Summer books catch-up: 20 of the best novels so far in 2025
John Connolly's Children of Eve; Theo Dorgan's Camarade; Joseph O'Connor's The Ghosts of Rome
There are few more enjoyable crime series characters than Detective Charlie Parker, John Connolly’s former cop whose cases invariably find him knee-deep in the supernatural in picturesque Maine. This time out of the traps, he’s tasked with finding an ex-soldier on the run who has apparently abducted the children of a mob boss.
Elaine Feeney is one of Ireland’s most talented novelists. In her third novel, Claire, moves back from London to Athenry following her mother’s death, needing to care for her dying father. When her old flame moves into a house close by, it opens up a pandora’s box of personal and family drama.
Flesh is the sixth book from the Booker Prize nominee David Szalay. He writes brilliant, meandering novels. His latest story is about a teenage Hungarian boy whose life over the course of decades takes a downward spiral owing to misfortune.
Patrick McHugh’s debut novel – following on from a well-received short story collection, Pure Gold, in 2021 – has been hailed. It follows the tribulations of a 17-year-old boy on an island off the coast of Mayo over the summer of 2009, a time of romance and ambiguous friendship.
If you’re looking to pack something in your suitcase for holidays, look no further than Brian Friel’s short story collection published this year by Penguin, which is in paperback and mercifully slim. Most of the 13 stories were published in the New Yorker in their day. Each one is a marvel.
Eimear McBride’s quasi-sequel to the brilliant The Lesser Bohemians re-unites us with the actors Eily, 20, and Stephen, 40. It’s set in London in the mid-1990s. Stephen’s teenage daughter has resurfaced. Something terrible has happened, which will have consequences.
Air is the fourth instalment in John Boyne’s elements series (following on from Water, Earth, Fire), novellas which examine abuse in different circumstances. In Air, a father, 40, is 30,000 feet above ground, in a passenger plane, flying with his teenage son. Both are trying to mend their broken lives.
Joseph O’Connor returns to wartime Rome – scene for his previous novel, My Father’s House, about wartime hero Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty – for a second instalment. Again, the theme is about escape lines for refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe, as Contessa Giovanna Landini, member of the activist group “The Choir”, tries to evade the unwanted attention of a Gestapo chief.
Colum McCann has a gift for storytelling. In Twist, Anthony Fennell, a journalist, in pursuit of a story to do with fibre optics, finds himself on board a boat off the west coast of Africa and in thrall to the ship’s captain. When he disappears, Fennell goes hunting for him.
The brilliant Emma Donaghue, author of Room and Oscar-nominated screenwriter of its movie adaptation, goes back in time to Paris in 1895 for her latest novel, a story inspired by the moments leading up to a fatal train crash, and the lives of several of the train’s passengers.
Oisín Fagan’s second novel has been acclaimed. His character Angel Kelly is a dreamer. In the late eighteenth century, he sets sail from Dublin, via Liverpool, intent on living in a commune in Brazil but ends up, unwittingly, in the middle of the slave trade, a mutiny and a colonial dispute, amongst other capers.
Amy Jordan’s crime novel, The Dark Hours, has been lauded by the New York Times. In 2024, Julia Harte, a retired Garda detective, gets a call from her old Superintendent. Two women have been murdered in Cork, in identical circumstances to a case she worked on 30 years earlier, forcing Julia to tackle some demons and hunt down a vicious serial killer.
The first three books in the City Girl series by the popular Patricia Scanlan were written in the 1990s. Dubliner Devlin Delaney and her best friends, Caroline and Maggie, return in middle age for more adventure and heartbreak, weighed down by their blended families, aging parents and sibling rivalries, but buoyed by friendship.
On a January morning, a body is discovered at the bottom of the Wishing Steps at Blarney Castle. The mother of the dead tourist girl, who came to Ireland looking for her father, travels over from Boston. She’s convinced her daughter’s death wasn’t an accident, setting in train an investigation that divides the local community.
The Bureau is perhaps Eoin McNamee’s most personal novel yet, as it features his father as a central character in the action. It’s a story of love and death during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, set along the border involving the vivacious Lorraine and Paddy, who’s caught up in smuggling and money-laundering.
During the pandemic lockdown in 2020, Jim, an Irish novelist, organises an anonymous online writers group to pass the time. Things get messy when one of the writers starts drip-feeding him details about the suspicious death of Jim’s childhood friend, which draws the reader back into the teenage world of a seaside Irish village in 1980 and a crime that must be resolved. A magnificent mystery novel.
Poet and writer Theo Dorgan has just released a philosophical thriller. A teenager abandons his life in Cork, having killed a policeman in a revenge plot. He flees to Paris, during a time of tumult, May ’68 and camaraderie. Several decades later, he begins writing his memoir, which forces him to address the seminal event in his life.
Catherine Ryan Howard’s novels are always page-turners. In Burn After Reading, Emily, a ghostwriter, gets a gig working on the book of a possible murderer who might be about to admit his guilt. Emily harbours her own secret, one of many twists in this tale.
Excavation comes to a halt on a Cork building site when six bodies are discovered. Therein lie the remnants of men from centuries ago. When the remains of a seventh person, a female less cold in the grave, emerges, a historical find turns into a murder case Detective Garda Alice McCann is desperate to solve, despite interference from her superiors.
Louise Hegarty grew up in Glanmire, Co Cork. In her debut novel, a group of friends gather on New Year’s Eve 2022 to celebrate Benjamin’s birthday with a murder mystery-themed party. Friendships and affairs blossom and fray as the night unfolds. In the morning, they wake to find Benjamin is dead and so begins the real murder mystery investigation.
- Next week: 20 non-fiction tips
