Horns by Joe Hill, Gollancz

Horny, eh?
Not like that. Ignatius Perrish wakes up after a night when he did ‘terrible things’, and finds horns growing on his head.
Not a good look
Actually, nobody notices. Except that they want to tell him their darkest desires and get his permission to do bad things. Like give that screeching kid one good slap.
Ig’s a bad boy?
Son of a legendary musician, brother of a TV star, he’s grown up in wealth and privilege. But Ig’s the kind of sweet innocent who is a beacon of truth. In fact, his evil friend Lee Tourneau - our villain - lives his life by thinking ‘WWID’ - What Would Ig Do - and mimicking his behaviour.
A good villain’s important
Lee Tourneau’s native water is deception. And there’s others: a few nasty cops. And Ig’s family don’t come too well out of it. Lots of badness.
And Ig…?
Everyone in town thinks Ig raped and murdered his girlfriend, Merrin, when she tried to break up with him.
What’s this girlfriend like?
They meet in church, where the pretty redhead flashes a message in Morse code using the gold cross she wears.
Small-town life, then?
All kinds of strange, dreamy magic happens, at the same time as a townie childhood of jokes and japes. Hill writes beautifully about the secret life of kids - the wild, dangerous things they do without their parents ever knowing. And about treachery.
Then he turns into Satan?
Kind of. But still a sweet guy. Hill, the writer of Heart-Shaped Box - a big hit last year (and Neil Jordan is going to film it) - and the Locke & Key comics, brings his reader on a hold-tight ride through the story.
Serious stuff?
With some jokes that make you burst out laughing. And a great story, with a spiralling series of shocking twists at the end that leave you open-mouthed and going “Wow!”.
A buy?
A definite buy.
Author's site

Becoming Scarlett by Ciara Geraghty, Hachette Books

Scarleh?
Scarlett O’Hara, no less. Daughter of retired actor (resting, dahling) Declan O’Hara, heartthrob of ladies of a certain age. And now staring in horror at the blue stick of a pregnancy test.
She doesn’t want a baby?
She’s all on her owney-o, after her beloved - plain-speaking John Smith - left her, the rat. And as it rapidly transpires, she’s not absitively sure who’s the father-to-be of the sprog-to-be.
Ouch! How so?
She had a little pity party, during which she was comprehensively pitied by -
Don’t tell me: Rhett Butler?
Close. Daniel Butler, universally known as Red Butler for his flaming hair. And soon to meet Scarlett again under circs embarrassing enough to make both of them live up to their names.
Who wrote it, btw?
Dubliner Ciara Geraghty, rumoured to have a six-figure deal with Hachette for two books, Saving Grace (her first, about a girl who falls for the office geek) and Becoming Scarlett.
How does this Scarlett make the redsers?
A popular job in chicklit: she’s a wedding planner. Now working on the ‘Smithson-Carling wedding’. High-end. Martello towers. Glam. And she’s in line for promotion.
All going well, then?
Hmm, not quite. The boss’s lover is also in line for that promotion. And no partner to help Scarlett raise the sproglet. So organised organiser Scarlett, determined not to have her five-year plan thrown out of synch, heads for the abortion boat.
Not! In a chicky book?
When she faints at the airport, disaster strikes… but I won’t spoil it for you.
Worth it, then?
Quirky characters - love the chip-shop heiress who’s one of Scarlett’s clients - heartrending turnarounds, and an ending that’s far from traditional. The supporting actors - including dad Declan and mammy Maureen, his femme fatale muse - are charming.
Publisher's site

