LMFM October #LateLunchBookclub

Another month, another great selection of recommended reads, for LMFM's #LateLunchBookclub

I was in with Gerry Kelly, on Friday 6th Oct and revealed which books I thought listeners may enjoy. Once again, there is a nice mix of genres and hopefully something may appeal to you. You can listen to our #LateLunchBookclub broadcast via the soundlink below:

BOOK OF THE MONTH

Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen, the creators of the much-loved Aisling character and the popular Facebook page 'Oh My God, What a Complete Aisling', bring Aisling to life in their novel about the quintessential country girl in the big smoke.

Aisling is twenty-eight and she's a complete ... Aisling. She lives at home in Ballygobbard (or Ballygobackwards, as some gas tickets call it) with her parents and commutes to her good job at PensionsPlus in Dublin.

Aisling goes out every Saturday night with her best friend Majella, who is a bit of a hames (she's lost two phones already this year - Aisling has never lost a phone). They love hoofing into the Coors Light if they're 'Out', or the vodka and Diet Cokes if they're 'Out Out'.

Ais spends two nights a week at her boyfriend John's. He's from down home and was kiss number seventeen at her twenty-first.

But Aisling wants more. She wants the ring on her finger. She wants the hen with the willy straws. She wants out of her parents' house, although she'd miss Mammy turning on the electric blanket like clockwork and Daddy taking her car 'out for a spin' and bringing it back full of petrol.

When a week in Tenerife with John doesn't end with the expected engagement, Aisling calls a halt to things and soon she has surprised herself and everyone else by agreeing to move into a three-bed in Portobello with stylish Sadhbh from HR and her friend, the mysterious Elaine.

Newly single and relocated to the big city, life is about to change utterly for this wonderful, strong, surprising and funny girl, who just happens to be a complete Aisling.

HISTORICAL FICTION

1993, Key West, Florida. When a Ku Klux Klan official is shot in broad daylight, all eyes turn to the person holding the gun: a 96-year-old Cuban woman who will say nothing except to admit her guilt.

1919. Mixed-race Alicia Cortez arrives in Key West exiled in disgrace from her family in Havana. At the same time, damaged war hero John Morales returns home on the last US troop ship from Europe. As love draws them closer in this time of racial segregation, people are watching, including Dwayne Campbell, poised on the brink of manhood and struggling to do what's right. And then the Ku Klux Klan comes to town...

Inspired by real events, At First Light weaves together a decades-old grievance and the consequences of a promise made as the sun rose on a dark day in American history.

THRILLER

It's been twenty years since Lindsey has seen her best friend Rachel.

Twenty years since she has set foot in Thornbury Hall - the now crumbling home of the Bagenal family - where they spent so much time as teenagers. Since Patrick Bagenal's 18th birthday party, the night everything changed . . . for good.

It's time for a reunion

Patrick has decided on one last hurrah before closing the doors of his family home for good. All of the old crowd, back together for a weekend.

For the secrets to come out

It's not long before secrets begin to float to the surface. Everything that Lindsey shared with her best friend at sixteen . . . and everything that she didn't . . .

Some secrets should never be told. They need to be taken to the grave. While others require revenge at any cost.

NON-FICTION/MEMOIR

‘Painfully funny. The pain and the funniness somehow add up to something entirely good, entirely noble and entirely loveable.' - Stephen Fry

Welcome to 97-hour weeks. Welcome to life and death decisions. Welcome to a constant tsunami of bodily fluids. Welcome to earning less than the hospital parking meter. Wave goodbye to your friends and relationships . . .

Welcome to the life of a junior doctor.

Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekends, comedian and former junior doctor Adam Kay’s This Is Going to Hurt provides a no-holds-barred account of his time on the NHS front line. Hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking by turns, these diaries are everything you wanted to know – and more than a few things you didn't – about life on and off the hospital ward. And yes, it may leave a scar.

CLASSIC FICTION

Told in Sebastian Barry's characteristically beautiful prose, "A Long Long Way" evokes the camaraderie and humour of Willie and his regiment, the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, but also the cruelty and sadness of war, and the divided loyalties that many Irish soldiers felt. Tracing their experiences through the course of the war, the narrative brilliantly explores and dramatises the events of the Easter Rising within Ireland, and how such a seminal political moment came to affect those boys off fighting for the King of England on foreign fields - the paralysing doubts and divisions it caused them.

Gerry Kelly & Margaret Madden

  

Myself and Gerry Kelly hope that there is something here that listeners will love. All these titles are available from your local bookshop or library, but should you have any problems, just ask your bookseller, or librarian, to order a copy in for you. Happy Reading!

Please feel free to let us know what you thought of the books. You can leave a comment on this page, or contact me via twitter @margaretbmadden or via facebook  page Bleach House Library.

