Fiction reviews Non-Fiction reviews Books for Younger Readers Author Interviews Books News and Features Books Home Page
Book extract: A British officer killed and an Irish city destroyed in a act of vengeance
Book extract: A British officer killed and an Irish city destroyed in a act of vengeance
Hugh Tudor was appointed by Churchill to lead the Royal Irish Constabulary, including the Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries, but he met civil strife and rebellion with indiscriminate state-sanctioned murder, changing the course of Irish history

Fri, 03 Oct, 2025

Book extract: Revelling in the marvels and secrets of Ireland’s creatures
Book extract: Revelling in the marvels and secrets of Ireland’s creatures
Anja Murray has been writing 'Nature File' for RTÉ Lyric FM since 2017 and wants readers to indulge their own biophilia with this selection

Fri, 03 Oct, 2025

Little boy reading a book in green armchair
Jennifer Horgan: When we stop reading, we limit our understanding of others
Reading, entering another person's world, can help to counter the one-dimensional view of the world we are fed by algorithms 

Fri, 03 Oct, 2025

Books are my business: Illustrator, designer, and director Mel Carroll
Books are my business: Illustrator, designer, and director Mel Carroll
Mr Carroll acts as an agent in UsFolk, managing the commissions for all the other artists — and sometimes himself — 'so I have my business head and then my creative head'

Sat, 27 Sep, 2025

Book review: No ignoring of the questions raised
Book review: No ignoring of the questions raised
'Living with Men' may be the kind of book about which one never reaches a settled view, simply because the subject matter itself will never fully settle in the mind

Sat, 27 Sep, 2025

Book review: Beautifully crafted, relatable stories that bring our capital city to life
Book review: Beautifully crafted, relatable stories that bring our capital city to life
Many of Dave Tynan's characters are bruised by stagnation: struggling in poorly-paid jobs, torpedoed by the housing crisis, and unmoored from their peers who are reaching the milestones of adulthood

Sat, 27 Sep, 2025

Book review: A funny but disorientating experience
Book review: A funny but disorientating experience
Kevin Smith, whose humorous third novel takes us back to post-Brexit suburban Belfast, is an undoubtedly gifted stylist

Sat, 27 Sep, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Television producer/director Frank Shouldice
Beginner’s pluck: Television producer/director Frank Shouldice
'Beneath the Cedar Tree' is a poignant, wise, and ultimately uplifting portrait of a troubled marriage

Sat, 27 Sep, 2025

Book review: Varadkar’s overview of his time in politics carefully avoids his failings
Book review: Varadkar’s overview of his time in politics carefully avoids his failings
'Speaking My Mind' is a fluid account of Leo Varadkar's life and work and it is an engaging read that touches on politics and public life

Fri, 26 Sep, 2025

Library, white shelves, multi colored books
Karl Whitney: Difficult decisions you have to face when the books pile up
Many books, on reflection, are entertaining but nothing more: You hold them in front of you and read, but once you’re done, you’re done writes Karl Whitney

Fri, 26 Sep, 2025

Books are my business: Literary agent Jade Kavanagh
Books are my business: Literary agent Jade Kavanagh
'I represent authors in the same way actors have agents. I read their work, take it on, represent it, and then sell it to publishers'

Sat, 20 Sep, 2025

Lee Harvey Oswald Auction
Book review: Grievances undiminished by time
The house select committee on assassinations found that, although Lee Harvey Oswald fired the deadly shots, he was not the only gunman

Sat, 20 Sep, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Freelance TV producer Gráinne Lyons
Beginner’s pluck: Freelance TV producer Gráinne Lyons
Heading north from Cape Clear 'Wild Atlantic Women' tells the story of 11 pioneering women along the way

Sat, 20 Sep, 2025

Book review: All secrets great and small
Book review: All secrets great and small
'One Summer in Provence' is about relationships, betrayals, and secrets. It’s absorbing and will keep you guessing about some of those secrets to the end

Sat, 20 Sep, 2025

Cheltenham Literature Festival 2019
Book review: Lost poetry and longing for the past in near future ruined by war and climate
Ian McEwan uses the term 'The Derangement' to describe how a generation saw that climate disaster was coming and did nothing about it

Sat, 20 Sep, 2025

Children's book reviews: Magical urchins, a fearful fur ball, and a pubescent trainee banshee
Children's book reviews: Magical urchins, a fearful fur ball, and a pubescent trainee banshee
Pet O’Connell rounds up a fresh selection of the latest children’s books, with tales of an enchanted hotel, a school full of fairies, and a dog afraid of absolutely everything