The Dating Detox

by Gemma Burgess
Avon
So dating is toxic?
For lonely London ad copywriter Sass, it is: she’s just been dumped for the sixth time straight. This time after finding her current squeeze shagging another, dressed only (him) in a judge’s full-bottomed wig.
Tasteful!
So Sass swears off men. After Arty Jonathan, Rugger Robbie, Smart Henry and the others, she’s had enough. Sass and her friend Bloomie make a 10-point plan: the Dating Detox. No More Men - for three months.
That works?
Like dreams, it goes in reverse. Instantly, Sass is the cynosure of all lusts, with men panting after her looking for her phone number.
Nice guys?
Most of them the usual bastardos. But Sass has a good line in put-downs. To a man who says he doesn’t believe in global warming, she withers: “It’s not the tooth fairy. ‘Believing’ makes no difference.”
Writing that down now
Irish chick-litterateurs had better watch out - Gemma Burgess is about to eat your cake. Smart, plotty and funny, The Dating Detox is the work of a master. And it’s her first book - started when Gemma’s sky-high heels put her back out and she wrote a couple of chapters for fun.
Knows her stuff?
In what they call a ‘recursive metaphor’, she has her heroine describe chicklit: “The girl is somehow identifiable. The guy is somehow unattainable. There is fashion. There is a dancing scene… a klutzy friend.”
Whoah! Every single film -
“Then somewhere along the line, there is a fear that he’s messed up forever and has to prove himself to her to win her love.”
But wait - she’s not dating. So how -
Fear not. When she meets spicy Jake - very tall, with broad shoulders and dark hair, crinkly-round-the-edges eyes, teeth almost straight and very white…lips look like they get sunburnt a lot. In short, attractive as hell -
Mm. Get the idea.
And before you ask, yes, buy it, read it, love it. Brilliant fun.

Author's site

I See Rude People by Amy Alkon

McGraw Hill
Don’t we all
See rude people? All the time. But Amy Alkon, ‘The Advice Goddess’ of Good Morning America, The Today Show, MTV, etc, sees them like the kid in The Sixth Sense says “I see dead people”.
They haunt her?
Seemingly. One story is about her battle with Bank of America after a toothless fat African-American claimed to be skinny redhead Amy. Seven withdrawals later - one in Texas (Amy’s in California) she was down $12,000.
Now that’s rude
The bank failed to help her find the fraudsters, she writes, then the letters from credit card companies thanking her for her ‘application’ started. A privacy researcher told her she could be legally responsible for crimes committed using her fake ID!
Madness! What did she do?
She got her boyfriend Gregg - researcher for detective novelist Elmore Leonard - on the job. He and others easily withdrew money using inadequate ID and blurry signatures.
Couldn’t happen in Ireland, right?
Amy also rails against people who share their lives in mobile phone calls on buses and in cafes and shops. “Just because you have a self doesn’t mean you have to express it,” she tells them.
And online boors?
Amy helpfully describes step-by-step how she tracked down people using their work computers to abuse her online, and rang them at work.
Telemarketers?
Amy actually succeeded in getting money out of them - she put herself on the ‘Do not call’ register, and when telemarketers called her, she traced them, and charged them for her time.
My hero
She’s a decent skin - she saw a citizen bargaining street artist Gary Musselman down to a tenner and blogged about it, illustrating the story with his work. A day later he had sold $1,500 worth, and had free legal service and his own blog.
Worth a buy?
You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll grind your teeth with rage. V worth it.


Author's website

Buy I See Rude People on Amazon.com

It’s Not Me, It’s You by Charlotte Ward

Headline
Oh noes, breakup time is here
It certainly is. When you scent the first mince pie and hear the tinkle of glasses at a staff party you know tears are not far behind. Christmastime is breakup time.
Why? Why?
What everyone asks herself after Mr Right turns out to be Mr Right Little So-and-So. But help is at hand - Mirror reporter Charlotte Ward has written a devastatingly funny account of some stonking great splits.
But why?
Lots of whys. Ward’s pal Anne was really into her new man, but the sex was too embarrassing - wake-the-neighbours yells. Olivia took an instant dislike to her boyfriend’s “little friend” - It was long and skinny and looked like a chipolata... or a severed finger.”
Severed? Ewww!
Verity’s boyfriend showered her with attention and presents and adoration - but when she came home from a Malaysian holiday she felt like her stuff had been moved.
A bit paranoid?
Then she found the superspy-type pictures on his mobile: everything she owned, photographed so he could store them while he had some nookie, then return them to their places.
Oh. So steer clear of them all?
The awful breakup stories are the most fun, but Ward gives good advice for the newly single, and reveals how men deal with breaking up too.
Revenge?
Actually, a lot of her revenge stories are girly ones - like Anna, who found steamy texts from women on her boyfriend’s phone. She told him she knew he was playing away because she’d caught an STD from him…
Any happy stories?
Stacy squeezed through a packed pub with drinks for herself and a man she fancied. “I thought this might be yours,” he said with a grin - holding up the wraparound skirt she’d been wearing. Reader, she married him, and lived happily ever after.
Most shocking thing?
A revelation in the “Truth About Men (by men)” section: “We don’t always pee standing up. There. I said it.”
Author's site

