Dearest Marian, The world you and I knew before you died has changed immeasurably. We didn’t know it, of course, but Covid-19 was already creeping through humanity in our last few weeks together. What followed – the cocooning, the absences, the denial of a hug – seems particularly surreal in light of your timing. All the rituals of death and mourning were scrambled and left many of us even further adrift. It made it harder to grieve, to find distractions, and so was all the more conducive to introspection. … Our old friends Patrick Farrelly and Kate O’Callaghan talked me into making a document ..read more

Marie Cassidy shares how she came about to write her new read, Body of Truth. One of the most important skills we can teach our children is reading. But it shouldn’t stop there, we should encourage them to read for enjoyment. It doesn’t matter how we do that, but reading material should be accessible, be that comics, graphic novels or your good old fashioned book. There will be something that will grab their attention. We can be a bit snooty about others reading material but a good story is a good story, be it fact or fiction, short or long. My saviour was the library, so many books I didn’t ..read more

Anne Doyle tells us about her new new read, Tales of the Otherworld. Ghosts have always been a part of my life. This isn’t something I acknowledge easily, nor is it something by which I’m best pleased. I believe in ghosts, and they sometimes frighten me. But, I suppose, a shiver or a scary thrill now and then is no harm – maybe it helps keep you young at heart. When I was a child, ghosts were a part of the fabric of the everyday. Back then, people accepted their presence and spoke openly about them with a mixture of superstition, warmth, wariness and respect. The lack of electricity probably h ..read more

During the Covid lockdowns I took to walking along the Grand Canal in Dublin, from Portobello to down as far as the docklands, within my 5km restrictions. I became fascinated by all the new building that had started, but now was stalled as we awaited the return to normal life after the lifting of restrictions. It was largely office blocks that I passed, sometimes new apartments, mostly bigger in scale than we had been used to, an enormous amount of glass and steel. I was fascinated too by how all this replaced some older buildings or vacant land or how it settled in visually, these brand-new i ..read more

Martin Doyle tells us about his new read Dirty Linen The Troubles in My Homeplace… Growing up in rural Co Down during the Troubles, I turned to books to understand the history and politics behind the sectarianism and violence. I never thought I would add to their number until I was asked to contribute to an anthology about being working class.  Looking with fresh eyes at the parish where I grew up on the banks of the Bann in Co Down, I began pulling on a thread which led me from a derelict linen mill to an abandoned farmhouse, where a neighbour walked me through the rooms where two brothe ..read more

Fin Dwyer tell us about his book A Lethal Legacy… Murder provides a unique insight into the past. In the aftermath of homicide, history tends to slow down. The victim along with those suspected of committing the crime, fall under intense scrutiny. Individuals, often neglected by history through most of their lives, can momentarily take centre stage. Their deaths (and lives) are recorded in minute detail. This makes the crime an extremely useful insight into the past. In ‘A Lethal Legacy’ I explore 18 murders that took place at key moments in our past over the last two hundred years. While ..read more

In writing Sisters under the Rising Sun, I have tried to capture the true story of over 500 women and children through the eyes of two main characters. In Feb 1942 amid the turmoil of WW2, a group of Australian Army nurses, among them our hero Sister Nesta James, flee Malaya where they have been stationed to care for allied troops, to Singapore. Norah Chambers, an English woman living the good life in Malaya with her husband and 8-year-old daughter, also flee to Singapore. As the Japanese Army advance onto Singapore, Norah refuses to leave her hospitalised husband and places their daughter on ..read more

Courtney Smyth has written a lovely blog for their new read, The Undetectables. I have always loved two things: reading, and forensic science. In the case of the latter, I found the mechanics of it fascinating, and that fascination has only grown with age (I did briefly harbour a desire to pivot into becoming the next state pathologist, but ultimately, at the age of ten, came to the conclusion that being an author was more my speed). For the former, I read everything I could get my hands on, diving into fantasy world after world, borrowing the maximum number of books from the library and inhal ..read more

Books for Business and Life… Given his constant presence in the upper echelons of the Irish podcast chart, it is no surprise that demand for Dragon’s Den star Steven Bartlett’s new book, Diary of a CEO: The 33 Laws of Business and Life, has been huge. The book promises to provide “a set of principles that can stand the test of time, apply to any industry, and be used by anyone who is search of building something great or becoming someone great.” Featuring indispensable knowledge and lessons the serial entrepreneur has learned in his own career and via conversations with some of the world’s mos ..read more

The invention of the science fiction genre is often accredited to Mary Shelley’s classic, Frankenstein. While there is no shortage of women writers in sci-fi, they are often overshadowed by their male counterparts or miscategorised as fantasy. However, some of the best sci-fi books I’ve read were written by women. Here are a few books I recommend you read. Winner of the MacArthur Fellowship and multiple Nebula and Hugo awards, it’s not difficult to see why Octavia Butler made the cut. Dawn, first of the Lillith’s Brood trilogy, takes place in a not-so-distant future following a nuclear apocal ..read more