What we're reading: Aoyama, Nolan & McKinty
Each week our amazing staff bring you a sample of the books or music they're immersed in.
Megan Wood is reading What You Are Looking for is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama
This delightful book features five people who are feeling stuck and questioning their place in the world. Each finds themselves at the local library, getting recommendations (and a bonus gift) from the mysterious librarian who has a particular talent for knowing what people need to read to give them the direction they are looking for.
Insightful and cosy, if you liked Before the Coffee Gets Cold, you'll like this book.
Emma Davison is reading Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan
After reading Megan Nolan’s debut Acts of Desperation (and loving it) a couple of years ago I have been anticipating her second novel Ordinary Human Failings and I was not disappointed, I flew through this!
Set in London in the 1990s, this story follows the conniving tabloid journalist Tom Hargreaves as he probes Irish family The Greens for information on a shocking crime which happened on their estate. Tom is such a sly and manipulative character but most scarily, he is a very realistic one too. Nolan is constantly switching between narrators, looking into each member of the Greens family and the events which led them to move to London from Ireland. This story is both gritty and heartbreaking, I loved it. Highly recommend!
I have also been listening to The Happy Couple by Naoise Dolan, another great upcoming Irish author, on Libro.fm. I am a recent convert to audiobooks and I absolutely love them. They are perfect for on the go listening and stops me mindlessly scrolling on my phone on the tram!
Mark Rubbo is listening to The Detective Up Late by Adrian McKinty
I’m listening to The Detective Up Late by Adrian McKinty. It’s the seventh novel is his masterful Sean Duffy series. It’s Belfast in the early 90s and Detective Inspector Sean Duffy is moving to Scotland; he’s still a marked man and now with a partner and a three year-old it's time for safer climes. He just has to tie up one last case and it seems a pretty straight forward missing person case; a young girl is thought to have probably run off with some feller, not much to see here. But when her empty car is found in the River Bann the case becomes more complicated.
I think Sean Duffy is one of the great crime characters and I’m so pleased that McKinty has reprised him. There’s no local print version of this so the audio is the best way to access it. It’s superbly narrated by Gerard Doyle and we have it available through Libro.fm.
