All that fall
The days are getting shorter which simply means one thing: more time to read. Donal O’Donoghue previews a few of the new titles coming to a bookshelf ( or website) near you
Last year in the UK, 500 new hardback books were published on Thursday, October 5. Super Thursday is what they call it in the publishing world and this year it happens on October 4 (Graham Norton’s new novel, A Keeper, arrives that day). Long before that avalanche, though, many new titles will be vying for your attention. Here are just a few.
Dancing with the Tsars
by Ross O’Carroll-Kelly (Penguin Ireland) “Life as a stayin-bed husband turned out to be a lot more complicated than I expected. My wife was pregnant with a baby that possibly wasn’t mine. My old man was engaged in a war with the feminist movement that he was never going to win. And my old dear was making a lot of unexplained trips to Russia.”
The never-ending escapades of Ireland’s most famously feckless, layabout (and one-time rugby ‘star’) has him trying to make sense of a world of rampant Fake News, possible sex addiction and the rare opportunity of winning the most coveted gong that South Dublin has to offer, the Strictly Mount Anville glitter ball. (September 6)
Lethal White by Robert Galbraith (Sphere)
JK Rowling’s (for Mr Galbraith is she) most distinctive character after Harry Potter, the private eye Cormoran Strike, returns in the fourth volume of the series which was also adapted for the small screen by the BBC. Lethal White opens, as the previous novels do, with a visit to Strike’s cluttered office. The visitor is a troubled young man called Billy who is looking for help to investigate a crime he witnessed (or did he?) as a child. The Rabelaisian Strike, as ever, faces stiff opposition as star of the show from his long-suffering and brilliant sidekick, Robin Ellacott and the city of London itself, a magnificently brooding presence in these mystery tales. (September 18)
The Darkest Place by Jo Spain (Quercus)
“Forty years was too long to wait for somebody to come back from the dead” is how the latest mystery yarn featuring Dublin detective Tom Reynolds (now a DCI) opens. From there it’s a helter-skelter ride with echoes of Shutter Island as well as nods to recent dark Irish history (mass graves) as Reynolds travels to Oileán na Caillte, an island once home to a controversial psychiatric institution and where buried secrets have risen into the present. Spain, a best-selling novelist and co-writer (with Stuart Carolan) of the hotly anticipated new RTÉ crime series, Taken Down, serves up another teasingly twisty thriller. (September 20)
The Importance of Being Aisling
by Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen (Gill)
It began as a bit of lark when in 2008, flatmates Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen, started sharing ‘Aisling-isms’ with their friends. A Facebook page followed but it was the phenomenally successful 2017 debut, Oh My God, What A Complete Aisling, that had the tills ringing and the critics lauding the duo, who subsequently landed a six-figure two-book deal, as Ireland’s answer to Bridget Jones. Now comes the ‘difficult’ second book. Subtitled, ‘Country Roads, Take Her Home,’ we hook up again with Aisling, now 29, but still a complete Aisling as she heads home to Ballygobbard following some shock news. (September 21)
A Keeper by Graham Norton (Hodder & Stoughton)
Last year, Graham Norton made an impressive fiction debut with Holding, a mystery yarn about the lonely passions of a garda in rural County Cork (the author’s old
turf). Anyone who read Norton’s 2014 autobiography, The Lives and Loves of a He Devil, could see he had writing chops. And while the ending of his first novel suggested a sequel, this sophomore work is something completely different, a convoluted love story that switches between past and present, as one woman tries to decipher the mystery of her mother and another woman strives to find herself. Can lightning strike twice for GN? (October 4)