Fri, 19 Sep, 2025

Book review: Greed and duplicity pollutes our politics and environment
Book review: Greed and duplicity pollutes our politics and environment
The Irish farm and food lobby enjoys an incredible, anti-democratic influence, that has had a disastrous and escalating impact on our countryside, our waterways, and our mountains

Fri, 19 Sep, 2025

Book review: A raw, harrowing personal account of Ireland’s true Oscar-winning artist
Book review: A raw, harrowing personal account of Ireland’s true Oscar-winning artist
Her middle-class upbringing may have afforded actor Brenda Fricker early opportunities, but the family dynamic was turbulent

Sat, 13 Sep, 2025

Poetry review: Bold poems full of verve and ambiguity
Poetry review: Bold poems full of verve and ambiguity
One of this collection’s great charms is Patrick Cotter’s trademark use of the absurd to tackle serious, or mock-serious, subjects

Sat, 13 Sep, 2025

Book review: London’s sweariest spy returns
Book review: London’s sweariest spy returns
Mick Herron’s Slow Horses series of books has attracted a whole new cohort of fans due to the much-praised Apple TV adaptation

Sat, 13 Sep, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Filmmaker and writer Dave Tynan
Beginner’s pluck: Filmmaker and writer Dave Tynan
The stories in 'We Used to Dance Here' explore frustrated ambitions, toxic masculinity, and life on the margins in a Dublin in flux

Sat, 13 Sep, 2025

Book review: A leader we could do with now
Book review: A leader we could do with now
This frighteningly perceptive and well-written biography of UN secretary general, Burmese Buddhist U Thant, details his efforts at resolving one 1960s crisis after another

Sat, 13 Sep, 2025

a girl sits on fallen leaves leaning against a tree trunk in an autumn park
Children's book reviews: Take a gander at what ‘The Best Irish Books of 2025’ has to offer
Children’s Books Ireland has some recommended reads from tots to teens for autumn

Fri, 12 Sep, 2025

Book review: Surviving a massacre, and the lasting emotional toll it takes
Book review: Surviving a massacre, and the lasting emotional toll it takes
Tipperary-born musician Stephen Travers was a member of the Miami Showband and had witnessed the brutal murders of three of his bandmates by the UVF in Co Down in 1975

Fri, 12 Sep, 2025

AMANDA CASSIDY
Book review: Thrilling mystery is a must read
Amanda Cassidy crafts a tense, atmospheric narrative in 'The Stranger Inside', with plenty of moral ambiguity and a constant undercurrent of dread

Sat, 06 Sep, 2025

Books are my business: Chair of Bookselling Ireland Maria Dickenson 
Books are my business: Chair of Bookselling Ireland Maria Dickenson 
Bookselling Ireland is the Irish branch of Booksellers Association in the UK

Sat, 06 Sep, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Company co-owner and director Joseph Birchall
Beginner’s pluck: Company co-owner and director Joseph Birchall
'I would love to have led a life like Beckett — to have lived in Paris with life being all about the writing'

Sat, 06 Sep, 2025

Book review: Mystery keeps ahead of the chasing pack
Book review: Mystery keeps ahead of the chasing pack
'Dark Horse' is gripping and it’s fast-paced, driven by the interesting characters and a plot which keeps you guessing

Sat, 06 Sep, 2025

Book review: Pop psychology, testing friendships, and plenty of commercial tropes
Book review: Pop psychology, testing friendships, and plenty of commercial tropes
At times predictable, this novel has all the ingredients of emotional chick lit, with dollops of pop psychology thrown in

Sat, 06 Sep, 2025

David Trimble death
Book review: The arc of change — from firebrand unionist to unlikely peacemaker
Stephen Walker’s fine biography will ensure David Trimble will be long remembered as a flawed man who made an enduring impact on the lives of many in bringing peace to Northern Ireland

Fri, 05 Sep, 2025

Author interview: Novel imagines Jane Austen falling in love at the seaside
Author interview: Novel imagines Jane Austen falling in love at the seaside
Paula Byrne, an Austen scholar, was inspired to write 'Six Weeks by the Sea' because the question she is most frequently asked about the author is 'did she ever fall in love?'