The Brightest Star in the Sky by Marian Keyes

Penguin

Zowie! A new Marian Keyes book!
In 66 Star Street - Keyes’ latest bestseller, I’ve no doubt - couples are coalescing and bursting apart like an experiment with mercury, and some strange beast is slouching towards Bethlehem to be born. Is it life? Is it death? Wait and see.
Sounds less cuddly than usual
It’s edgy enough, but very funny - several loud guffaws every few pages. The characters are great -
Tell me more
Two fine Polish hunks, one holy and prayerful, one zippy and zingy with blazing blue eyes, both sharing their flat with vividly bad-tempered taxi driver Lydia. One psychic -
The real thing?
Jemima, an aged Protestant lady, and yes, genuine psychic, with a troubled grey dog called Grudge, works for a psychic hotline. Her gorgeous foster-son Fionn is about to be the star of a new TV gardening programme.
Gorgeous, you say?
Fionn is so lovely that even his photo throws a sparkly wink to anyone who looks at it. More of the tenants at No 66: Matt ’n’ Maeve are married, quiet, devoted, a decent-living couple with a calm routine.
How ideal
You may think so; I won’t contradict you. And glam-mam type Katie is 40 this hated birthday. She’s the beloved of unreliable workaholic Conall.
All about coupledom?
No indeed - one aged parent is dying, another is struck by illness but no one will listen to her frantic daughter; companies go bust and people are sacked. Most of the action takes place in a haze of alcohol and sex, often both at the same time.
So many stories?
And more, indeed, since all these lives and others weave in and out - including the dog’s. The stories don’t have the driving force of Keyes’s earlier work, but this is good fun, and you know that in the end the good will win out and the bad be punished with icy force.
A buy?
A cosy read to comfort you in this nasty rainy winter we’re facing.

Jumping in Puddles by Claire Allan

Poolbeg

I need a box of chocs and a girly story
Look no further, my dear: a box of Lily O’Brien’s best and Jumping in Puddles, the story of a group of lone parents in a Donegal village putting their lives back together.
Village full of gossip?
You have no idea. Ciara is 17 and won’t tell anyone her baby’s father’s name - not even her mam, who’s helping her bring up the sprog. The poor kid has left school and gone to work in the village shop, run by the local dragon.
Worst thing I can imagine
Maybe, maybe not. Niamh (why do authors give characters lookalike names? Ciara… Niamh - confusing for readers!) is mourning her perfect husband. He’s left her rich and living in their dream home, but she’s shattered. And about to be more so.
And no one to talk to?
Until Niamh and Ciara - and Ruth and Liam - join Detta O’Neill’s support group for lone parents, to the fascinated delight of the village. Ruth and Liam’s spouses have run off with each other, by the way.
Yikes! Makes a bond, though
Liam is dead solid, an old-fashioned Irishman who likes his fried breakfast and his traditional values. Unfortunately, his mother loathes his ex. All he wants is Laura back and his life the way it used to be.
Know the feeling
Socially ambitious Laura and bossy bank official James, Ruth’s ex, seem perfectly suited. But as Ruth knows, there’s more to James than meets the eye. Ruth is a weepy, downtrodden type who’s bullied by her bold strap of a teenage daughter, and worried about her sons.
Kids? These poor souls have kids?
The kids are the centre of the story - the Loony Lone Parents (as they nickname themselves) grow into a strong group who help each other with their children and their rapidly changing lives.
Rattling good yarn?
If RTE have any sense, they’ll buy this and turn it into a fab series and sell it internationally.
Author's site