LMFM September #LateLunchBookclub

LMFM September #LateLunchBookclub 

#LateLunchBookclub 

September Recommendations 

It is time for my September #LateLunchBookclub choices. It can be hard to please all readers, so I have chosen from different genres in the hope of finding you a perfect read. All these books are available from your local bookstore, library or online. (Remember, if you can't find a book in-store, your bookseller can order it in for you.)

I really hope you enjoy the recommendations and feel free to leave me a comment on the blog, twitter: @margaretbmadden or facebook: Bleach House Library. Follow #LateLunchBookclub for all LMFM book reviews, interviews and chances to win some book bundles.  #LateLunchBookclub Podcasts are also available on the LMFM website. So, here we go...

BOOK OF THE MONTH: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

 Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. All the slaves lead a hellish existence, but Cora has it worse than most; she is an outcast even among her fellow Africans and she is approaching womanhood, where it is clear even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a slave recently arrived from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they take the perilous decision to escape to the North.

In Whitehead's razor-sharp imagining of the antebellum South, the Underground Railroad has assumed a physical form: a dilapidated box car pulled along subterranean tracks by a steam locomotive, picking up fugitives wherever it can. Cora and Caesar's first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But its placid surface masks an infernal scheme designed for its unknowing black inhabitants. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher sent to find Cora, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.

At each stop on her journey, Cora encounters a different world. As Whitehead brilliantly recreates the unique terrors for black people in the pre-Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America, from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once the story of one woman's ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shatteringly powerful meditation on history.

Female Fiction: The Break by Marian Keyes

Amy's husband Hugh has run away to 'find himself'. But will he ever come back?

'Myself and Hugh . . . We're taking a break.'

'A city-with-fancy-food sort of break?'

If only.

Amy's husband Hugh says he isn't leaving her.

He still loves her, he's just taking a break - from their marriage, their children and, most of all, from their life together. Six months to lose himself in South East Asia. And there is nothing Amy can say or do about it.

Yes, it's a mid-life crisis, but let's be clear: a break isn't a break up - yet . . .

However, for Amy it's enough to send her - along with her extended family of gossips, misfits and troublemakers - teetering over the edge.

For a lot can happen in six-months. When Hugh returns, if he returns, will he be the same man she married? Will Amy be the same woman?

Because if Hugh is on a break from their marriage, then so is she . . .

The Break is a story about the choices we make and how those choices help to make us. It is Marian Keyes at her funniest, wisest and brilliant best.

Crime Fiction: Let The Dead Speak by Jane Casey

A murder without a body

Eighteen-year-old Chloe Emery returns to her West London home one day to find the house covered in blood and Kate, her mother, gone. All the signs point to murder.

A girl too scared to talk

Maeve Kerrigan is determined to prove she’s up to her new role as detective sergeant. She suspects Chloe is hiding something, but getting her to open up is impossible.

A detective with everything to prove

No one on the street is above suspicion. All Maeve needs is one person to talk, but that’s not going to happen. Because even in a case of murder, some secrets are too terrible to share…

Non-Fiction: Six at the Table by Sheila Maher

In Six at the Table, regular contributor to RTÉ Sunday Miscellany Sheila Maher tells the story of her childhood through meals shared around the kitchen table – and occasionally from the boot of the car on long family trips – and celebrates the central role that the food lovingly prepared by her mother played in her younger years.

Exotic Lilt and exploding Moondust have their thrills, but it is her mother’s Sunday roasts, steak and kidney pies and home-made Jaffa cakes that create the regular and comforting rhythm of Sheila’s life and of the rest of her boisterous family.

From sliced egg and cold ham salad on summer days to the milk puddings that mark the passage of the winter weeks, packets of Tayto, Campbell meatballs and the fascination with Sodastream, Six at the Table is a nostalgic journey through an Irish childhood in the 1970s, when uniforms were itchy, porridge stuck to your ribs, and Cidona felt like the height of sophistication.

Classic Fiction: The Snapper by Roddy Doyle

Twenty-year-old Sharon Rabbitte is pregnant. She's also unmarried, living at home, working in a supermarket, and keeping the father's identity a secret. Her own father, Jimmy Sr., is shocked by the news. Her mother says very little. Her friends and neighbours all want to know whose "snapper" Sharon is carrying.

In his sparkling second novel, Roddy Doyle observes the progression of Sharon's pregnancy and its impact on the Rabbitte family--especially on Jimmy Sr.--with wit, candor, and surprising authenticity.

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Here's hoping you find something here that appeals to you, and that you will listen in to the show at 2pm today. The link to the #LateLunchBookclub will be available here, after the show. On behalf of myself and Gerry, we hope you enjoy your September reads and we would love to hear your thoughts via twitter, facebook or the blog...

Gerry Kelly and Margaret Madden

 

LMFM August #LateLunchBookclub recommended reads.

