Subtitled “How Georgian Britain’s Worst Husband Met His Match” this is the jaw-dropping true story of the marriage between Irish adventurer, Andrew Robinson Stoney (whose dubious legacy to posterity is the expression “stoney broke”) and the “richest heiress in Britain”, Mary Eleanor Bowes (great-great-great-great-grandmother of the Queen). To say Stoney was a bad husband is the understatement, certainly of this century, if not his own. An accomplished fortune hunter and ingenious schemer, he had already seen one rich wife into an early grave before he duped the Earl of Strathmore’s widow

This is a thought-provoking and engaging read that weaves together several storylines, but centres on the complex relationship between mother and child.

It begins with a house fire. The Richardson's youngest daughter, Izzy, is presumed responsible, as she is the black sheep of the family. From here we are taken back eleven months and given an account of the events leading up to the fire.

This is a thrilling account of the unbelievable but true exploits of the heroic Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, a Kerry born priest who saved thousands of Italian Jews and Allied troops and airmen from the Nazis during WW2. O'Flaherty cut his teeth as a young curate in the War of Independence in Ireland where he was actively involved in the struggle against the British, in particular the notorious Black and Tans.

I’m still doing rose-tinted nostalgia this week, choosing another old favourite to review. Who knows, I might yet be shamed by those YouTubing self-improvers into having a crack at Ulysses, but for the moment I’m happy staying firmly in my comfort zone. Alliott is often dismissed as a writer of frivolous chick-lit but, while I’m not suggesting she’s up there with Joyce, I believe she can hold her own with Townsend and Fielding, and, dare I say it, acclaimed male comic writers like Simsion, Hornby or even Wodehouse himself.

It’s taken me a while to embark on this series, the delay being due to the fact that I’m not really a Potter fan and have eschewed fantasy my entire reading career. I recall picking up The Philosopher’s Stone back in the day to see what the furore was about and realising very quickly that, magic wands and flying broomsticks aside, children’s books are best left to children. So why did I decide to give JK a go after all this time? Believe it or not because my friends suggested this as an antidote to Dublin Murders, assuring me that Cormoran (as in Cormoran Strike, the PI hero of these novels)

Published in 1998 Tom Clancy’s techno thriller which spawned a series of hit computer games focuses on special forces commander John Clark and his son in law Domingo Chavez rather than CIA agent Jack Ryan who was the central character of his previous thriller novels. In later novels Ryan had become President of the United States defending his country in a series of wars and against international terrorism. In the opening of the novel Clark and his new black ops team code named Rainbow Six foil a hijacking on a transatlantic flight before defeating a series of terrorist attacks around the world

The Argentinian, Jorge Luis Borges, was one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. A man of wide reading, he produced an enormous volume of work: poems, essays and the short stories delighting in bewildering paradoxes for which he is now best known. He was also the director of the Argentine National Library from 1955 to 1973. His immense erudition not to mention his access to that library’s shelves, is displayed to great effect in what is perhaps his most delightful and enchanting work, The Book of Imaginary Beings. First published in 1957, Borges gradually added to its entries in

As a reader who really enjoys short stories I was excited to sink into this 11 story collection by Lucy Caldwell titled "Multitudes". This collection focuses largely on childhood and adolescence in the backdrop of Belfast. Caldwell writes with such candor about issues that we've all faced in our adolescence years. She paints such a realistic perception of how spiteful adolescents can be, and how elements of our childhood become inescapable in adulthood.

It is 1990 and the Cold War has just ended dramatically with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse the Communist Warsaw pact regimes. Veteran spy Sam Macready who has for decades operated a network of spies and taken part in high risk missions behind the Iron Curtain finds himself in front of a board stacked with his bureaucratic superiors who will decide if his special skills are still required. His loyal and naive deputy tries to persuade them otherwise by presenting four of Macready's most successful Cold War operations..

A sports / business memoir which would be of interest to anyone curious about the origin story of Nike. I had never heard of Knight before, even though his wealth and impact compares to Bill Gates or Warren Buffet. This is part memoir, part branding exercise, part business thesis, which reads like a case study for a marketing or business student. That isn't to say it's not entertaining or revealing about its author. Reading it gives an insight into the culture of corporate sponsorship in sport, of creating a culture in the workplace, using your skills strategically as an entrepreneur and