Savvy by Ingrid Law

Puffin
Kids with magic?
Secret super-powers. The Beaumont family always discover their ‘savvy’ on their 13th birthday. When Fish turned 13 the family had to move inland, because the storms he caused were too dangerous near any large body of water.
What do the others do?
Rocket (16) is electric. Grandpa can make land - when Mom and Pop married he made them six acres as a wedding present, moving neighbours’ homes further apart without their noticing.
Mom and Pop?
Pop doesn’t have a savvy; his family’s talent is losing all their hair by 30. Mom’s savvy is to be perfect - not an easy one. Grandma used to catch radio waves, so there are jars of happy tunes and inspiring speeches all over the house.
A great book for kids?
If you’ve got readers, they’ll just gobble it up. It’s a gorgeous book, about a quirky but happy family who look after each other, and about teenagers finding their way.
Teenagers? Oh no!
Oh yes. Mibs (for Mississippi: the kids on the school bus call her Missy Pissy), turns 13 as it starts. She’s dying to see what her savvy will be - but it’s no longer important on the day. Poppa’s car is crushed in a crash, and he’s hospitalised far away, in Salinas, Kansas.
Her savvy isn’t raising the dead and healing the halt?
What do you think? Mom, Grandpa and little Gypsy take the family clunker to Salinas, bringing Rocket to charge the battery. Mibs decides she has to get to Salinas too, and hides away in Lester the Bible salesman’s bus with brothers Fish and Sampson - and Will Meek, the preacher’s son she fancies, and Bobbi, his cool sister.
A Bible salesman? A flake?
Far from it - Lester is dead sound, and when he stops to rescue Lill the waitress, whose car has broken down, things get even more interesting.
Maybe I’ll read this myself
Good idea. I love this book. Sweet, kindly, courageous, funny, hopeful. Love it.

Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella

Bantam Press
Ain’t it grand to be bloomin’ well dead?
Not dead but sleeping - or in the case of Lara’s ghostly Great-Aunt Sadie, doing the Charleston while smoking gaspers at cocktail parties.
Sadie masochism?
Sadie died aged 105, unvisited, in a nursing home. At the funeral she turns up as a 23-year-old ghost in a silky shimmy dress. She’s horrified at Lara, still drooping over a guy who dumped her by email. “Why don’t you take a new lover?” she asks, astonished. “Or several?”
I’m sorry for her trouble
“Don’t be a trailer,” dead Sadie tells Lara. “You can want and want a man, but if he doesn’t want you back, you might as well wish the sky were red.” Sadie’s more interested in getting Lara to find her necklace - mysteriously missing from the nursing home - and steal it back.
I sense the grinding of a ghostly axe
Sadie drags Lara into japes, mocking her cautious nature and demanding that she take crazy risks, like asking sexy American executive Ed Harrison out on a date after crashing his business meeting - Sadie has a far from otherworldly interest in delicious Ed.
Nothing like entrepreneurial eroticism
That would be Lara’s Uncle Bill, a coffee magnate who leveraged ‘two little coins’ into a worldwide business - and an irritating trope. The US president rings him for chats. They’re making a film about him, starring Pierce Brosnan.
What a great role model
That’s what he thinks; he runs seminars where people hold up the ‘two little coins’ he started with and chant that they too can succeed if they start from nothing. But sexy Ed snarls: “The only people who go to those seminars will be self-deluding fantasists, and the only person who’ll make money is your uncle.”
Should I buy it?
Only if you want to bust your sides laughing, adore the characters and be pulled in by a great plot full of twists. Brilliant!

