Sinéad and Rick's Autumn Must Reads

Genuinely, Though The Bodies Fall is a highpoint in a decade so far of exceptional Irish debut novels. Micheál lives in the old family house on an isolated head above cliffs in Kerry. For decades it has been a spot where people have come to end their lives and he now finds himself living there and fulfilling a duty, the same one his mother had when he was a child, to convince people in their darkest moment to change their mind.

Years of that vocation take a toll both on him and his family, and when his sisters decide they want to sell the family house, he must assess what he has done with his life, and what happens next. It’s a compelling story of how finding yourself pulled back into family responsibility can ruin your life and sense of purpose, how the most thorny of intertwined families can end up with a burden, almost by accident, and the things we do to cope with trauma. It’s an utterly unique gem.

Steven Bartlett is known as an entrepreneur, podcast host and Dragon's Den star. In this book he shares the important lessons he has learned in his business career. I am a fan of his podcast of the same name, where he interviews the world’s most successful entrepreneurs across all professions. I was interested to see how the book would stack up. I really enjoyed it. It’s one of those ‘how to’ books that you can pick up and put down and is full of insightful nuggets of information about how to succeed. What’s interesting about Bartlett is that he has achieved success by being quite unconventional.

In The Diary of a CEO , he presents the 33 fundamental laws that he believes have guided him to success. Inspired by his own experience, rooted in psychology and behavioural science, the laws are more unconventional than the usual business books. This is what makes it unique – Bartlett talks about “leaning into bizarre behaviour” and learning to “out-fail the competition”. The book gives the reader fresh insights to lead them on the path to success.

Belle is obsessed with skincare videos and gurus and her own skincare regime. So far so normal, but when her mother dies suddenly, and she has to return to Southern California, things take weirder and weirder turns. A mysterious woman approaches her at the funeral offering her entrance to a seemingly exclusive cult-like spa her mother frequented, and things get all the more bizarre as her grip on reality slowly loosens and she starts to understand just how far her mother went to maintain her looks.

The publisher describes Rouge as “Snow White meets Eyes Wide Shut”, and they’re not far wrong. It has a lot to say about the cosmetics/wellness industry being, pardon the pun, only skin deep. It’s a cinematic, surreal almost David Lynch-like story of a young woman, her relationship with herself, her body, her mother, beauty and identity. Dark, weird and strange in the best possible way.

I am someone who dips into the sea and then quickly gets out. Nuala Moore is someone who embraces the sea and becomes part of it. The sea is the main character in this book, and it’s a mighty one. Nuala Moore is either the bravest or the maddest woman alive. The challenges she has taken on in her life are unbelievable. This is not a woman who likes to relax by the fire. From a young age, the sea was a big part of Nuala’s life. Her father was a fisherman and she swum in the sea from a young age. After completing years of marathon swimming, Nuala turned to more ambitious challenges. Struggling to balance caring for her father while trying to hold down a job and train, she turned to ice swimming. She headed off to Russia to swim in -33 degrees through ice. She holds two Guinness World Records for extreme cold water swimming. Even the Russian swimmers thought she was nuts.

As well as taking on extreme challenges, Nuala swims because it helps her mental wellbeing. In her memoir she states that she really believes everyone is capable of greatness, whatever shape that might take, if you push yourself to the limit. She is proof of what can be achieved when you push yourself far out of your comfort zone.

I’m so thrilled Crook Manifesto is so good as I’ve been waiting for it eagerly since the first book in the series Harlem Shuffle (also one I picked for Must Reads) back in 2021. Haven’t read that one? Don’t worry as Colson Whitehead deftly slips you back into the world of Ray Carney in a heartbeat. Ray is still a furniture store owner in Harlem with a legacy of fencing the odd stolen thing on the side. Now it’s the 1970s, couches are more garish, New York is toppling into chaos, corruption, bankruptcy and Ray finds himself dragged back into a world he thought he had escaped because he does a favour to get tickets for his kid to see the Jackson 5 at Madison Square Garden…

Crook Manifesto is brilliant - a wild ride of Blaxploitation film shoots, piled garbage on the streets, a wave of arson in Harlem, and a war between a radical black liberation group and the crooked NYPD. I couldn’t have loved it more.

Bernie Taupin is the man behind the star. Bernie has written lyrics for Elton John since they met when they were both teenagers. But the memoir is not about Elton, it’s about writing lyrics, it’s about Bernie’s love of music, travel, drink, drugs and is full of fantastic anecdotes about the colourful people, famous and not, that he has met over his long career. It’s not a traditional memoir, it’s a non-linear book about people, places and events Bernie has encountered during his life. Nor is it a tell-all book, it’s a book about a man with eclectic interests who wanted to experience art, music, travel, horses and rodeo. Along the way he throws in great stories about meeting Frank Sinatra and Salvador Dali among many others leading artists of the day.

Lost as a teenager his only love was music and it was answering an ad in a music newspaper that brought him together with a guy who could write music, but not lyrics - Eton John. While Bernie doesn’t mention Elton too much, it is clear that he adores and admires his friend and music partner and that they have a deep and powerful connection. An unusual but compelling read.

Mick Herron might be someone you know about already, either through his fantastic Slough House series of grimy spy novels or from the equally excellent Apple TV+ series Slow Horses. Never read one? That’s fine, because this is more Slough House-adjacent.

A grindingly dull, pointless parliamentary enquiry in London, thwarted at every turn in its attempts to dig into MI5 over-reach, comes into possession of a file just as it is about to wind down. It details events in Berlin a few years after the fall of the Wall that might blow open a story hidden by powerful interests for 30 years.

Like many of his novels, The Secret Hours is a beautiful little clockwork hand grenade that you can sense is ticking but have no idea when it will go off. When it does, it blows the whole story apart. The view it gives you into a newly free and hedonistic Berlin is vivid, dark, stark, and sharp.
Wonderful stuff, perfect if you are looking to break a reading drought. Bring on the next one.