Ep. 193: Clare Leslie Hall (Author of Broken Country) + Book Recommendations
Sarah's Bookshelves Live
Sarah Dickinson
4.9 • 732 Ratings
🗓️ 16 April 2025
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In Episode 193, author Clare Leslie Hall talks with Sarah about her US debut, Broken Country — a breakout hit and a Reese’s Book Club pick. A genre mash-up that is part love story and part murder trial, Clare talks about marketing Broken Country, how this came to be her first U.S. release, and the ways the novel evolved over time. Plus, Clare shares her book recommendations.
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CLICK HERE for the full episode Show Notes on the blog.
Highlights
- Books by Clare Leslie Hall: Broken Country, Days You Were Mine (previously published as Mine), and Pictures of Him (previously published as Him).
- Clare gives a brief, spoiler-free overview of Broken Country.
- Clare’s inspiration for Broken Country.
- How the themes of love, guilt, and connection play roles in the novel.
- The ways Broken Country developed and changed over the course of her writing process.
- How Clare decided that this was no longer a contemporary novel and needed to be set in the 1950s and 1960s.
- The aspect of the book of which she’s most proud.
- How Broken Country came to be her first book released in the U.S.
- What the marketing looked like for Broken Country compared to her first two novels.
- Anything Clare would change about Broken Country down the line should she have the opportunity (since she was able to change the ending of her second book for the U.S. release).
- A bit about what Clare has planned for her next book.
Clare’s Book Recommendations [35:30]
Two OLD Books She Loves
- Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively (1987) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [35:43]
- All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy (1992) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [37:26]
- Other Books Mentioned:
- Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (1985) [38:42]
Two NEW Books She Loves
- Nesting by Roisín O’Donnell (February 18, 2025) | Amazon | Bookshop.org[40:12]
- Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell (July 30, 2024) | Amazon | Bookshop.org[41:33]
- Other Books Mentioned:
- The Wedding People by Alison Espach (July 30, 2024) [43:48]
- The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller (2021) [44:04]
One Book She DIDN’T Love
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1878) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [45:22]
One NEW RELEASE She’s Excited About
- What the Deep Water Knows by Miranda Cowley Heller (July 1, 2025) | Amazon
| Bookshop.org [48:40]
Last 5-Star Book Clare Read
- Leaving by Roxana Robinson (2024) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [51:19]
Books From the Discussion
- Atonement by Ian McEwan (2001) [14:38]
- The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley (1953) [14:42]
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960) [16:22]
- Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (2018) [54:02]
About Clare Leslie Hall
Clare Leslie Hall is a novelist and journalist who lives in the wilds of Dorset, England, with her family. She’s the author of Broken Country, Pictures of Him, and Days You Were Mine.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Sarah's Bookshelves Live. I'm your host, Sarah Dickinson. Join me every other week as we get real, and sometimes a bit snarky about books and reading. Let's get rolling. |
| 0:20.8 | I first talked about Broken Country by |
| 0:23.0 | Claire Leslie Hall in the winter preview and circleback episodes, so y'all know that this was a |
| 0:28.2 | five-star read for me. It's also quite possibly the biggest breakout novel of 2025 so far, |
| 0:34.4 | at least in my opinion. And Broken Country is a love story, but it's an intense one |
| 0:39.4 | that's not a romance. It's also crime fiction. It's also a legal drama, and all of these |
| 0:44.8 | things are mashed up together for an excellent genre mashup. It's intense, emotional, |
| 0:49.8 | and hot, and I was totally riveted. So I am thrilled to welcome Claire Leslie Hall to the podcast today. |
| 0:57.0 | Claire is a novelist and journalist who lives in the wilds of Dorset, England with her family. |
| 1:02.1 | Under the name Claire Empson, she published two domestic noir novels, pictures of him and |
| 1:07.2 | Days You Were Mine that were published in the UK and Germany. And these two novels are |
| 1:12.5 | now going to be released in the U.S. Broken Country is her U.S. debut and it was a Reese's book club pick |
| 1:18.5 | for March. Welcome, Claire. Hi, Sarah. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm really excited to |
| 1:24.4 | talk books with you. I am excited to talk to you too. Broken Country has been all |
| 1:29.5 | over the place recently. And I'm especially excited to talk to you today because I recorded a |
| 1:37.3 | spoiler discussion with Susie, my co-host, two days ago. So Broken Country is very much on the |
| 1:43.2 | forefront of my mind and we are actually |
| 1:46.0 | four patrons going to be able to talk to you about some of our spoiler questions that came up |
| 1:51.6 | in that discussion. But not on this episode, y'all, don't worry. We're not going to spoil |
| 1:55.8 | Broken Country on this episode. Cool. So for those who have not had a chance to read it yet, can you give us a brief |
| 2:02.5 | overview of Broken Country without spoiling anything? Sure. So Broken Country is about a very |
| 2:08.3 | passionate love triangle that takes place in a small Dorset village during the 1950s and 60s, |
... |
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