      

#LateLunchBookclub 

August Recommendations 

It is time for my August #LateLunchBookclub choices. It can be hard to please all readers, so I have chosen from different genres in the hope of finding you a perfect summer read. All these books are available from your local bookstore, library or online. (Remember, if you can't find a book in-store, your bookseller can order it in for you.)

I really hope you enjoy the recommendations and feel free to leave me a comment on the blog, twitter: @margaretbmadden or facebook: Bleach House Library. Follow #LateLunchBookclub for all LMFM book reviews, interviews and chances to win some book bundles.  #LateLunchBookclub Podcasts are also available on the LMFM website. So, here we go...

AUGUST RECOMMENDED READS

BOOK OF THE MONTH: I Found My Tribe by Ruth Fitzmaurice

Ruth’s tribe are her lively children and her filmmaker husband, Simon, who has Motor Neurone Disease and can only communicate with his eyes. Ruth’s other ‘tribe’ are the friends who gather at the cove in Greystones, Co. Wicklow, and regularly throw themselves into the freezing cold water, just for kicks. 

‘The Tragic Wives’ Swimming Club’, as they jokingly call themselves, meet to cope with the extreme challenges life puts in their way, not to mention the monster waves rolling over the horizon. Swimming is just one of the daily coping strategies as Ruth fights to preserve the strong but now silent connection with her husband. As she tells the story of their marriage, via diagnosis to their current precarious situation, Ruth also charts her passion for sea swimming – culminating in a midnight swim under the full moon on her wedding anniversary.

An invocation to all of us to love as hard as we can, and live even harder, I Found My Tribe is an urgent and uplifting letter to a husband, family, friends, the natural world and the brightness of life.

Female Fiction: The Summer of Impossible Things by Rowan Coleman

If you could change the past, would you?

Thirty years ago, something terrible happened to Luna’s mother. Something she’s only prepared to reveal after her death. 

Now Luna and her sister have a chance to go back to their mother’s birthplace and settle her affairs. But in Brooklyn they find more questions than answers, until something impossible – magical – happens to Luna, and she meets her mother as a young woman back in the summer of 1977. 

At first Luna’s thinks she’s going crazy, but if she can truly travel back in time, she can change things. But in doing anything – everything – to save her mother’s life, will she have to sacrifice her own? 

Non-Fiction: My Shitty Twenties: A Memoir by Emily Morris

The baby’s father’s parting shot was “Enjoy your impending shitty, snotty, vomity twenties.”

When Emily Morris was 22 and half way through university, she found out she was pregnant. It felt like an alien invasion but her instincts took over and, despite being totally unmaternal, she found herself going ahead with the pregnancy.

My Shitty Twenties is an award-winning memoir about being a single mum. Emily Morris started writing when her son was two and she needed to try to find something funny in a crap, banal day. Six years later, this is her story.

Classic Fiction: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again . . .

Working as a lady's companion, the orphaned heroine of Rebecca learns her place. Life begins to look very bleak until, on a trip to the South of France, she meets Maxim de Winter, a handsome widower whose sudden proposal of marriage takes her by surprise. Whisked from glamorous Monte Carlo to his brooding estate, Manderley, on the Cornish Coast, the new Mrs de Winter finds Max a changed man. And the memory of his dead wife Rebecca is forever kept alive by the forbidding Mrs Danvers . . .

Not since Jane Eyre has a heroine faced such difficulty with the Other Woman. An international bestseller that has never gone out of print, Rebecca is the haunting story of a young girl consumed by love and the struggle to find her identity.

Crime Fiction: Rattle by Fiona Cummins

He has planned well. He leads two lives. In one he's just like anyone else. But in the other he is the caretaker of his family's macabre museum.

Now the time has come to add to his collection. He is ready to feed his obsession, and he is on the hunt.

Jakey Frith and Clara Foyle have something in common. They have what he needs.

What begins is a terrifying cat-and-mouse game between the sinister collector, Jakey's father and Etta Fitzroy, a troubled detective investigating a spate of abductions.

Set in London's Blackheath, Rattle by Fiona Cummins explores the seam of darkness that runs through us all; the struggle between light and shadow, redemption and revenge.

It is a glimpse into the mind of a sinister psychopath. And it's also a story about not giving up hope when it seems that all hope is already lost.

Here's hoping you enjoy some of these recommended reads.

                       

 From myself and Gerry Kelly, Happy Reading!

LMFM #LateLunchBookclub July recommendations.

      

#LateLunchBookclub 

July Recommendations

  
 Friday, 7th July.

Here are the books I have chosen for July's #LateLunchBookclub. It can be hard to please all readers, so I have chosen from different genres in the hope of finding you a perfect summer read. All these books are available from your local bookstore, library or online. (Remember, if you can't find a book in-store, your bookseller can order it in for you.)

