Summer reads: 20 great fiction books to bring on your holiday
Literary inspiration for your summer reading. Picture: iStock
Kevin Barry’s latest novel is a masterpiece – a western about two lovers on the run from bounty hunters across the badlands of Montana in the 1890s, which will leave you crying and slapping your thigh in gales of laughter in equal measure.
Fifteen years after publishing his best-selling novel, , Colm Tóibín returns to the lives of Eilis Fiorello and her circle in a tension-filled sequel. Flitting between Long Island, New York and Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, Eilis, now in her forties, finds herself at a crossroads. A wonderful evocation of the 1970s and the negotiations people make in their lives.
Few novelists write better – and with such wry humour – about the messiness of modern love than Bafta-winner David Nicholls. , he throws Michael, a geography teacher, and Marnie, a copyeditor, both reeling from marriage breakups, together on a hiking holiday to see if sparks will fly.
Cork-born writer Joseph O’Neill – author of , one of the finest novels in recent memory – turns his gaze from cricket to soccer for his latest book, a story about two brothers on the trail of the next child star to emerge from Africa, which shines a light on the dark underbelly of the beautiful game.
A new Marian Keyes book is always news. In , Anna, a successful beauty publicist, abandons New York and her partner to help old friends, Colm and Brigit, to set up a luxury retreat in a coastal Irish village, against the wishes of the locals. Things heat up further when an old lover, Joey, enters the fray.
Mary Costello is a master craftsperson. Her second collection of short stories are about relationships and “the ordinary murk of life” that can’t be rinsed away. They often take unexpected turns, make for unsettling reading, hinging on moments of revelation, a turning in a life’s trajectory, or indecision or sliding doors moments, of what might have been. It’s a slim volume. Nine stories, nine gems.
Andrew O’Hagan’s follow-up to the magnificent is a 600-page romp. The star of 52-year-old Campbell Flynn – a celebrity intellectual – shines brightly across the London skyline, but it endures a calamitous fall, dragged downwards by hubris.
Doire Press have a novel idea for , which is part of an anthology: commission the best of writers, who live or have lived in Cork city and county – including Kevin Barry, Tadhg Coakley, Oonagh Montague, Danielle McLaughlin and William Wall – to magic up some wild and wonderful yarns set in rebel country. Ideal fodder for snatched reading on a holiday.
The dystopian Booker Prize-winning novel is a fascinating, original story. Set in Dublin, Eilish Stack, a mother of four children, is left with difficult choices trying to save her family as Ireland becomes consumed by totalitarianism.
Edel Coffey’s follow-up to her popular debut novel is a brilliant set-up. Ann is grieving her dead mother. She meets Justin, whose wife, Deborah, is in a coma. Ann and Justin fall in love. They move in together. Ann becomes a surrogate mother to his daughter. Life seems blissful until Deborah snaps out of her coma.
The debut novel from the talented essayist and critic Sinéad Gleeson is a gothic story, bleeding with the supernatural, set on an Irish island. Nell, an artist living on the “wave-fucked” island, falls in with an all-female commune, which leads to unexpected mysteries.
The best-selling Irish author Sheila O’Flanagan’s novel hinges on a love triangle: Izzy, jilted at the altar, falls in love with Charles while holidaying in the Caribbean. Charles’s ex-wife, Ariel, a successful agent, isn’t, however, for letting him go.
Critics and fellow writers have been raving about Anna Fitzgerald’s debut novel: a coming-of-age story set in suburban Dublin in the 1970s and ’80s about a young girl and her difficult family situation, which includes a mother going through a breakdown and an abusive relative.
Claire Kilroy has written a visceral novel about motherhood, which was shortlisted for this year’s prestigious Women’s Prize for Fiction. A mother (Soldier) forsakes reality and her former life for the twilight world of caring for her baby boy (Sailor). Full of wit, lyricism and the kind of marital fighting that belongs in a heavyweight ring, Kilroy’s story packs a ferocious punch.
Sinéad Moriarty’s new novel, which has just hit the bookshelves, is about the three Devlin sisters and the trials and tribulations of being good mothers to their children and if possible good sisters to each other too.
One of the most talked about Irish novels of the year. Emma Harte, a young entrepreneur, vanishes into thin air, last seen in Dublin’s city centre on CCTV footage. Archivist James Lyster, a morally ambiguous character, becomes a suspect, but it’s hard to tell if he’s a victim or a killer.
The brilliant Tana French’s sequel to has retired Chicago detective Cal Hooper back on the beat again in the west of Ireland. This time he’s dragged into solving a mystery involving Trey, the 15-year-old daughter of his lover, who wants revenge for her brother’s murder.
Jo Spain sets her latest thriller in the leafy grounds of a university on the outskirts of Dublin. Ten years after her boyfriend disappeared off campus, a mystery that was never solved, Dani returns to the college as a history professor seeking answers, but also guarding some secrets of her own.
Charlie Parker, one of crime fiction’s most beloved private investigators, tries to unravel a seemingly open-shut case in Maine, his home state: a mother is accused of murdering her own child, but all is not as it appears.
The debut novel from Colin Barrett – who dazzled with his maiden story collection, , in 2013 – has been eagerly awaited. It’s a literary crime fiction story set in Ballina, Co Mayo about a gangland feud and abduction.
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