Timothy O’Sullivan.
In 1989, Timothy O’Grady’s publishers were asking for a book – and he didn’t have one in his head. Meanwhile, Iris Murdoch had taken a box of photographs to her publisher, Carmen Callil. Taken over a […]
Karin Slaughter
Karin Slaughter looks around the drawing room in the Merrion Hotel and smiles. And agrees that, after selling more than 40 million copies of her books around the world, she sometimes has to pinch herself. “When […]
Cecelia Ahern
For some years, Cecelia Ahern has wanted to write about empathy. Describing herself as sensitive – as someone who picks up the energies in a room, and the emotions of those around her, she wanted to […]
John Banville
When John Banville wrote Christine Falls back in 2007, he invented the pseudonym, Benjamin Black to show that this wasn’t some post-modernist joke. Describing his crime writing as craft – compared to the Art of his […]
Charlene Hurtubise
In August 2020, when I was on a retreat in the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Annaghmakerrig, one of the writers, Charleen Hurtubise, read the first chapter of her novel in progress. Hauntingly atmospheric, it had the whole […]
Serena Molloy
Wider by the Sea, a children’s book from debut writer, Serena Molloy, features a young girl, Ró, her only friend, The Bean, and a dolphin called Sunny. An only child, life is tough for Ró. She’s […]
Jane Casey
Jane Casey has an incredibly loyal fanbase. They love her crime novels featuring DS Maeve Kerrigan so much, that they are constantly asking her when the next one is due out. One reader, who bought her […]
Karl Geary
Karl Geary is in his car, in Glasgow, talking to me via zoom. After spending many rackety years in the States, the Dubliner is happily settled in Glasgow. After a lifetime of yearning to be a […]
Shane Dunphy
Before I start reading a novel, I turn to the page of Acknowledgments. You can learn a lot from them. Can the writer form a good sentence? Is he/she over fond of exclamation marks? Are they […]
Kathleen MacMahon.
Kathleen MacMahon has writing in her blood. As a Granddaughter of the short story writer, Mary Lavin, and niece of the late Caroline Walsh, former Books editor of the Irish Times, whose husband, James Ryan is […]
Sam Blake
Sam Blake has always been passionate about words. And she likes nothing more than writing – losing herself in her characters and intricate plots. She’s published eight crime fiction novels since 2016 – many of them […]
A Second Life by Dermot Bolger.
New Island: €13.95. Kindle: €6.96. Sean Blake, a press photographer and father of two young children is involved in a near fatal car crash outside the gates of the Botanic Gardens. His heart stops for a […]