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BOOKS

NO PREVIOUS:  Crocodile Tears is Mark O'Sullivan's first crime novel; he wrote six novels for teenagers  when his two daughters were that age. Picture: Denis Scannell

Following the money to a bloody outcome

Mark O’Sullivan is the latest crime writer to produce an accomplished piece set against the background of the property market implosion. He spoke to Liam Heylin

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WARRIOR POET: Fermor was an elegant writer, and man of action. Picture: Patrick Leigh Fermor Archive, reproduced by permission of the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland

Boys’ own adventure: the wandering mind of great travel writer Fermor

Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure
Artemis Cooper
John Murray, hb €34.99 / ebook €16.99

If Artemis Cooper’s book was a novel, not a biography, you would not believe the story.

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A return to Europe for Brown and a return to form

Inferno
Dan Brown
Transworld, Random House, €14.99, ebook €10.99

It’s been almost four years since Professor Robert Langdon, the renowned Harvard symbologist, last embarked on a mystery.

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A freestyle literary feast

The Enigma of Return
Dany Laferriere (translated by David Homel)
MacLehose, £12.99Kindle: £8.51

In 1947, Martiniquan poet and politician Aimé Césaire’s epic surrealist work, Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, considered the cultural identity of black Africans in a colonial setting.

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Beginner’s Pluck - Miranda Manning

Living the country life, Miranda Manning wasn’t really a reader until her twenties. She worked in HR; in a state body, then a secondary college, and finally in a factory.

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The thrill of gothic horror cliches expertly retold

This House is Haunted
John Boyne
Doubleday, £12.99; Kindle, £8.54

The gothic ghost story has etched-in-stone dictates: a first-person narrator, usually from London and emerging from grief, is relocated for work reasons to a rural castle or manor house.

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The trouble with Mother

On Helwig Street A memoir
Richard Russo
Vintage, £8.99; Kindle, £6.17

Richard Russo, a Pulitzer Prize winner for his novel Empire Falls, has written an indulgent autobiography about how his life has been disrupted by his relationship with his complicated mother, Jean.

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The village idiot who defines home truths to ‘sane society’ around him

The Gamal
Bloomsbury €13.99

Humiliation and disappointment, historically, in Ireland, are things that would have been felt by large portions of the population down through the ages. And I guess that feeds into our drinking culture.

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We’re still trying to make Europe add up

Gerard Howlin on a book that looks at the synergy of history, politics and the ideas that has brought the European Union to life and sustained it through succeeding crises.

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Navigating the choppy waters of love and life

Poet Theo Dorgan has finally written a novel. He tells Caroline O’Doherty what took him so long and why the country is going in the wrong direction

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Spectacular rise and ignominious decline of crusading Templars

The Tragedy of the Templars: The Rise and Fall of the Crusader States
Michael Haag
Profile Publishing, £16.99

On 1307, all Templars across France were arrested for heresy.

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Essential home truths

The Book of Fate
Parinoush Saniee (translated by Sara Khalili)
Little, Brown, £14.99; Kindle, $7.99

Coming to us in the wake of a turbulent Arab Spring, the English translation of Parinoush Saniee’s controversial debut novel uncovers essential human truths by foraging among some of the foundation stones of that unrest.

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Bender’s uneven collection of quirky short stories

Willful Creatures
Aimee Bender
Windmill, €11.45;Kindle, £5.51

American writer Aimee Bender has made her name for her weird, but wonderful writing.

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Picture: Maura Hickey.

Sharing life’s most intimate experiences

Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist made his name. His third novel reflects his return to the centre of his extended family, says Sue Leonard

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RITES OF PASSAGE: Kevin Maher says growing up in 1980s Dublin, Catholicism had a sexual undercurrent. Picture: Rose Maher

Altered states: an altar boy’s struggle with sexual and national identity

The Fields
Kevin Maher
Little Brown, €14.99, ebook €8.99

When you’ve spent the last two decades chatting to Hollywood movie stars for a living, sitting on the other side of the interview couch must be strange.

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A return to form for Picoult with a tale of delayed justice

The Storyteller
Jodi Picoult
Simon & Schuster €14.99, ebook €12.99

Jodi Picoult has got her writing mojo back — with a book, appropriately titled The Storyteller.

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A fine Irish horse opera

Red Sky in Morning
Paul Lynch
Quercus, £12.99

Paul Lynch’s debut novel is a highly accomplished literary cowboy story. Though half of it is set in Donegal in the 1830s, it is a horse opera nonetheless.

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The answer my friend is shining in the sky

Decoupling food production from hydrocarbons is vital to our survival. John Sweeney considers a book that suggests we look to the sun for an alternative source of energy

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EUROPHILE: Novelist John Banville writes the introduction. Picture: Photo Grapher

Half a dozen star turns in this year’s selection of the best European fiction<

Best European Fiction 2013
Edited by Aleksandar Hemon, Preface by John Banville
Dalkey Archive Press, €13

The appearance of Dalkey Archive Press’s annual anthology, Best European Fiction, is now an eagerly awaited event on the literary calendar.

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Economic promiscuity <

On the Floor
Aifric Campbell
Serpents Tail, £7.99

Aifric Campbell writes what she knows.

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A remarkable short story collection worthy of acclaim

The Gurkha’s Daughter
Prajwal Parajuly
Quercus, £8.96; Kindle, £8.22

The eight stories that make up Indian author Prajwal Parajuly’s much heralded literary debut focus on the lives of Nepalese people, whether eking out an existence at home or struggling to survive in an exiled state.

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