Pat Carty | Business Post

Pat Carty

Writer

Book review: Zadie Smith’s mistaken identity novel casts an eye over Victorian England and its many frauds

The Fraud is ostensibly about a butcher who claims to be the long-lost son of an heiress, but also examines many other half-truths of the period

Stage fright – when the audience was a no-show for famous performers

Getting a gig can seem like you’ve arrived if you’re an up-and-coming artist, but as these stars experienced, going on stage can be a very lonely place

Book review: Anne Enright’s light touch makes pure poetry of The Wren, The Wren

Latest novel exploring family relationships may be even better than her Booker Prize-winning The Gathering

Book review: John Connolly spirits us back into dark fairy tale world

Captivating follow up to The Book of Lost Things revisits themes of time, mortality and the power of storytelling via the shady path of society’s subconscious

Book review: Stephen King finds more dark treasure in the basement in Holly

The master of the macabre scratches an itch by filling out characters from his Mr Mercedes trilogy, but still manages to keep the reader enthralled

Book review: Tony Parsons loses the plot among fog of clichés in Cornish village

Tedious and clanger-ridden, with barely credible characters, Who She Was is finally hit by an inexplicable twist that finishes it entirely

Future Islands frontman Samuel T Herring on fame, drugs and his favourite Irish venues

Future Islands got their big breakthrough appearing on The David Letterman Show in 2014. Here, the band’s frontman Samuel T Herring talks about dealing with their subsequent fame, relating to George Michael, paying their dues and playing in Collins Barracks this week

Book review: Kate Atkinson’s new collection takes us out of this world

Normal Rules Don’t Apply, the author’s first book of short stories since 2002, redraws reality using the broad brushstrokes of a deity

Book review: Polished thriller with silver screen at the heart of its darkness

Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s enjoyably daft novel and its deranged denouement has a different type of movie magic as its central premise

Book review: Chain-Gang All-Stars will have you baying for blood of US justice system

Book review: Hokum fantasy is no spellbinder, but a charming romp all the same

Emma Törzs’ debut novel

Book review: Megan Nolan builds powerful novel from wreckage of a family

Waterford-born writer’s second book, Ordinary Human Failings, elicits sympathy for deeply flawed characters, balanced with a cooling dose of realism

Book review: How America’s hope of racial harmony died in a hail of bullets

American Whitelash is a sobering, intelligent and timely examination of how the election of Obama as the country’s first black president sparked a vicious backlash of white supremacism

Book review: Pacey and enjoyable courtroom yarn makes for perfect holiday material

Columnist and television (and real-life) lawyer Rob Rinder’s debut novel The Trial follows a student barrister who’s not so sure the ‘guilty man’ is guilty

Book review: The Bee Sting is a remarkable display of bravura from a great Irish writer

Paul Murray, author of Skippy Dies, has produced another tragicomic masterpiece that recalls Tolstoy’s sprawling epics about families

Book review: Fasten your tinfoil hat and sit tight for the horrible history of hacks

Fancy Bear Goes Phishing explains how we got from the earliest digital transgressions to the multibillion dollar computer security industry of today

Well-observed story of a world built on a bottomless well of deception

Things don’t quite go according to plan in novelist, screenwriter and playwright Philip Davison’s competent and detailed spy thriller

Dave Fanning and Ham Sandwich singer Niamh Farrell pick the cover versions that delight (and horrify)

Pat Carty asked the Irish music veterans what makes a good cover and why does it frequently go horribly wrong?

Have book, will travel: Business Post writers select the best reads of summer

Business Post Magazine contributors Andrew Lynch, Andrea Cleary, John Walshe and Pat Carty unpack their best of summer books

Book review: In Killing Moon, Jo Nesbo breathes new life into the tired trope of the renegade cop

If you’re not familiar with the multimillion bestselling crime writer Jo Nesbo, you’re in for a treat as he takes the hard-drinking, suicidal Harry Hole for his latest outing