Sinéad and Rick's Spring Must Reads

I like biographies, but they often fail to give a rounded version of the subject or the author puts themselves at the centre of the story. This is not one of those. This is a fascinating and well researched biography of a complicated hero.
What makes this biography stand out from previous ones is the access the author had to the recently released White House telephone transcripts, FBI documents, letters and oral histories. It is shocking to discover the lengths that the FBI, led by J Edgar Hoover, went to, to bring King down. They spent years trying to blacken his name by falsley accusing him of having communist ties and then, they illegally bugged his home and office and tried to blackmail him about his extra marital affairs.
King was brought up in a very middle class family and he felt great guilt about his privileged upbringing. He was so bright that he went to college aged only 15. He used his smarts and his charm to win over his fellow students and from early on, had a way with the ladies. Eig doesn’t shy away from painting a warts and all picture of King. He reveals his many affairs and his love of women.
One really interesting revelation is how much King was influenced by Gandhi’s strong belief of the power of non-violent protest and resistance, which King brought to the civil rights movement with great effect.
This is an engaging, page turning biography, a human and humane story of the flawed but brilliant man behind the civil rights leader.

In modern Barnsley, every family has a connection to the once booming pits which gives us the thread running through Andrew McMillan’s impressive family story.
Alex and Brian are brothers, men for whom a mining accident decades ago destroyed their family and left scars on the town, and on them, that have never healed.
Alex’s son Simon grew up in a post-mining world and works in a dull day job while honing his drag act in gay bars and working men’s clubs. His new drag persona is going to be based on Margaret Thatcher.
Andrew McMillan is a poet, his prose is evocative and he uses it well in this is a gorgeous novel of old and new working class realities in a post-industrial town where the pits have mostly been replaced with call centres.
Short, beautiful, and in case you are in a reading rut only 170 pages long.

This debut novel is stunningly written with lyrical and poetic prose. It’s difficult to describe the book without giving away any spoilers.
The story follows the Hembry’s, a biracial family living in rural England. The book is set over four seasons and is narrated by the four family members – Tess, Richard and their twin boys Max and Sonny - so you get the perspective of each person and gain an insight into their individual heartaches and struggles.
You’ll fall in love with this damaged, patchwork family as they deal with the heavy weight of love, loss and heartache. Although we don’t initially know the nature of the loss that befell the family, we feel its effects from page one. The author slowly and skilfully reveals why the family is so broken and really draws you into the emotions and confusion they are all experiencing. Will the loss tear them apart or can they find their way back to each other.
Fans of beautiful prose and stories about family, grief and multicultural interest, will love this beautiful and tender novel.

Mothers are not supposed to go on road trips. Mothers can go on holidays, city breaks, outings, but not on road trips. It is women without children who go on road trips. When a mother leaves home, she is expected to return, sooner or later, with shopping bags.”
Thus starts Cathy Sweeney’s thought-provoking debut novel in which our unnamed narrator leaves her nice house in a posh suburban Dublin housing estate one morning, turns left instead of right, and just keeps driving. She ends up on the ferry to Wales heading to an uncertain destination and out of the lives of her husband and teenage children.
It's a fantastic story of a woman who leaves a life filled with days “carved in marble”, lovely as they may be, and who walks away from a life on rails in calm, normal, extremely comfortable domesticity. It’s brilliant and an unmissable start to 2024

If you’re looking for a psychological thriller to binge on, this is the one for you. It’s a rollercoaster ride with lots of twists and a kickass female heroine.

When we meet Evie Porter, she appears to have a perfect life - a handsome boyfriend who loves her, a beautiful house, money…the only problem is, Evie Porter doesn’t actually exist. She is faking it all, but why and will she be found out?

Evie is great heroine. She’s resourceful, smart and hard-nosed, but as we get to know her better and understand why she is pretending to be someone she is not, we see a more vulnerable side which makes you grow to care for her and root for her to succeed.

This book is full of cat and mouse games that kept me on my toes throughout. It’s a perfect book to switch off from the world.

Everyone is readying themselves for festival weekend in Ballina. Dev is living his almost exclusively sedentary life alone in his remote house with the dog who has been slowly getting used to him since his mother died.
A car pulls up outside. It’s two lads he knows who arrive at the house every now and then with takeaway and drink, but this time they have a hostage. It’s some way to start a book.
You might have read Colin Barrett’s two highly acclaimed short story collections Young Skins (the film Calm With Horses was based on one of the stories) and Homesickness. If you have, this, his first novel, won’t disappoint you.
He creates the most wonderfully vivid characters with crackling dialogue while slowly unwinding a story of fairly low stakes in a very unmelodramatic way (this isn’t a schlocky thriller). It’s a book that is rightly one of those most anticipated books of 2024.

This is a complete gem of a book. It’s heart-wrenching and heart-warming in equal measure.
Shuichi, a successful illustrator, returns home to Kamakura to fix up his mother’s house after her recent death, only to discover that a young boy sneaks into her garage every day and takes a few objects out of his mother’s boxed up belongings.
Shuichi confronts eight-year-old Kenya and slowly they develop a precious and beautiful friendship. These two lost souls are both struggling to cope with life for different reasons and they find a way to help each other to heal.
Their friendship leads them to visit the Library of Heartbeats. This library actually exists, it is on the Japanese island of Teshima. It’s a magical place where the heartbeats of visitors from all around the world are recorded. Heartbeats of people who are still alive or have already passed away continue to beat here.
The visit has consequences that neither of the characters could have imagined.
Curl up and immerse yourself in this gentle, tender story about the power of connection and healing broken hearts.

It’s 412 BC, Lampo and Gelon are out of work potters with a love for the plays of Euripides, but with very little experience of them. As luck would have it, the local quarry in Syracuse is full of starving Athenian prisoners of war, and some of them know his plays. Why not put one on?
Put aside any thought you have of not wanting to read a book set in ancient Syracuse – all of our main characters talk as if they are hanging around street corners in Mullingar. This is all comedic caper, hugely ambitious in the telling.
It’s warm, funny, but very dark in places. Part sort of love story, part sort of thriller, the sort of novel that leaves you thinking about what parallels there might be in our world long after you’ve finished. Utterly unique and unmissable, I was left wanting more