Lost Gaels: Remembering the Members of the GAA Killed During the Conflict in Ireland, by Peadar Thompson (Merrion Press, €29.99)
Falling in love with Gaelic games in your formative years meant absorbing the names of great players and high-profile managers. You also learned important names such as Aidan McAnespie from the Border town Aughnacloy, in Co Tyrone, who, while walking to play in a local Gaelic football match in 1988, was shot dead with his back to a British army checkpoint. He was 23. His name will never be forgotten, and with this important record nor will close to 100 other men, women and children with strong ties to the GAA, who had their lives snuffed out during the conflict. A touching and genuine pen picture of each person is drawn by those who knew them best: we can remember them by reading this worthy testament. NJ McGarrigle
The Punk Rock Birdwatching Club by Richard Foster (Ortac Press, €16.99)
Where have all the ravers gone? In these stories, Richard Foster, whose debut, Flower Factory, depicted the Dutch warehouse dance scene of the 1990s and early 2000s, updates us. The heady, free days of chemical-driven night living have been eclipsed. Economics and social change have driven the British and Irish contingents from the clubs, some home to escape addiction, some grown-up and moved on. From under the post-party detritus, Foster presents misfits, drifters, dreamers and wannabes who try to piece life together while ordinary life on the local flower-bulb production lines goes on. Trying at times for the reader with its frequent infusion of Dutch-language terms and by necessity disjointed, the stories show how, when the party’s over and they turn out the disco ball, those most affected are the ones who can’t find the ordinary light switch. Helena Mulkerns
Sweet Vidalia by Lisa Sandlin (Abacus Books, €19.99)
Sweet Vidalia is a warm novel about a chilling betrayal. When newly widowed Eliza suddenly inherits her late husband’s secrets, she finds her lease on life as a housewife null and void. Rather than admit defeat, she checks into the Sweet Vidalia Residence Inn, a gritty hotel whose tenants are all “waiting for something to hit them, a windfall or a friend with a gimmick”. To survive, Eliza must find out how many of her talents – and friends – are transferable. In her depictions of small-town Texas in the 1960s, Sandlin matches soft, colourful prose with meticulously choreographed scenes that betray her pedigree as an award-winning crime writer. While Vidalia’s layers are limited, its spirited cast of characters and irrepressible attitude make it an outstanding coming-of-middle-age story. Kristen Malone Poli
