Summer books catch-up: 20 of the best novels so far in 2025
There are few more enjoyable crime series characters than Detective Charlie Parker, John Connolly's former cop whose cases invariably find him knee-deep in the supernatural in picturesque Maine. This time out of the traps, he's tasked with finding an ex-soldier on the run who has apparently abducted the children of a mob boss.
2. Let Me Go Mad in My Own Way by Elaine Feeney
Elaine Feeney is one of Ireland's most talented novelists. In her third novel, Claire, moves back from London to Athenry following her mother's death, needing to care for her dying father. When her old flame moves into a house close by, it opens up a pandora's box of personal and family drama.
3. Flesh by David Szalay
Flesh is the sixth book from the Booker Prize nominee David Szalay. He writes brilliant, meandering novels. His latest story is about a teenage Hungarian boy whose life over the course of decades takes a downward spiral owing to misfortune.
4. Fun and Games by Patrick McHugh
Patrick McHugh's debut novel – following on from a well-received short story collection, Pure Gold, in 2021 – has been hailed. It follows the tribulations of a 17-year-old boy on an island off the coast of Mayo over the summer of 2009, a time of romance and ambiguous friendship.
5. Stories of Ireland by Brian Friel
If you're looking to pack something in your suitcase for holidays, look no further than Brian Friel's short story collection published this year by Penguin, which is in paperback and mercifully slim. Most of the 13 stories were published in the New Yorker in their day. Each one is a marvel.
Patrick McHugh's Fun and Games; Eimear McBride's The City Changes its Face
6. The City Changes Its Face by Eimear McBride
Eimear McBride's quasi-sequel to the brilliant The Lesser Bohemians re-unites us with the actors Eily, 20, and Stephen, 40. It's set in London in the mid-1990s. Stephen's teenage daughter has resurfaced. Something terrible has happened, which will have consequences.
7. Air by John Boyne
Air is the fourth instalment in John Boyne's elements series (following on from Water, Earth, Fire), novellas which examine abuse in different circumstances. In Air, a father, 40, is 30,000 feet above ground, in a passenger plane, flying with his teenage son. Both are trying to mend their broken lives.
8. The Ghosts of Rome by Joseph O'Connor
Joseph O'Connor returns to wartime Rome – scene for his previous novel, My Father's House, about wartime hero Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty – for a second instalment. Again, the theme is about escape lines for refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe, as Contessa Giovanna Landini, member of the activist group 'The Choir', tries to evade the unwanted attention of a Gestapo chief.
9. Twist by Colum McCann
Colum McCann has a gift for storytelling. In Twist, Anthony Fennell, a journalist, in pursuit of a story to do with fibre optics, finds himself on board a boat off the west coast of Africa and in thrall to the ship's captain. When he disappears, Fennell goes hunting for him.
John Boyne's Air; Emma Donoghue's The Paris Express
10. The Paris Express by Emma Donoghue
The brilliant Emma Donaghue, author of Room and Oscar-nominated screenwriter of its movie adaptation, goes back in time to Paris in 1895 for her latest novel, a story inspired by the moments leading up to a fatal train crash, and the lives of several of the train's passengers.
11. Eden's Shore by Oisín Fagan
Oisín Fagan's second novel has been acclaimed. His character Angel Kelly is a dreamer. In the late eighteenth century, he sets sail from Dublin, via Liverpool, intent on living in a commune in Brazil but ends up, unwittingly, in the middle of the slave trade, a mutiny and a colonial dispute, amongst other capers.
12. The Dark Hours by Amy Jordan
Amy Jordan's crime novel, The Dark Hours, has been lauded by the New York Times. In 2024, Julia Harte, a retired Garda detective, gets a call from her old Superintendent. Two women have been murdered in Cork, in identical circumstances to a case she worked on 30 years earlier, forcing Julia to tackle some demons and hunt down a vicious serial killer.
