‘England, 1643. Parliament is battling the King; the war between the Roundheads and the Cavaliers rages. Puritanical fervour has gripped the nation, and the hot terror of damnation burns black in every shadow. In Manningtree, depleted of men since the wars began, the women are left to their own devices. At the margins of this […]
‘For years, rumours of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years […]
‘Social media is a new type of public space that has revolutionised the way women express themselves, placing the power of representation in female hands like no technology before. But this increased visibility looks both ways, with the gazed upon also gazing back through platforms designed for judgement and surveillance. A man-made tool, social media […]
‘A prize-winning, genre-bending collection of short stories that has already achieved cult status, Her Body and Other Parties is unique, unsettling and totally original. Carmen Maria Machado demolishes the borders between magical realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. Bodies become inconsequential, humans become monstrous, and anger becomes erotic. A dark shimmering […]
‘Piranesi lives in the House. Perhaps he always has. In his notebooks, day after day, he makes a clear and careful record of its wonders: the labyrinth of halls, the thousands upon thousands of statues, the tides that thunder up staircases, the clouds that move in slow procession through the upper halls. On Tuesdays and […]
‘This is the story of Irish theatre legend, Katherine O’Dell, as written by her daughter Norah. It tells of early stardom in Hollywood, of highs and lows on the stages of Dublin and London’s West End. Katherine’s life is a grand performance, with young Norah watching from the wings. But this romance between mother and […]
The Emperor’s Babe: Bernardine Evaristo (2001) ‘Londinium, AD 211. Zuleika is a reluctant teenage bride with no idea about true love. She’s too busy sneaking out with the slave girls and drag queens. Until one day she catches the eye of the most powerful man on earth — Emperor Septimius — and the trouble really […]
‘Kerri ní Dochartaigh was born in Derry, on the border of the North and South of Ireland, at the very height of the Troubles. She was brought up on a council estate on the wrong side of town. But for her family, and many others, there was no right side. One parent was Catholic, the […]
That Old Country Music: Kevin Barry (2020) ‘Since his landmark debut collection There Are Little Kingdoms in 2007, and its award-winning sequel in 2012, Dark Lies the Island, Kevin Barry has been acclaimed as one of the world’s most accomplished and gifted short story writers. Barry’s lyric intensity, the vitality of his comedy and the […]
‘The extraordinary story of a family devastated by a sudden disappearance and transformed by a miraculous return. In 1973, twenty-year-old Moll Gladney takes a morning bus from her rural home and disappears. Bewildered and distraught, Paddy and Kit must confront the unbearable prospect that they will never see their daughter again. Five years later, Moll […]