Des Breen reads an account of 156 Irish UN troops who battled impossible odds in the Congo, only for their courage to be airbrushed from history.

THIS is such a boy’s own yarn about a seafaring adventure that it could be called Code of Honour or Men of Courage with that gusty and gutsy prose of ‘waves to the left of me, waves to the right’ but because this is a new Dermot Bolger novel it isn’t just guts and glory, there is an attentiveness to the emotional lives of all the men aboard.

Brought up in England to Northern Irish parents, Roisín has always felt a sense of dislocation. A writer since she was small, she had completed three novels by the time she was 24.

Michael started life as a journalist. He worked for Hot Press, writing news-based stories, and eventually moved to Magill. He was at the stage of securing a staff job, but he’d always wanted to study law.

In 2010, the novelist Catherine Dunne, then chairperson of the Irish Writers’ Centre met the Italian writer Federica Sgaggio.

The Menu returns once again with his Yuletide roundup of the very best of 2014 to fill the Christmas Hamper as well as his food awards, The Munchies, a tip of the hat to those who labour long and hard to make local, sustainable Irish produce to a world-class standard.

Griffin was first rejected by a publisher at age 11. She turned to poetry; her first collection came out in 2011, when she was taking a Masters in Creative Writing.

The Things We Lose, The Things We Leave Behind

Alan began to write in his late teens, starting with poetry, songs and short stories, He worked as an architect, in Dublin, then Edinburgh, returning to Ireland in 2009, when he became ill.

An economist, Diarmuid has always had literary leanings.

I never really got it; the Access All Areas pass.

There are a couple of distinguishing aspects to Dublin’s largest book festival.

EINA McHUGH

Angela Byrne

Time on the Ocean: A voyage from Cape Horn to Cape Hope

Danny, Mario and Me

Nuala Ní Chonchúir

Edited by Máire Nic Gearailt