolm Knox who will be In Conversation with Michael Brissenden on his latest and highly anticipated new book, The Second Child.

About the Book

You can't choose your family, but you can choose your enemies.

1945: It's the dying days of the war. A triumphant Josef Stalin has the world's future in his hands, but leading up to the Potsdam peace conference he is restless and paranoid, increasingly suspicious that his ambitious security overlord Lavrentiy Beria is plotting against him.

Beria has a secret weapon, his best friend's daughter. A patriot and devotee of Papa Stalin, Melor Murtova has returned from a two-year exile to become Beria's adopted daughter, and his eyes and ears among the nepo babies of the Kremlin.

In this palace of intrigue and deception, Melor must play a dangerous game, outwitting treacherous power plays and the capricious whims of her frenemies, while conducting a secret mission of her own: to find out who murdered her parents before her time runs out.

Against a backdrop of international politics, spying and the true-history intrigue of the closing days of World War Two, The Second Child is a chilling black comedy about survival in the court of madmen.

About Malcolm Knox

Malcolm Knox grew up in Sydney. Since 1994 Malcolm has written for the Sydney Morning Herald and has won three Walkley Awards and a Human Rights Award. His novels include Summerland; A Private Man, winner of the Ned Kelly Award; Jamaica, which won the Colin Roderick Award and was shortlisted in the 2008 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards; The Life; The Wonder Lover; Bluebird; and The First Friend, which was shortlisted for the ARA Historical Novel Prize and longlisted for the Sir Walter Scott Prize. His many non-fiction titles include Boom: The Underground History of Australia, From Gold Rush to GFC, which won the 2013 Ashurst Business Literature Prize; and Bradman's War, shortlisted in the 2013 Prime Minister's Literary Awards.

About Michael Brissenden

Michael Brissenden is an author and journalist. His first book of fiction, The List, was published in 2017. A second thriller, Dead Letters, also features the Federal investigator Sidney Allen and was published by Hachette Australia Books in March 2021. Smoke was published by Affirm Press in 2024, and his latest book, Dust, is out now.

Michael was a journalist with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for 35 years. He was posted to Moscow, Brussels and Washington and worked in Canberra for many years in various roles – including as the Political Editor for the daily television current affairs program – The 7.30 Report, as the ABC’s defence and security correspondent and as the presenter of the ‘AM’ Current Affairs program on ABC radio. From 2017 to 2021, he was a reporter with the ABC’s investigative television documentary program, Four Corners.

Michael has also written nonfiction. In 2012, American Stories: Tales of Hope and Anger was published by UQP. The book was a personal account of a country on edge that chronicled the undercurrents of division and anger that surfaced during the first term of the Obama presidency. Divisions that would later be exploited to such devastating effect by Donald Trump.

He has contributed to a number of essay collections over the years and written for The Bulletin, The Canberra Times and New Matilda.

Before he turned to journalism and writing, Michael dabbled in art and music. He has a degree in Visual Art from the Sydney College of the Arts and continues to believe he might one day master the double bass.

Contact the host of In Conversation with Malcolm Knox