I really hope you enjoy the recommendations and feel free to leave me a comment on the blog, twitter: @margaretbmadden or facebook: Bleach House Library. Follow #LateLunchBookclub for all LMFM book reviews, interviews and chances to win some book bundles.  #LateLunchBookclub Podcasts are also available on the LMFM website. So, here we go...

JULY READS

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Female Fiction: The Woman at 72 Derry Lane by Carmel Harrington

On a leafy suburban street in Dublin, beautiful, poised Stella Greene lives with her successful husband, Matt. The perfect couple in every way, Stella appears to have it all. Next door, at number 72 however, lives Rea Brady. Gruff, bad-tempered and rarely seen besides the twitching of her net curtains, rumour has it she’s lost it all…including her marbles if you believe the neighbourhood gossip.

But appearances can be deceiving and when Stella and Rea’s worlds collide they realise they have much in common. Both are trapped in a prison of their own making.

Has help been next door without them realising it?

With the warmth and wit of Maeve Binchy and the secrets and twists of Liane Moriarty, this is the utterly original and compelling new novel from Irish Timesbestseller Carmel Harrington.

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General Fiction: Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman.

Eleanor Oliphant has learned how to survive – but not how to live

Eleanor Oliphant leads a simple life. She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka to drink every weekend.

Eleanor Oliphant is happy. Nothing is missing from her carefully timetabled life. Except, sometimes, everything.

One simple act of kindness is about to shatter the walls Eleanor has built around herself. Now she must learn how to navigate the world that everyone else seems to take for granted – while searching for the courage to face the dark corners she’s avoided all her life.

Change can be good. Change can be bad. But surely any change is better than… fine?

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Thriller: Honeymoon by Tina Seskis

There's trouble in paradise . . .

For as long as she can remember, Jemma has been planning the perfect honeymoon. A fortnight's retreat to a five-star resort in the Maldives, complete with luxury villas, personal butlers and absolute privacy.

It should be paradise. But it's turned into a nightmare.

Because the man Jemma married a week ago has just disappeared from the island without a trace. And now her perfect new life is vanishing just as quickly before her eyes.

After everything they've been through together, how can this be happening? Is there anyone on the island who Jemma can trust? And above all - where has her husband gone?

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Non-Fiction: The Boy Who Gave His Heart Away by Cole Moreton

‘How do you say thank you to someone for giving you their heart? It is the greatest gift a person can ever give.’

Marc is a promising young footballers of 15, growing up in Scotland. A few hundred miles away in England, Martin is a fun-loving 16-year-old. Both are enjoying their summers when they are suddenly struck down by debilitating illnesses. Within days, the boys are close to death.

Although their paths have never crossed, their fortunes are about to be bound in the most extraordinary, intimate way. One of them will die and in doing so, he will save the other’s life.

This is a deeply powerful and dramatic story. It is extremely rare for the family of a donor to have any personal contact with the recipient of their loved one’s organ. Yet remarkably, the mothers of these two boys meet and become friends, enabling the extraordinary, bittersweet moment in which a mother who has lost her son meets the boy he saved. Reaching out and placing her palm flat against his chest, she feels the heart of her son beating away inside another. Her boy, the boy who gave his heart away.

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Young Adult: Girl In Between by Sarah Carroll

I know the mill has a story cos there’s something strange going on. I heard something. I’ve decided that I’m going to find out what it is later today when Ma leaves. Cos even if it is scary, we live here and we’re never leaving. So if there’s something going on, I need to know. 

In an old, abandoned mill, a girl and her ma take shelter from their memories of life on the streets. To the girl it’s home, her safe place, the Castle. But as her ma spins out of control and the Authorities move ever closer, the girl finds herself trapped – stuck in the crumbling mill with only the ghosts of the past for company.

Can she move on before it’s too late? 

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Short Stories: Joyride To Jupiter by Nuala O'Connor

 

A heartbroken man deals with his wife s Alzheimer's as best he can. The Jesus of O'Connell Street reflects on his situation, which isn't half bad. A too-young girl witnesses her father s shocking infidelity. A quiet murder on a riverbank. Imperfect lovers and unlikely friends thwart and bolster each other as they act out their dramas on the beaches of Brazil, in the bedrooms of Dublin, and in the wilds of North America.

 With prose both lyrical and profound, the award-winning Nuala O'Connor writes of maternal love and cross-generational friendship but here, also, are stories of ageing, suicide, and the buoyancy of new love. In these urgent, humane stories of ill-advised couplings, loneliness and burgeoning hope, we find O Connor's trademark humour and sensuality, and the quest for longed-for truths. A truly stunning collection by one of Ireland's finest writers.

       

   

Here's hoping you find some of these recommendations in your hands this summer. Enjoy!