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Normal People might be welcome, Exciting Times actually lives in its own, equally bright universe. It’s queer, for one thing, with a polarising bisexual protagonist and a humid Hong Kong backdrop. It follows a young Irish expat called Ava, as she becomes romantically entangled with two people: Julian, a filthy rich, emotionally stunted banker, and Edith, an ambitious, caring lawyer. Who will she choose? And what does that choice reveal about her relationship to power, sex, and her sense of self? The classic love triangle trope gets subverted by Dolan’s spikey prose, which crackles with c...

The eight stories in Pure Gold explore rites of passage, childhood interactions, marriage, pubescent infatuation, sexual discovery, and the transition into adulthood.

My father’s green hunting jacket still had his smell on it. It was way too big for me so I had to roll up the sleeves three times before my hands could see daylight. The last time I saw him wearing it was when he took me to Crick’s Bend, where the salmon were all funnelled into a stream only a couple of yards wide. Easy pickings but we didn’t catch anything. He’d gotten too tired and we came away after only a half an hour. He coughed all the way back to the car. That was probably the last thing we did together.

‘Any time we go on holiday, I miss that routine of going to the desk and working every day. I must be a terrible person to be on holidays with,” says John Patrick McHugh. “I remember we went to Cork for a long weekend, and I was like, ‘Ciara, can I just do three hours?’ I went under the stairs to work on a story.” The idea of a weekend away anywhere seems fanciful these days, which is why the author’s gleeful confession is distressing to hear. While Ciara has our sympathies, McHugh, in fairness to him, does explain that once you’re in the writing flow, you have to grab it beca...

Rooney has close connections to Sligo, as her father hails from Sligo town. Beautiful World, Where Are You tells the story of Alice and Eileen, two best friends nearing their thirties in different places and on very different trajectories. As the summer approaches, they exchange emails about art, friendship, the world around them and the complicated love affairs unfolding in their own lives. They say they want to see each other again soon. But what will happen when they do? Alex Bowler, Publisher, acquired UK & Commonwealth and audio rights in a two-book deal from Tracy Bohan at the Wylie A...