Amy Jordan's The Dark Hours; Patricia Scanlan's City Girls Forever
13. City Girls Forever by Patricia Scanlan
The first three books in the City Girl series by the popular Patricia Scanlan were written in the 1990s. Dubliner Devlin Delaney and her best friends, Caroline and Maggie, return in middle age for more adventure and heartbreak, weighed down by their blended families, aging parents and sibling rivalries, but buoyed by friendship.
Some of This is True by Michelle McDonagh
14. Some of This Is True by Michelle McDonagh
On a January morning, a body is discovered at the bottom of the Wishing Steps at Blarney Castle. The mother of the dead tourist girl, who came to Ireland looking for her father, travels over from Boston. She's convinced her daughter's death wasn't an accident, setting in train an investigation that divides the local community.
15. The Bureau by Eoin McNamee
The Bureau is perhaps Eoin McNamee's most personal novel yet, as it features his father as a central character in the action. It's a story of love and death during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, set along the border involving the vivacious Lorraine and Paddy, who's caught up in smuggling and money-laundering.
Cork Fiction Highlights
William Wall's Writers Anonymous; Catherine Ryan Howard's Burn after Reading
1. Writers Anonymous by William Wall: During the pandemic lockdown in 2020, Jim, an Irish novelist, organises an anonymous online writers group to pass the time. Things get messy when one of the writers starts drip-feeding him details about the suspicious death of Jim's childhood friend, which draws the reader back into the teenage world of a seaside Irish village in 1980 and a crime that must be resolved. A magnificent mystery novel.
2. Camarade by Theo Dorgan: Poet and writer Theo Dorgan has just released a philosophical thriller. A teenager abandons his life in Cork, having killed a policeman in a revenge plot. He flees to Paris, during a time of tumult, May '68 and camaraderie. Several decades later, he begins writing his memoir, which forces him to address the seminal event in his life.
3. Burn After Reading by Catherine Ryan Howard: Catherine Ryan Howard's novels are always page-turners. In Burn After Reading, Emily, a ghostwriter, gets a gig working on the book of a possible murderer who might be about to admit his guilt. Emily harbours her own secret, one of many twists in this tale.
Catherine Kirwan's The Seventh Body; Louise Hegarty's Fair Play
4. The Seventh Body by Catherine Kirwan: Excavation comes to a halt on a Cork building site when six bodies are discovered. Therein lie the remnants of men from centuries ago. When the remains of a seventh person, a female less cold in the grave, emerges, a historical find turns into a murder case Detective Garda Alice McCann is desperate to solve, despite interference from her superiors.
5. Fair Play by Louise Hegarty: Louise Hegarty grew up in Glanmire, Co Cork. In her debut novel, a group of friends gather on New Year's Eve 2022 to celebrate Benjamin's birthday with a murder mystery-themed party. Friendships and affairs blossom and fray as the night unfolds. In the morning, they wake to find Benjamin is dead and so begins the real murder mystery investigation.