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Penguin Fig Tree
A story about maids in the Deep South?
Don’t expect to put this book down once you pick it up - the story sucks you in and won’t let go. And it’s funny. Set in the 1960s, when Mississippi was the heartland of American apartheid, it’s about how the most powerless people start things changing.
Gripping stuff?
Our heroes are saintly Aibileen, who loves her white boss’s neglected little daughter; Minny, the sassy-mouthed maid who’s the best cook in town; and Skeeter, a white girl who wants to be a writer. Skeeter is trying to find out what happened to Constantine, who brought her up - but no one will talk. And she’s consulting Minny for her house cleaning column.
Her what?
Everyone has to start somewhere. Skeeter (so nicknamed because she’s skinny as a mosquito) writes a column on difficult stains, with advice from the expert: Minny, who has just been sacked by her white lady employer, Hilly Holbrook.
I sense a vicious villain?
Hilly is vile. She runs the bridge club, the ladies’ dances, the whole Jackson social scene, and she’s demonic in her control. Her ambition is to get people to instal outside toilets for the ‘help’ to use, so white bottoms don’t have to sit on the same toilet seats as black ones.
Noble, eh?
Lying Hilly has told everyone Minny is a thief. But Minny gets a job with the only one who hasn’t heard: Celia Rae Foote, a white-trash girl who married the man Hilly had her eye on.
Oooh, bad move
Worse, poor Celia doesn’t know what she’s done, and keeps trying to get in with Hilly and the ladies. Then Skeeter decides to write a book about maids in Jackson, and she gets together with Aibileen to collect all the maids’ stories.
Aren’t they scared?
Oh yes. But that’s what makes this story brilliant: the real horror amid the sugar-coated niceness. Funny, sad, angry: this book has everything.

Benny and Shrimp by Katarina Mazetti

Short Books
Swedish sex god seduces librarian?
In a sense. Benny and Shrimp is the story of an unlikely love. It came out in Sweden in 1998 and became a mass seller, then when it was published in the US it took off there. Now it’s about to explode here.
A love fated to be?
Pretty unlikely, really. In the graveyard, Desirée is gazing sadly and resentfully at her husband’s starkly designed grave while Benny tends his parents’ over-the-top grave of frills and marble and plastic flowers, and they dislike each other on sight. Then they smile at each other, and Zowee!
But…?
Ah yes. Benny is a dairy farmer crushed by a 16-hour day tending cows, clearing manure, fixing tractors, doing accounts, paying the vet, working in the forest, with no one to help. Desirée, or Shrimp as he nicknames her, is a serious intellectual with a career in the library.
So he needs a different kind of woman?
And she needs a different kind of man. Benny needs a sonsy farmgirl who knows how to make meatballs with lingonberry sauce from berries she’s gathered herself, and keep the farmhouse trim, and back the tractor and baler while he’s loading. Desirée needs a Lacan-discussing cafe lizard.
But then how…?
One smile, and next thing she’s fondling his blond curls and they’re having wild experimental sex all over the place. He buys her birthday presents - butterfly-shaped soap, a mouth organ, silly earrings, mauve tights -
Wait! Wait! What was that about sex?
Oh, lots of sex. Funny sex too, better still. And the story! A real page-turner, with nice subplots as well - one of the librarians keeps files and photos on colleagues; a friend loves a bad man who does her wrong.
But a happy ending?
The weirdest ending you could imagine, and morally equivocal, to say the least. But I won’t spoil it for you. Go and buy it pronto. It’s wonderful.
Author page for Penguin (Mazetti's US publisher)

