From Maggie O’Farrell’s latest work to a stunning debut from Colin Morgan, June is a month of great Irish book releases.
LAND, by Maggie O’Farrell
June 2, Tinder Press
Inspired by the mapping of Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century, LAND is at once intimate and epic: a portrait of a family navigating a legacy of upheaval and loss with love and hope. On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster. As spellbinding and various as the landscape that inspired it, LAND is, above all, a story of survival, for our times, and for all time.
The Long Way Home, by Helen Soraghan Dwyer
June 3, Poolbeg Press
When teenage Fiona falls in love, she believes her future is just beginning. But after becoming pregnant, she is sent away in shame and forced to give up the baby daughter she never even got to hold. Heartbroken, Fiona leaves Ireland and builds a glamorous new life in Italy as a successful model, hiding the pain she can never escape. Years later, she returns to Dublin wealthy and polished, but haunted by the daughter she lost and the boy she left behind. As old wounds resurface, Fiona’s carefully controlled world begins to unravel. A gripping, emotional novel about love, loss, family secrets and the courage to face the past.
Make Strange, by Niamh Campbell
June 4, Weidenfeld & Nicolson
It begins on an orange afternoon, cool but ruminant, close to Halloween. Sunny, only four years old, looks up from the tub of toys in the living room and asks, ‘Mama, do you remember when I died?’ Over the strange, strained year that follows, Sunny will refer repeatedly to her previous lives – and how they ended. Her parents, Lena and Odhran, who tumbled into family life after an accidental pregnancy and a hasty registry office wedding, are left desperate for answers. Is their child suffering from disassociation, a psychological disorder or something more? Has she absorbed their own haunted histories – Lena’s experience as an indie musician in the era of sleaze, or the shady legacy of madness in Odhran’s family? Can we ever really protect our children? What if we can’t?
Three Reasons for Revenge, by Dervla McTiernan
June 4, HarperCollins
Three packages arrive at three very different homes: a respected psychologist’s house, a socialite’s mansion, and a single father’s run-down apartment. The contents will tear apart the lives of their victims. This quickly becomes the most complex case of DS Judith Lee’s career. She’s convinced the gifts connect to a young woman who reported an assault then disappeared overnight… but how? As Judith races to uncover the truth, she realises she’s no longer just investigating – she’s being forced to play a very dangerous game. A game where only the winners will survive.
Everything She Didn’t Say, by Jane Casey
June 4, Hemlock Press
A woman arrives at a hospital in Mayo. At first, she won’t speak. Then she reveals her name: Ruth. A story starts pouring out – about a missing friend and her paranoid behaviour in the days before she disappeared. The two women were staying together in a rented clifftop house, but there’s blood on the floor and locals say they never saw the pair together. Ruth’s story makes sense if you want to believe her. But someone is dead, someone is a killer, someone is lying. Can Ruth’s version unlock the truth, or are the answers in everything she didn’t say?
People in Love, by Claire Daverley
June 4, Michael Joseph
One bright blue day, on a bench by the river, Nora’s partner Robin proposes. It is unexpected; they’d always agreed that they didn’t need a wedding. But after a decade of in-jokes, dancing in the low-lit kitchen and sharing morning toast in bed, Nora says yes. Why wouldn’t she? The answer lands on the night of their engagement party, when Bren turns up on her doorstep. Growing up, Bren and Nora were the sort of best friends who everyone swore would end up together. But when a sudden heartbreak turned their lives upside down, Bren left, Nora stayed, and the silent longing between them remained unspoken. Now, he’s back, and their tentative yet undeniable spark reignites, forcing Nora to ask herself: How can you know your heart if it feels like it’s split in two?
Experts in a Dying Field, by Patrick Freyne
June 11, Sandycove
The Heathens thought of themselves as ‘the 1000th best band of all time’. Then their tour van crashed, and one of their members died. Twenty years later, weird things are happening in Dublin, bringing the surviving members of the band together in ways none of them could have anticipated and lifting the lid on mysteries from their shared past. Experts in a Dying Field is a gloriously sharp, witty and surprising novel about friendship, secrets, the strange workings of grief and guilt, and the joyful alchemy of music, from a writer with a unique ability to access humour and deep emotion.
All of Them Lied, by Gill Perdue
June 11, Sandycove
Thea wakes from a coma, having forgotten much of the recent past. As well as learning to walk again, she studies the list of ‘facts’ she keeps on her phone, hoping something will unlock her memory. But as Thea gets hazy glimpses of the lead-up to her fall, the facts stop adding up. Trapped at home in the middle of the Irish countryside, dependent on those who were on holiday with her – her fiancé, her brother, her sister-in-law and her best friend – terrifying questions surface: Was I pushed? Why are they lying? Who can I trust? As memories come tumbling back, Thea realises she is in a race against time to figure things out – and that her life hangs in the balance.
In the Company of Nature, by Frieda Gormley
June 16, Chelsea Green Publishing
In the Company of Nature is the story of British interiors brand, House of Hackney’s regenerative journey to put Nature and our Future Generations at the heart of their business. Founded by Irish-born Frieda Gormley, with her husband Javvy M Royle, nature had always been their design muse but they came to realise that nature needed to be even more central to their business – and lives. What started as a design brand became the framework for something far greater: a journey into how beauty, creativity and business itself might serve life, with nature as its core.
Ballad of Ronan McCoy, by Colin Morgan
June 18, HarperCollins
Brendan’s best friend, his only friend, is Ronan McCoy. Standing at the school gates on the first day of term, the dark feeling begins to form in Brendan’s stomach. And when Ronan doesn’t turn up, Brendan learns that something terrible happened to his best friend over the summer and he’ll never be the same again. Over the course of the final year of school, Brendan will have to learn to navigate the new shape of their friendship and find a place for himself in the world without Ronan to protect him. The Ballad of Ronan McCoy is a beautifully written, tender coming-of-age story about friendship and first love, loss and letting go, and the hopes and fears of a young man standing on the cusp of the rest of his life.
If These Walls Could Talk, by Michelle McDonagh
June 18, Hachette Books Ireland
Hazel McNamara is on the phone with her husband Darragh when she hears the screech of tyres. He screams her name – then, silence. The jeep he was driving is soon found, overturned in a field off the motorway, but Darragh has vanished. As days pass and the Gardaí investigate, Hazel’s carefully built life starts to crumble. She soon discovers that her charismatic property developer husband has been keeping secrets – personal and financial – that could put her family’s safety and future at risk. But where is he? Is something sinister afoot, after he got into bed with the wrong people? And what is the connection to an abandoned mental asylum in a small town in county Galway? The answer, when she eventually gets it, will shock Hazel beyond belief.
Also Read