Next week: 20 non-fiction tips
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Irish Times
5 days ago
- Irish Times
Zealous book bans and brilliant writers forged strong Irish Penguin links from the start
'When my first novel appeared in Penguin,' said the writer Malcolm Bradbury, 'I regarded it as a step towards canonisation'. He was surely not alone. For most of us, Penguin books have always been there, from the classroom to the bedside table. But as the publisher celebrates its 90th anniversary this month, it's easy to forget that before its arrival, it was almost impossible to read a good paperback. Paperback novels existed, of course, but they were mostly pulp fiction, penny dreadfuls, as disposable as they were garish. 'Real books' – literature – were largely preserved in hardback, the durability of the format matching the contents. Then in 1934, the publisher Allen Lane was returning from a visit to see his author Agatha Christie. At Exeter train station, he wanted something to read on the journey home but couldn't find anything that was both affordable and worthwhile. [ Books better than screens for students, study finds Opens in new window ] The idea hit him in a coup de foudre. Quality literature in paperback – a good book for the price of a packet of cigarettes. Lane's secretary came up with the name Penguin: a 'dignified but flippant' symbol. A conservative publishing industry was sceptical that the idea would work. But – allowing for the benefit of hindsight – of course it was going to work. This was a culture before TV, before hand-held devices, when the people's choice for portable entertainment was a book. Many people had one on the go at all times, borrowed from lending libraries in Woolworths: so paperback books were a way for publishers to get – literally – into every pocket. The first set of 12 Penguin books appeared in July 1935, including novels by Ernest Hemingway , Dorothy L Sayers and (the indirect inspiration for the series, so it was only fair) Agatha Christie. The series was indeed a huge hit, shifting three million copies in the first year. From the start, Penguin drew on Irish writers for its list. The 17th Penguin title, published in October 1935, was Liam O'Flaherty's Civil War drama The Informer, though not all its Irish titles were so durable. (Does anyone now read St John Ervine's The Wayward Man, published by Penguin in 1936?) [ What do Irish writers read? Donal Ryan, Mark Tighe, Nuala O'Connor, Claire Hennessy and more give recommendations Opens in new window ] Soon, Penguin was not just republishing older books but taking on original titles. The publisher showed that books could be mass-market material without aiming for the lowest common denominator. It created a democratisation of reading. Liam O'Flaherty: Penguin published his novel The Informer in 1935 They showed too that books could be timely as well as timeless, with the rapid turnaround of the Penguin Specials series. In 1937, the title Germany Puts the Clock Back sold 50,000 copies in four days, to a public hungry for detailed information on the Nazi threat. But it also showed that they could not just follow trends, but lead them and initiate the public conversation. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962), about the dangers of pesticides and the industry's cover-up, was a clarion call for the environmental movement. [ From the archive: Fifty years on, Silent Spring still matters, by Eamon Ryan Opens in new window ] Most famously, Penguin became part of a campaign itself with the publication of DH Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover. Penguin published the book in 1960 to test the new Obscene Publications Act , which allowed so-called obscene work to be published if it had 'literary merit'. The publisher invited prosecution and the authorities were happy to oblige. At the trial numerous authors and academics spoke up for the book (though Enid Blyton turned down the opportunity to do so), and the prosecution bombed. Penguin's marketing genius – an important part of its success – came into play: it had 200,000 copies of Lady Chatterley's Lover ready to distribute (using a different printer, as the usual one refused to handle the book) and managed to get some copies on sale the same day as the acquittal. One month later, the novel had sold two million copies. Ireland's own zealous book bans could also create a market that Penguin was keen to satisfy. In 1950 it published a translation of Apuleius's second-century raunchy Latin satire The Golden Ass, which had been banned in this country. And Ireland's once unloved son, James Joyce, has a strong history with Penguin. Allen Lane, who had been the first publisher to produce a UK edition of Ulysses in 1936 (when Penguin was still a sideline for him), reissued the novel as Penguin title number 3,000 in 1969. James Joyce: Penguin reissued Ulysses in 1969. Photograph: Lipnitzki/He had paid £75,000 for the paperback rights, a record at the time. Within 18 months, it had sold almost half a million copies – an extraordinary figure for a novel as dense, allusive, ambitious and delightful as Joyce's masterpiece. More widely, Penguin has a good track record of recognising Ireland as a country that punches well above its weight in literary brilliance. In 1946, to celebrate George Bernard Shaw's 90th birthday, it published one million books in one day: 100,000 copies each of 10 of his titles. They sold out in six weeks. Shaw had been a Penguin stalwart since the early days. Its imprint of non-fiction work, Pelican Books, was launched with Shaw's two-volume The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism and Fascism; the author modestly claimed that these new cheap editions 'would be the saviour of mankind'. Now Penguin continues to publish many of Ireland's most successful writers, from Marian Keyes and Colm Tóibín to Donal Ryan and Ross O'Carroll-Kelly, and has its own imprint for Irish writing, Sandycove. Marian Keyes. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw But what first comes to mind when many of us think of Penguin books are the classics series: the slightly forbidding black classics, or the edgier, cooler modern classics. The Penguin Classics series was launched in 1946: its launch title, a new translation of The Odyssey, set out its stall clearly. This was a range to be both high-minded and accessible, to bring the greatest writers in history within reach of the ordinary book buyer. The Modern Classics followed in 1961, for books that weren't quite old enough to be classics, but demanded some recognition – or at least some marketing. They were given stylish covers, in line with its aim to be – as former series editor Simon Winder put it – 'a series to be enjoyed, rather than something that is good for you'. But the Classics and Modern Classics ranges have a tricky line to tread: these books not only reflect the literary canon, but they also help to shape it. It took a long time for Penguin to break out of the traditional modern classics mode of white men: Orwell, Waugh, Greene, Fitzgerald. The current publishing director of Penguin Classics, Jessica Harrison, acknowledges this. When reviewing the list for the 90th anniversary celebrations, she told me, she could see that 'in the 80s they brought in a lot more women writers' and later 'there must have been an editor who was really interested in Japan and Chinese [literature].' Now, the list looks wider, though even now there are only a handful of Penguin Modern Classics writers from China, and one from North Africa. But Penguin's success is not just down to the quality of the books. From the start – see the Penguincubator, a Penguin books vending machine launched in 1937 – the publisher has been a ruthless exploiter of its own intellectual property, with special editions and rejacketed reissues a regular feature of its catalogue. (It currently keeps no fewer than seven editions of Orwell's Animal Farm in print.) This approach itself leads to unexpected successes. In 2018, it launched a dirt-cheap (80p in the UK) series of Little Black Classics, including Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' most famous work – which meant you could buy The Communist Manifesto at the till point in Tesco. As a result, it made the Sunday Times bestseller list. More recently, Fyodor Dosotevsky has been having a moment, thanks to handsome reissues of his novella White Nights, which became Penguin's bestselling classic title of 2024, outstripping hardy perennials like Jane Austen. This ruthless reuse of its titles has its latest manifestation in the Penguin Archive series, a set of 90 short books published this year to celebrate the anniversary, with handsome covers reflecting the various styles of Penguin books over the decades. Dracula author Bram Stoker The bestselling title of the series when it was launched? Not Austen or Orwell or Fitzgerald, but an Irishman: Bram Stoker, whose short story collection The Burial of the Rats outsold the other 89 titles. It's impossible, of course, to cover the full range of Penguin's history even in a generous spread of 90 titles. But nonetheless, there do seem to be one or two curious omissions. Are there, I asked Jessica Harrison, any authors she regrets not including in the Archive? 'It did feel odd,' she said after a long pause, 'to be without [James] Joyce.' Not half.
Irish Independent
06-08-2025
- Irish Independent
‘Wednesday' review: Netflix's Addams Family spin-off returns with a lot of big names – but the second season doesn't live up to the hype