Civil & Strange by Cláir Ní Aonghusa

Penguin Ireland

Civil and strange? What’s that mean?
It’s a Munster saying, meaning you should be civil with your neighbours, but keep a distance so the gossips don’t ate you alive.
What’s the story?
Kind of an Irish Aga Saga - Ellen escapes her unhappy marriage and manipulative mother by going back to the country town where she spent happy summers as a child.
Shudder - peeling wallpaper, dank rooms?
Until she gets the builders in, then it’s bright paint, conservatory, sexy cherrywood and granite kitchen, sexy kitchen installer.
Whoah, say again?
Yup, Eugene, gorgeous, flirty carpenter, has a fine pair of hands on him, and wants to get them on our Ellen. But he’s 12 years younger than her - shock horror - and she’s now a teacher in the local school.
She’ll bring disgrace on the family
Aha, your roots are showing. The nearest thing Ellen has to local family is her uncle Matt, whose wife, Julia, is icy and distant and wouldn’t have Ellen to stay when she was a kid.
And for why, like?
Matt married Julia at his mother’s instigation when the woman of his heart left him for someone else. Or so they say….
It’s good, so?
Brilliant. Not a pageturner, but told in a very appealing dialogue-heavy, slangy style. You like these characters and want to know what’s going to happen to them.
Gonna be a country girl again, eh?
Small-town, really. The local shopkeeper who’s avid for gossip. The way everyone knows everyone else’s business. The sly power plays by parents who bully the teachers.
Who’s this Cláir?
Poet, short story writer, novelist - this is her second novel; the first, Four Houses & A Marriage, was published by Poolbeg in 1997. Civil & Strange came out last year in the US, to critical acclaim, before arriving here.
It’s a buy, then?
A gently funny book that’ll make you nostalgic for your old home town.
US publisher's site

The Kinsella Sisters by Kate Thompson

Avon
Funny, you say?
Snort-tea-through-your-nose funny. And upbeat and life-affirming, and a great story.
Saor is Gaelach?
Set in Lissamore, a trendy Connemara village full of creative locals and high-priced visitors. Two households both alike in dignity, in fair Lissamore…
Oh, get to the hot stuff
Bohemian Rio and her high-flying sister Dervla communicate only through notes about the care of their ageing Da. When Daddy dies, Rio finds a letter with riveting news.
And the other family?
Millionaire developer Adair Bolger and his petit bourgeois princess daughter Izzy (the comic relief - she thinks it’s classy to call your dessert ‘pudding’, and has some unfortunate luck with hair extensions) have a massive second home, built on the site of a cottage to the rage of locals.
Poor little rich girl Izzy falls like a ton of awfully elegant bricks for Rio’s son Finn.
Sounds wholesomely local
Norratall, my dear. Finn and Izzy are both keen divers, and a chunk of the action takes place in the seas off Thailand. And Finn’s actor father, sultry welfare-bum Shane Byrne, is about to hit the big time.
Cut to the chase: who gets of with who?
Ah, that would be telling. Rio is under siege by Shane, but too busy laughing at his fans’ internet fantasies, and Adair has the hots for her - but will he get anywhere? Will he?
Hey, don’t tell me the whole story!
There’s plenty more, don’t worry. After all, this is set in the first drastic days of the recession, and estate agent Dervla is trying to sell houses as everyone in Ireland tries to shed the second home and its mortgage.
What’s the best thing?
Lots of overhearing and picking things up wrong and subsequent tangles. And the descriptions of luxury and bohemian life and sun-drenched Thai holidays make you feel totally pampered.
I’m going to rush out and buy it
Good move.
Author's site

The Fidelity Project by Susan Conley

Little Black Dress
Fidelity back in fashion in the recession?
Oh aye. Max and Jax, ace ad copywriters, are standing shivering on the chill cliff of recession, looking at the gulf of redundancy looming beneath them -
Enough of the metaphors, already
The agency’s downsizing. The ‘creatives’ are about to be out of a job.
Bummer. Dole time?
Entrepreneur time for feisty ladies. New Yorker Maxine and Dub Jacinta say “Hey, we know how to film ads - we could film our own TV programme!” The idea is to take a bunch of couples and talk to them - reality TV style - about their relationship, while secretly filming.
What are they like!
Indeed. Jax is engaged to gorgeous but wooden Fergal Delaney, who’s far away in Dubai. Max has her own secrets… And when Jax’s actressy mammy says she hopes they have a starring part for her - without realising just what they’re filming - well, little does she know.
I love go-get-em-girls books
This is full of happy success. The girls roller-coaster over every obstacle and you just know they’re going to succeed - when you can stop laughing. And they film some truly horrendous couples, who unwittingly reveal all.
Written by?
Susan Conley, who works with us here in the Herald.
A colleague? Biased much?
Hey! This is hilarious! Family-centred! Heartwarming! With enough hot sex to warm up a caravan on a rainy Mayo beach, if you can’t afford Lanzarote.
Hot sex? Now I’m interested
They need tech support - so they turn to trusty brown-eyed John Paul. His Holiness is well smitten - but I won’t spoil it for you.
And there has to be a villain?
Nasty Niamh, forever on the snoop around their workplace, puts her oar in and throws a spanner in the works -
What did I tell you about metaphors?
Sorry. Very funny, anyway, and all about Dublin - except when the mysterious Mr La Motta appears from Max’s past. Mm hmm.
Publisher's site