Fri, 05 Sep, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Former teacher Aisling Rawle
Beginner’s pluck: Former teacher Aisling Rawle
'The Compound' is an addictive, beautifully-paced look at consumerism and a wish for fame in a mildly dystopian future

Sat, 30 Aug, 2025

Book review: A quiet story of personal crisis that swells into tumultuous tide of history
Book review: A quiet story of personal crisis that swells into tumultuous tide of history
'Conversations with the Sea' is a precise, masterly novel that encompasses themes of trauma, displacement, war, history, love, hope, and hopelessness

Sat, 30 Aug, 2025

Books are my business: Executive librarian Margaret O'Sullivan
Books are my business: Executive librarian Margaret O'Sullivan
'There is nothing I don’t like about working in the library. I have been at it for 34 years now and I still love it'

Sat, 30 Aug, 2025

Book review: Stuart Neville returns with ravenous, bloody sequel
Book review: Stuart Neville returns with ravenous, bloody sequel
Horrific tale hits close to home while highlighting an important message: Be careful who you trust, anyone could be lurking in the night

Sat, 30 Aug, 2025

Book review: Brilliance of a true wordsmith
Book review: Brilliance of a true wordsmith
Adrian Kenny’s collection of short stories can be described as an evolved exploration of the human condition

Sat, 30 Aug, 2025

AM-FM frequency indicator of retro radio
Karl Whitney: Don’t touch that dial: Talking about books on the radio
Writers don’t really get tutored in the art of talking about their book on the radio, where conversations thrive on small talk

Fri, 29 Aug, 2025

Chris Newens
Author interview: ‘Food is one of the most immediate languages any place speaks’
'Moveable Feasts' is divided into 20 chapters, each devoted to the search for a dish representative of one of Paris’ 20 arrondissements

Mon, 25 Aug, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Swedish photographer Lina Scheynius
Beginner’s pluck: Swedish photographer Lina Scheynius
'Diary of an Ending' is a hybrid of memoir and autofiction that explores ideas about art and creativity, sex, and passion

Sat, 23 Aug, 2025

Book review: Punished by a kindness to strangers
Book review: Punished by a kindness to strangers
'Two Kinds of Stanger' is the ninth book in Steve Cavanagh’s series featuring criminal defence attorney Eddie Flynn

Sat, 23 Aug, 2025

Book review: A sensitive unspooling of self
Book review: A sensitive unspooling of self
Yasmin Zaher’s 'The Coin' is a compulsive read, built with startling prose and observation

Sat, 23 Aug, 2025

The New York Times Book Review Live
Book review: Plucky lead, passable novel
'Vera, or Faith' is written in breezy, readable prose that offers wry observations about family, love, sex, learning, culture wars, and the wider dynamics of American politics and society

Sat, 23 Aug, 2025

Book review: All in the mind: A vision of hell in which all torments are interior
Book review: All in the mind: A vision of hell in which all torments are interior
The characters in 'The Sleepers' drift on seas of sadness and self-loathing, coupling and decoupling, riding out storms of anxiety that exhaust them further

Sat, 23 Aug, 2025

A boy turning the pages of a book while reading
Children's book reviews: 12 books for August with Children's Books Ireland
Ruth Concannon says Intrigue is key: From becoming an older sibling to teenager troubles

Fri, 22 Aug, 2025

Heather Clark by Beowulf Sheehan
Author interview: ‘I took a risk publishing this book but it meant a lot to me’
Heather Clark's 'The Scrapbook' shines a light on what men bore witness to as soldiers in the Second World War

Fri, 22 Aug, 2025

Colm Tóibín returns as president of Listowel Writers’ Week
Colm Tóibín returns as president of Listowel Writers’ Week
Brooklyn author to return after resigning in 2022

Thu, 21 Aug, 2025

Children's books review: Three local reads to consider for your younger reader
Children's books review: Three local reads to consider for your younger reader
Three books from Irish authors that your child may enjoy.

Mon, 18 Aug, 2025

Book review: Utopian resolve in the face of Tudor tyranny
Book review: Utopian resolve in the face of Tudor tyranny
Joanne Paul’s biography of Thomas More is a meticulous account of a clever late-medieval Londoner and a tale of social mobility too

Mon, 18 Aug, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Karin Walker’s brilliant summer read
Beginner’s pluck: Karin Walker’s brilliant summer read
This heartwarming novel focuses on three women as they negotiate huge life changes. Will their friendship survive all the deception?

Mon, 18 Aug, 2025

Understanding the ‘extreme centre’ of Syria after Assad
Understanding the ‘extreme centre’ of Syria after Assad
The 14 years under Assad’s authoritarian leadership has been brutal but now Syria is facing many other challenges, including a recent surge of sectarian violence

Mon, 18 Aug, 2025

Latest

Scene & Heard

Newsletter

Music, film art, culture, books and more from Munster and beyond.......curated weekly by the Irish Examiner Arts Editor.

Cookie Policy Privacy Policy Brand Safety FAQ Help Contact Us Terms and Conditions

© Examiner Echo Group Limited