December’s YA picks: Genre fiction where horror tropes are subverted, thwarted and perpetuated
Including books by Susan Cahill; Bill Wood; Scarlett Dunmore; Rosie Talbot and Sarah Maxwell; and Bex Hogan
The Fall of Man: a Christmas short story by Donal Ryan
Kevin Power: Literary magazines are all the more vital for operating off the commercial grid
Caricature and the Irish: Satirical Prints from the Library of Trinity College, Dublin c 1780-1830
Eve in Ireland: Controlling and Silencing Irish Women, 1922-1972 by Ailish McFadden
The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller: A beautiful, slow-burning novel
She’s Always Hungry by Eliza Clark: Punchy, funny and unapologetically perturbing short stories
Revolutionary Times: Accessible account of a pivotal decade in Irish history
Book Club
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Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel by Edwin Frank – A must-buy for fans of fiction writing
By Paul Larkin
The best crime fiction of 2024: Robert Harris, Jane Casey, Joe Thomas, Kellye Garrett, Stuart Neville and many more
By Declan Burke, Brian Cliff, and Elizabeth Mannion
Every Valley: The Story of Handel’s Messiah by Charles King – Not the work of a ‘lone genius’ but a collaborative achievement
By Jenny McAuley
Finnegans Wake: untangling its histories of humans, the animal world and the environment
By Richard Barlow and Paul Fagan
Poet Grace Wilentz: ‘Ireland has been very generous to me. There’s an abundance of fresh air and bookstores and intellectual stimulation’
By Adrienne Murphy
New poetry: Works by Niall Campbell, Elisa Gonzalez, John McAuliffe and John Fitzgerald
By Declan Ryan