A Bit of a Scandal by Mary Rose Callaghan

Brandon €22.94

Holy God, she didn’t get off with a priest?
Fraid so - baby journalist and part-time waitress Louise in Mary Rose Callaghan’s hot novel A Bit of a Scandal slides into love with Father Peter.
The bold strap! Based on a mediaeval love story?
Supposedly. Abelard and Heloise.
She a pale rose, he a gallant knight?
Not quite - he a trendy philosopher, she a scholarly young wan; due to a tragic misunderstanding, her family castrated him.
Ouch. Well, families are like that.
Maybe your family.
And this happened in Dublin?
No, no, you’re not listening. Abs and Helly were back in 11th-century France. The pair in the darkly funny Bit of a Scandal are modern - well, fairly. They fell for each other in the mildewy Dublin of the 1970s - he a Canadian monk, she a freelance for a Catholic paper.
So she got off with him? Scarlet woman.
Ah now. There was a pair of them in it.
True love?
Sorta kinda. He’s wedded to the Church, but there are three of them in this marriage.
Sounds like a tormented thing - Brief Encounter for the 1970s?
Callaghan puts a funny spin on it. Fr Peter’s constantly trying to convert her. On a bus, he veers from “Oh, God, you’re sick? You’re pregnant!” to “You have to invite Jesus into your heart - if you did it’d blow your mind!”
Lovely.
On a visit to a German family, he follows her up the stairs, goatily touching her behind, then they go back to sing Grace to the tune of Eidelweiss.
Been there.
He patronises her - “Your degree? You never get beyond the empirical” - tells everyone else that she’s a recovering addict or alcoholic.
Oh. Haven’t been there.
This guy is some tulip. At one party, he pushes past her into the loo - “Oh my God, you’re wearing stockings!” and as they make out, he shouts hoarsely to the person pounding on the door: “I’m counselling Miss O’Neill, I’ll be down in 15 minutes.”
Saucy! So it’s a buy?
If you like it funny, it’s a definite buy.
Publisher's site

40 Fights Between Husbands and Wives by Colm Liddy

Penguin Ireland €16.19
A BITTER man writes a user’s manual for his (former) wife. In a row of toilets at a wedding, a bride wrestles to free herself of the hoops on her dress, knowing that the groom and the bridesmaid her mother foisted on her are having sex in the end cubicle.
Colm Liddy recently told a radio interviewer that when he goes out for a few drinks with a friend in Clare, he’s likely to end up in the toilet himself, rapidly taking notes for one of these stories.
His fights between husbands and wives track marital annoyance through the ages and across countries.
Edgar Allen Poe makes his appearance as a chance-met passenger on a train, who tells his fellow-travellers a horrible story. A Virginia cotton magnate’s son crashes from the balcony of his home. The parents try everything to mend his broken body.
Their failure drives the magnate to drink and bankruptcy, and he returns at last to find that his child has been suspended in childhood by a mesmerist. Breaking the child’s trance, the father watches in horror as his body transforms in moments into an adolescent’s, and he dies.
You’d have to wonder what kind of drinks they’re serving in Clare.
Unmissable stores, the products of a wonderfully creative storyteller.
Publisher's site