So what, exactly, is the point of Wednesday (Netflix, now streaming), which takes the character (played by Jenna Ortega) from cartoonist Charles Addams's celebrated cartoon strips for The New Yorker – as well as from the multiple TV series and films, live-action and animated, they spawned – and thoroughly defangs her? Addams's original one-panel cartoons were small, satirical gems that upended the image of the traditional American family. Wednesday, which is filmed in Ireland (our little country has never looked less like itself!), couldn't be any further from that simple concept, or indeed from Barry Sonnenfeld's two entertaining Addams Family movies from the 1990s, which at least seemed interested in honouring Addams. At best, season one of Wednesday paid Addams lip service. It yanked the character from her natural habitat and dropped her into Nevermore, a special school for outcasts and the alma mater of her parents, Gomez (Luis Guzman) and Morticia (Catherine Zeta Jones), where she had to solve a mystery. The result felt like what you might end up with if teen detective Nancy Drew had accidentally enrolled at Hogwarts. Wednesday was one of the streamer's biggest hits in 2022, racking up 341 million hours watched in its first week, beating Stranger Things Four. Its success is understandable: it's a teen comedy horror, and teen comedy horror is, as we know, one of Netflix's most popular genres. But if you strip away the Gothic production design, the supernatural trappings and the cachet of having Tim Burton as an executive producer (once again, Burton directs the first four episodes), it's not really a lot different from all the other Netflix fish-out-of-water high school fare it pumps out year after year. The new season, which has been needlessly split in half (four episodes now, four in September), opens with Wednesday relating how she spent her summer break catching a serial killer called the Kansas City Scalper, gamely played by Haley Joel Osment. Then it's back to Nevermore. Having saved her classmates last time from the maniacal teacher played by Christina Ricci (Wednesday in the 90s movies), she returns to find herself the school's top girl – a celebrity, in fact. Wednesday professes to hate all this, yet makes a pretty good job of continually drawing attention to herself. Soon, though, there are other things to occupy her. She has a stalker. And she's having visions of her friend Enid (Emma Myers) dying horribly. Someone or something is going around murdering people and relieving them of their eyeballs. Just when Wednesday needs her psychic powers more than ever, they begin to fail. In other words, season two offers more or less the same lumpy, underwhelming mixture as season one. There some mild improvements, mind you. Burton, who's directing last time was so anonymous it could have been anyone behind the camera, seems a little more engaged. A brief stop-motion sequence tied to a subplot involving Wednesday's brother Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez), who is also now attending Nevermore, accidentally waking a zombie, sparks warm memories of Burton's Corpse Bride and Frankenweenie. Sadly, it also reminds you that he's been off his game for years. Gomez and Morticia are given more to do this time, which helps a little, and the cast has been bolstered by big-name additions. Steve Buscemi is new principal Barry Dort, an Edgar Allen Poe lookalike (which is explicitly noted and could be a clue to something) who might not be as cheery as he seems. Billie Piper plays new music teacher Miss Capri, Joanna Lumley is 'Grandmama' Hester Frump, and Christopher Lloyd, who played Uncle Fester in the 90s films, pops up as the school's longest-serving teacher, Professor Orlock. Overall, though, Wednesday is a pretence to being dark, morbid humour rather than actual dark, morbid humour, and the character's relentless stream of withering one-liners is even more exhausting than before.
Sunday World
01-08-2025
- Sunday World
Producer of The Assassination of Michael D Higgins hopes new film catches attention
EYE-CATCHING | The Assassination of Michael D Higgins is a film title that got cinema goers' attention, and producer and actor Natalie Britton hopes the president likes it But, with a head-turning name like 'The Assassination of Michael D Higgins', the 84 year-old head of state is, out of curiosity, almost certain to have it on his watchlist. 'We did contact the Áras and invited him to the screening,' the actor and producer tells Magazine+. 'Unfortunately, he had other commitments, but sent back a lovely letter, thanking us.' The short film, written by Dave Minogue and John Doran, tells the story of a psychiatric patient who believes he is president and the nurse's aid who goes along with the premise on his last day on the job, and premiered at the recent Galway Film Fleadh. natalie britton And Natalie - who plays boss woman Mrs Tiernan in the production by Julie Ryan's MK1 Studios - agrees the provocative title may have been at least partly responsible for putting bums on seats. 'Obviously, there's tons of shorts that play down there, but everybody was talking about it or had heard about it, which is a lovely feeling,' says the Dublin woman of the rapturous first reaction to the film. 'It is an eye-catching name that stops you in your tracks, but there's a pressure there; if you give yourself a title like that, then you have to deliver. 'As a producer, you never know how something is going to play in front of an audience until you're in the room, [but] it landed so well in Galway. 