Books | Business Post

Three Castles Burning: Entertaining stories from Dublin’s past allows hidden gems to shine

Based on the Three Castles Burning podcast, historian Donal Fallon picks 12 streets in the capital to paint a bigger picture of the city through the ages

Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: Sobering story of Friends star’s battle with addiction

Matthew Perry recounts how he nearly died when his ‘colon exploded’ and how he has spent $7m on various attempts to cure himself of his opiates and alcohol addictions

The Philosophy of Modern Song: Dylan riffs on universal truths in favourite music

Bob Dylan gets right inside the songs in this all-encompassing series of essays on tracks by artists from Elvis to Judy Garland

Colm Tóibín: ‘You can’t force a book. It is like composing a song: you have to wait for a melody’

One of Ireland’s most acclaimed and prolific authors shares with Ben Haugh some of the most important things he has learned and observed about the art of reading and writing

Isaac and the Egg: Poignant yet playful modern-day fable of grief, survival and healing

Bobby Palmer’s absurd, whimsical and inventive tale about coming out of your shell after love and loss is bursting with metaphor

The Whitethorn of the Dancing: Good yarn of a murder mystery with twists aplenty

Author and broadcaster Tom McCaughren’s debut novel for adults is very readable and beautifully descriptive – if a little overlong

Out of the Blue: Gripping story of the woman who should never have been British PM

Lively and colourful biography of Liz Truss details how the woman who served just 49 chaotic days at 10 Downing Street had a shrewd knowledge of her personal limitations, but combined it with a wild overestimation of her political abilities

Mad Honey: Nuanced novel about a beekeeper and a small-town murder is one of the year’s best

A collaboration between two well-known writers, this is a seamless, beautifully written tale whose characters are the real stars

A Guest at the Feast: Tóibín’s tasty essays will leave readers hungry for more

Writer’s latest collection shows that the Irish author of The Master and The Magician is himself a little of both

Ireland’s Call: Detailed map plots passage through tortuous Brexit labyrinth

Stephen Collins diligently plots Ireland’s impressive handling of the onerous path through never-ending negotiations

Come Back in September: Intriguing glimpse into a generation of creative intellects

Novelist Darryl Pinckney recalls his friend and mentor Elizabeth Hardwick and her fraternity in 1970s literary New York

Beyond Supervet: Dark disclosures and humour mix in Supervet’s commendably candid memoir

TV star and workaholic Irish vet Noel Fitzpatrick reveals how he threw himself into his work after suffering sexual abuse as a child growing up in Laois and being bullied terribly at school

Living With Ghosts: Thoughtful, melancholy book assesses North’s post-traumatic stress

Ex-BBC security correspondent Brian Rowan’s book is not a memoir, he says, but an attempt to quantify the effects of decades of political violence on not only himself, but Northern Ireland as a whole

Hereafter: A striking tapestry woven of research and speculation

Poet Vona Groarke revisits her emigrant great grandmother’s life, both real and imagined, in this genre-defying narrative

The Road to Riverdance: Entertaining account of the steps that led to a showbiz phenomenon

From a childhood in Limerick to working with Van Morrison, Paul McGuinness and Johnny Logan, Bill Whelan traces the road to creating the famous show that began life as an interval act in the Eurovision song contest

The Moderator: Immersed in a world of dark, disturbing content for €13 an hour

Chris Gray recounts his time working as a content moderator for Facebook where he says there was inadequate training for policing the internet and workers suffered depression and mental illness

Novelist as a Vocation: Compelling look at mysteries of the novel from a master of the art

Renowned novelist and short story writer Haruki Murakami offers an explanation of what goes into creating a successful novel

Cells: Brutally honest dissection of familial conflict and its aftermath

Gavin McCrea’s almost surgical appraisal of his family is shrouded in suspicions around emotional inheritance

Life begins in Leitrim: memoir is a story of hope, acceptance and the power of sport

Trapped with his Kurdish family in a camp in Iraq, Zak Moradi little dreamed that he would end up playing senior hurling for Leitrim

Noraid: Solidly researched but strictly academic history of the group that bankrolled the IRA

Robert Collins’s narrative on the controversial Irish American organisation is flawlessly sourced, but lacks the human drama