A host of new releases featuring literary icons, blockbusters, iconic memoirs, romance, mystery and short stories …
Joan Didion fans have been patiently waiting for the publication of NOTES TO JOHN (4th Estate, €23) a collection of notes Didion wrote in 1999 about her sessions with a psychiatrist. The notes were found in a folder after her death and focused on subjects of alcoholism, adoption, depression, anxiety, guilt, and her relationship with her adopted daughter, Quintana. The sessions also saw Didion questioning her legacy or, as she put it, “what it’s been worth”. The book offers a rare insight into one of the most enigmatic literary giants of our time.
Emily Henry has made her name writing big vibrant love stories like Beach Read and Funny Story. Her latest, GREAT BIG BEAUTIFUL LIFE (Penguin Viking, €16.99), sees two writers vying to tell the access-all-areas biography of a famously reclusive heiress. Alice is convinced this is her big break, but she’s competing against the moody Pulitzer-prize winner Hayden Anderson. Sparks fly.
Bestselling author Rachel Joyce’s latest novel THE HOMEMADE GOD (Doubleday, €20.42) has the kind of opening that makes you shelve all plans for the foreseeable future. When ageing world-famous artist Vic Kemp summons his adult children to lunch, he drops the bombshell that he is about to marry a woman he has just met, and who is also 50 years younger than him. Six weeks later he is dead and his children must travel to his summer house in Italy to settle his affairs. Fans of Liane Moriarty will love this family drama.
Danielle Giles’s debut novel MERE (Mantle, €20.59) is a captivating story set in a convent in 10th-century Norfolk. Cut off by a large lake or “mere” the nuns make do with what they can. When the mere takes a young servant boy, the convent is gripped by fear and suspicion and a belief that a curse or the work of the devil is to blame. The arrival of a new sister brings much upheaval too. Told from the point of view of the convent’s nurse, Hilda, the book is hugely atmospheric and examines the panic that fear and ignorance can sow.
Kit De Waal gained an immediate following for her brilliant debut novel My Name Is Leon, about a young boy taken into care. Her latest novel, THE BEST OF EVERYTHING (Tinder Press, €16.99) returns to similar themes. Paulette is engaged to Denton and looking forward to their lives together when tragedy strikes and she is thrown onto a new trajectory. But life goes on and soon Paulette becomes a mother to a little boy, and is determined to give him the best of everything. Her attention is divided when she notices a neighbourhood child whose mother is nowhere to be seen. A beautiful story about community, friendship and love.
Irish writing goes from strength to strength with a glut of talent to pick from this month, starting with one of my favourite contemporary writers, Sean Hewitt. Following on from his 2022 memoir All Down Darkness Wide and his collections of poetry, comes this debut novel, OPEN, HEAVEN (Jonathan Cape, €16.99), a beautiful coming of age story about two teenage boys in rural England, exploring sexual awakening and desire as well as the human need for love. Hewitt’s writing will stop you in your tracks.
Lisa Harding’s novel Bright Burning Things was a spectacular tour de force that won her success in Ireland and America. Her new novel, THE WILDELINGS (Bloomsbury, €17.99) is set in Dublin in the 1990s when best friends Linda and Jessica go to an elite university. When Linda starts dating Mark, Jessica notices a change in her and eventually discovers she is not the only one under his influence. Now, years later, the charismatic Mark has decided to write his account of their time in university and it’s up to Jessica to set the record straight.
Sarah Maria Griffin makes her adult fiction debut with EAT THE ONES YOU LOVE (Titan Books, €10.99) and talk about arriving in style. Set in a shopping centre, it tells the story of Shell, who is down on her luck. She has split up from her fiancé and is back home living with her parents. When she sees a “help wanted” sign in a local florist’s she decides to go for it. She develops a crush on the owner, the beautiful Neve, but she’s not the only one with a growing obsession for Neve. At the centre of the shopping centre (and this story) is an orchid named Baby, who happens to be carnivorous and has designs on Neve. This is totally original, escapist and charming.
Louise Hegarty’s debut novel FAIR PLAY (Picador, €15.99) is an impressive lockedroom mystery along the lines of the Knives Out franchise. Abigail is throwing a murder-mystery themed birthday party for her brother Benjamin and has hired out an old house for the occasion. The night is filled with champagne and kissing and friendship and heartbreak and in the morning, everyone wakes up … except Benjamin. Cue the arrival of the famous detective Auguste Bell, who puts everyone under suspicion.
Catherine Ryan Howard, author of 56 Days, has earned a reputation for writing thrillers with ingenious twists that you don’t see coming. She’s back with a new thriller, BURN AFTER READING (Bantam, €15.99) which tells the story of the famous cyclist Jack Smyth whose wife has died in a fire. When it emerges that she was dead before the fire started, Jack becomes a suspect and drafts in Emily to ghost write his story and prove his innocence. But nothing is straightforward in a Catherine Ryan Howard novel. Twisty, suspenseful and gripping.
Former lawyer and author of the Inishowen Mysteries Andrea Carter has just published her latest thriller, THERE CAME A TAPPING (Constable, €15.99). This is an eerie and tense story about Allie, whose boyfriend goes missing while working on a documentary in the west of Ireland. When his car is found at the end of a pier with a mysterious body in the driver seat, Allie has to examine their past in an attempt to come up with answers to her questions.
TWENTY-TWENTY VISION (Lilliput Press, €15.99) is a new collection of short stories by revered Irish writer Mary Morrissy. These interconnected stories feature a handful of characters who offer meditations on the realities of moving into a later stage of middle-age and looking back with regret. Deeply wise and insightful, and beautifully written with unforgettable characters.
Finally, Tina Knowles, also known as Beyoncé’s mum, has written her life story. MATRIARCH: A MEMOIR (Dialogue Books, €24.22), is described as deeply personal and revelatory, telling Knowles’ story from her childhood in Texas, to her role as the mother of the most famous singer in the world.
SECOND LOOK
It’s no surprise that Colm Tóibín has written the introduction to this beautiful new edition of Henry James’s WASHINGTON SQUARE, published by Manderley Press. Tóibín is an expert on James’s life and work – his Booker-Prize shortlisted novel, The Master, was all about the life of Henry James – and in this new introduction he re-examines how James’s childhood home on Washington Place influenced the setting for this novel.
James’s Washington Square was first published in 1880 and tells the story of Catherine Sloper, who falls in love with a handsome fortune hunter and has to decide between her heart and her familial duty and her father’s objections. The book has been adapted many times, including for Broadway in the 1940s, and it was choreographed by Rudolf Nureyev for the Paris Opera in 1985.
Manderley Press is a one-woman publisher run by Rebeka Russell and named after the house in Daphne du Maurier’s classic novel Rebecca, and aptly so, as they specialise in publishing classic books inspired by memorable buildings, cities or landmarks, with new introductions by the best contemporary writers. Bound in cloth and published on high quality paper they are also objects of great beauty
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