'There's a lot of different things going on in this film,' she adds, citing the theme of 'that push and pull between the institutionalism of old Ireland and the hope of new Ireland'. 'But I'm very proud of the journey that we take people on in that 10 minutes.' Multi-talented Natalie returned to her home city three and a half years ago after more than a decade living and working in Los Angeles. Natalie Britton as Jane Kerrigan in Maxine And she explains how she and actor husband Robert Mitchell, a New Yorker, with whom she has two young children, found an entirely different media landscape to the Ireland she left at 22. 'Absolutely, it's buzzier, I mean there's so many things shooting in Ireland now,' says the actor, who played investigative journalist Jane Kerrigan in the controversial Channel 5 mini-series Maxine, about Maxine Carr's involvement in the 2002 Soham murders of schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. 'We've always had the tax breaks, so there's always been productions who have come here, but now I think we have the talent, especially behind the camera … and we're able to supply all these productions that are coming in here. 'So I do think it's probably the busiest it's ever been in the Irish industry. 'It's interesting, because I left Ireland when I was 22 and I went to London, and I studied in drama school there, and did that whole journey, because there wasn't, unfortunately, the same kind of resources that there are now for actors. 'Then from there, I went to LA, so I actually never worked in Ireland as an actor or producer up until the past three years.' Natalie Britton News in 90 Seconds, Friday August 1 'Starting afresh at a later stage in life', continues the founder of Queen's Gambit Films, has been 'a positive challenge' for the creative couple, who have a seven year-old son and a three year-old daughter. 'It wasn't a decision that we made to move back; we came back for a visit during Covid, when everybody's world was upside down, one thing led to another, and we just ended up staying. 'We wanted to be around family and raise our kids here and to be able to give them that lifestyle that isn't there in LA. 'For the last couple of years, I've been going back and forth [between Dublin and LA], which is lovely, and it's actually what a lot of people who have moved out of LA are doing now. 'It gives you that opportunity to dip back in and see your friends and go grab that slice of pizza that you like. You get a top up of LA, but then you get to come home.' As a consequence, her diverse CV includes stints in some of the biggest shows on American television, including Curb Your Enthusiasm and NCIS, while closer to home, other half Robert has appeared in Irish dramas such as Clean Sweep and Conversations with Friends. 'Whenever a nice gig comes in, the first thing is, 'Gosh, I'm so grateful', and then it's probably a phone call to my mum, saying, 'You can relax, I've got a job',' laughs Natalie. 'Those big studios like HBO and Sony and NBC are machines, and you're a very small cog in the wheel of everything. 'So I suppose, initially, you just feel very lucky to have been given a chance to do your thing, and get to play with wonderful seasoned actors. Read more 'Getting a chance to do that [is] what dreams are made of. 'Of course, as an actor, you're only as good as your last gig,' she continues. 'It took me maybe three years to get my first American TV credit, and then you've got to keep building. 'It's a hard old slog, and the older you get … it's harder. 'When [you're younger] you can survive on a bowl of noodles and bounce around and couch surf. But then you have kids, who need a bit of stability, so you do have to make different choices … and I see why people give up. 'Every year that we can stay in this industry and we can keep making things is a win for me.' Pot Noodle dinners, for now at least, are a distant memory for the in-demand pair, with Natalie having just wrapped on a new Channel 5 show that will air here on Virgin Media Television, and Robert set to appear in upcoming John Carney comedy, Power Ballad, starring Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas. NBC's reboot of Quantum Leap, starring the Dubliner as Irish character Holly Carter, also drops on Netflix this month. Meanwhile, she's hoping to have found at least one new fan in 'Miggeldy', as her latest short continues on the film festival circuit across the country. 'We sent the link over, so we do hope he watches it because it's a homage to him, really,' she explains. 'All the hope and all the goodness in the film comes from our idea of the type of person that we want to see more of in Ireland. 'You'd be hard pressed to find an Irish person who didn't love Michael D Higgins - all of us in the team are just kind of obsessed with him, if it's not obvious already! 'I suppose he's a rare icon, isn't he? And you just don't want to take that for granted because he is a reminder that leadership can be humane - and I think now more than ever we all need that as an example.'
