Vena Cork
Green Eye

To an outsider, the hedonistic lifestyle of University students can seem an enviable one. But right now Danny Thorn – enrolled at Billings College, Cambridge – can see little to be jealous of. Danny’s got woman troubles – his ex, Julie, won’t leave him alone and the beguiling Stella doesn’t seem to be interested in him. But as the term progresses, getting a date for the May Ball will be the least of his worries. A rapist, who’s been preying on female students for months, is still at large. And a potentially deadly case of the green-eyed monster – jealousy – is about to rear its ugly head. He could never be prepared for just how terrifyingly out of control things are about to get....

Roddy Doyle
The Deportees

The stories range from Guess Who’s Coming to the Dinner, where a father is forced to confront his feelings when one of his daughters brings home a black fella, to a terrifying ghost story, The Pram, in which a Polish nanny grows impatient with her charge’s older sisters. Most of the stories are very funny – in 57% Irish Ray Brady tries to devise a test of Irishness by measuring reactions to Robbie Keane’s goal against Germany in the 2002 World Cup, Riverdance and Danny Boy – others deeply moving. And best of all, in the title story itself, Jimmy Rabbitte, the man who formed The Commitments decides it’s time to fi nd a new band, and this time no White Irish need apply.

Nobody loves you when you’re down and out – nobody except maybe Seattle P.I. Leo Waterman. As a man who has transformed a crew of residentially challenged devotees of cheap alcohol into a crack surveillance team, Leo has a soft spot for society’s downtrodden. And so when a homeless woman says she’s the mother of a deceased rock idol, Leo takes it upon himself to investigate the lady’s claim, thereby embroiling ‘the Boys’ and his own already bruised body in a high-speed, life-threatening pursuit of the truth.