Drive Like a Woman, Shop Like a Man by Mary Mulvihill

New Island €8.99
USEFUL right now, this is a fantastic guide to being a keen green mean machine.
With the emphasis on ‘mean’.
Mary Mulvihill’s guide to living sustainably has 101 tips, most of which save you money.
The default settings on printers use too much ink. “Do you really need to print your airline confirmation in full colour?”
No you don’t! Mulvihill says to set your printer to black-only to save on dear colour cartridges, and select the ‘draft’ setting, or 300 dpi if you’re using a laser printer, and the toner saver option if there is one, and your ink and money will go twice as far.
Ka-ching!
Some of her ideas are a step too far for me - drying yourself all over with a facecloth after a bath, erk.
Others are brilliant, like freezing surplus cream in ice-cube trays, then dropping a cube into soup as needed.
She has truly scary information: the world supply of hafnium (used in computer chips) could be gone in 2017, as could indium, used in LCDs and flat screen TVs. Recycle, she says, while we still have stuff to recycle.
This book is the perfect present for anyone with even the palest streak of green in their makeup.
Author's site

The 19th Wife by David Eberhoff

Doubleday €10.79
DOWN in the basement, Dad's playing Texas Hold Em and chatting online with DesertMissy when - blam! - someone takes off the top of his head with a Golden Boy .22.
Since the final lines of his online flirt refer to the person who's just come in as "my wife... #19", it's obvious that the technologically savvy polygamist has just been done in by one of his handmaidens.
And that's just the start of The 19th Wife, a bestseller in the US. How well it will do here is moot. This book is hard work, with interlinking narratives and a multiplicity of viewpoints and styles.
The main narrator is sweet, gay Jordan, who grew up hard and fast when the voice of God told the ma that she should abandon him on the road when he was 14.
Yes, that's the suspect, that mother #19.
Jordan is determined that the ma is innocent. And so she seems. Innocent, otherworldly and totally dim - the kind who's waiting for the Rapture.
Peeking out from between the story of Jordan's investigation into his father's murder is another story - author David Ebershoff's retelling of the factual story of Brigham Young's renegade 19th wife.
Hideously funny and way, way too long, this makes a perfect desultory Christmas read.
Publisher's site

20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill

Gollancz €11.95

JOE HILL'S first novel, Heart-Shaped Box - about a bad-boy rock star who buys a ghost on the internet - was built around a plot hole the size of San Andreas Fault, but was so exuberant, funny and scary that several editions sold out before publication.
The first issue of his comic Locke & Key sold out in one day.
The stories in 20th Century Ghosts were the first book published by a writer who happens to be the son of Stephen King, but kept that quiet until outed by perceptive readers.
The stories are gripping - oh yes. They lack the cruelty of true horror, and they have the sweetness that is Hill's most notable asset.
(His father, incidentally, used to have a dog called Good Boy. When children petted it and said "Good boy!" he would reel back and say: "You're clever! How did you know my dog's name?")
In one story here, a film-obsessed ghost terrifies cinemagoers by chatting to them about the movie, then replaying her death.
In another, dead children coach a kidnap victim on how he should kill their murderer.
In a charming fantasy, a man remembers his best friend, an inflatable boy who lived in terror of the narrator's evil father and his savage pit bull.
Irresistible stories.

The Poison Throne by Celine Kiernan

O'Brien €12.99
A NEW Irish fantasy talent has appeared. Celine Kiernan is one of the crop of animators developed by Sullivan Bluth when the company was in Ireland.
She went on to follow the work around the world, then she and her husband came home to set up their own studio in Dublin.
She's always had stories niggling away in her head, one of them about Wynter Moorehawke, Protector Lady, well-qualified carpenter's apprentice, former King's Cat-Keeper.
With the first burst of happy laughter, you know you can settle down to a happy fireside read with this fantasy set in a version of a 14th-century south of France.
But this is a France not only of witch-hunts, torture and roadside gibbets, but also of talking cats, clubbable ghosts, and supernaturally chilly statues (which, handily, can be used to keep the milk and butter cool).
That first laugh was at the traditional greeting for cats: "All respect to you this fine day, mouse-bane" - and its most cat-like response: "All the finer for you, having seen me".
But as Wynter arrives home after years, the cats won't acknowledge her, and even the ghosts run away at her greeting. Something is most definitely wrong.
The first of a trilogy, this shows serious promise. I forecast a rosy future for Celine Kiernan.
Author's website