Book Reviews

Europe
Why Russia’s imperial past shapes its present and haunts its neighbours
Book Reviews
Krystal Evans’s The Hottest Girl at Burn Camp is a bittersweet excavation of a chaotic childhood
Book Reviews
Historical fiction roundup: Four novels of struggle, loss and intrigue spanning 300 years of history
Music
How Oasis threw a petrol bomb at the British music scene and became the most important band in the world

Paying for the shirt: what football kits reveal about soccer’s filthy money and sportswashing
Thu 19 Jun 2025 at 03:30
From bullied teen with an absent father to Italy’s first female PM: Giorgia Meloni’s rise to right-wing politics in her own words
Wed 18 Jun 2025 at 15:30
RB Egan’s The Landlord is a nail-biting snoop for the mysteries of a secret garden
Wed 18 Jun 2025 at 15:30
Love story of two women aspiring for the stars but whose dreams return to Earth
Mon 16 Jun 2025 at 03:30
‘A poor man’s guitar? No ma’am, it’s a rich man’s ukulele’: The lesser-known Beatles stories that will make you smile
Sat 14 Jun 2025 at 03:30
Richard Bradford’s The Durrells: The Story of a Family debunks the popular Corfu zoological myth as being ‘made up largely of lies’
Fri 13 Jun 2025 at 15:30
Geoff Dyer’s Homework is a witty account of provincial boyhood and thrifty, stoic fathers
Fri 13 Jun 2025 at 15:30
Stephen King’s page-turner Never Flinch sees a sober serial killer on the trail of the innocents
Fri 13 Jun 2025 at 15:30
A page-turning rural thriller on the search for truth after daughter’s death at Blarney Castle
Fri 13 Jun 2025 at 03:30
The ‘sublime insanity’ of airmen who tried to cross the Atlantic first – inspired by a Dubliner
Thu 12 Jun 2025 at 03:30

Book Reviews

Why Russia’s imperial past shapes its present and haunts its neighbours

Krystal Evans’s The Hottest Girl at Burn Camp is a bittersweet excavation of a chaotic childhood

Historical fiction roundup: Four novels of struggle, loss and intrigue spanning 300 years of history

How Oasis threw a petrol bomb at the British music scene and became the most important band in the world

Paying for the shirt: what football kits reveal about soccer’s filthy money and sportswashing

From bullied teen with an absent father to Italy’s first female PM: Giorgia Meloni’s rise to right-wing politics in her own words

RB Egan’s The Landlord is a nail-biting snoop for the mysteries of a secret garden

Love story of two women aspiring for the stars but whose dreams return to Earth

‘A poor man’s guitar? No ma’am, it’s a rich man’s ukulele’: The lesser-known Beatles stories that will make you smile

Richard ­Bradford’s The Durrells: The Story of a Family debunks the popular Corfu zoological myth as being ‘made up largely of lies’

Geoff Dyer’s Homework is a witty account of provincial boyhood and thrifty, stoic fathers

Stephen King’s page-turner Never Flinch sees a sober serial killer on the trail of the innocents

A page-turning rural thriller on the search for truth after daughter’s death at Blarney Castle

The ‘sublime insanity’ of airmen who tried to cross the Atlantic first – inspired by a Dubliner

The real Handmaid’s Tale: a woman’s story of a life of drudgery inside Opus Dei

The fascinating relationship between Irish writer Mary Lavin and her ‘New Yorker’ editor

Untaxing page-turner from Bill Clinton and James Patterson in their third collaboration

‘The Many Passions of Michael Hardwick’ is a gripping study of the US fight for gay rights

Gaelle Bélem has penned an absorbing, lyrical tale of a botanist and his boy in ‘The Rarest Fruit’

Even the Vikings knew it didn’t pay to smash everything up: what you didn’t know about the economics of war

Ithell Colquhoun’s The Crying of the Wind from 1950s Ireland still chimes with modern matters

Elaine Feeney delivers a moving meditation on enforced female roles in Irish society past and present

An exceptional and sensitive account of the sad legacy of China’s devastating one-child policy

A kinder look at Margaret Thatcher: the lady’s not for turning into a monster

New crime novels and thrillers to read this June, featuring Stephen King and the final novel from Denzil Meyrick

John Connolly’s The Children of Eve skillfully explores what happens when good people succumb to temptation

In The Definite Article, Michael McDowell’s retrospective of op-eds and speeches is refreshingly well balanced

John Connolly talks to Rick O’Shea: ‘A Kate Bush song primed me to enjoy one of the greatest chapters in literature’

Lies, cheating, gaslighting – a devastating portrayal of coercive control as depicted by a son

The ego and exploitation behind OpenAI’s relentless march

‘Three things in life are certain – death, taxes and your OnlyFans nudes being leaked’: how women’s sexuality is hijacked online

Gunk by Saba Sams: nightclub boss left holding the baby after ex-husband’s one-night stand

Dip and rummage through this trove of the riveting stories behind Trinity’s objects of empire

Graham Swift reaffirms his place among the very best storytellers in the quietly affecting Twelve Post-War Tales

Michael Connelly’s new Nightshade character is a compelling small-town detective with bigger fish to fry

Ocean Vuong swaps poetry for prose in The Emperor of Gladness, and with mixed results

Crime fiction round-up: Dark novels exploring murder, manipulation – and some zinging one-liners by Joseph Birchall

How Dev, Trump and North Korea prove economic nationalism is bad for us

Valerie French’s brother lays bare the astonishing cruelty of giving her killer husband a say in their sons’ lives

John Boyne: ‘In my fantasy final week, I’m 93, have published my memoirs and recounting seven decades of scandals before retiring for pints’

Thudding reality of life as a TD makes you wonder why anyone would bother

No Straight Road Takes You There is Rebecca Solnit’s rousing call to action

In ‘Speak to Me of Home’, Jeanine Cummins delivers the perfect riposte to the ‘American Dirt’ controversy

The Girls’ Trip by Zoë Miller won’t thrill serious crime fans but it’ll while away a holiday in Ibiza

Mary Ann Kenny’s memoir is a harrowing but vital read in an age of pathologising grief

The new misogyny driven by AI and ‘cyberbrothels’

James Joyce reimagined as a cinephile with shades of Jay Gatsby

Shane Tivenan’s To Avenge a Dead Glacier marks the birth of an exceptionally talented short-story writer

A Rastafarian Irishman, an energetic Londoner and a midwife try to save the world in Gethan Dick’s plucky debut

Glenn Patterson’s The Northern Bank Job is a superb account of Northern Ireland’s most infamous bank robbery

When WhatsApp groups go horribly wrong in Andrea Mara’s brilliant thriller It Should Have Been You

Rick O’Shea: One of America’s smartest political minds makes a brave admission about Israel

Emma Jane Unsworth’s fizzy story of sisterly rivalry has shades of her TV collaborator Sharon Horgan

‘Cursed by a teenage girl’: how American Pie brought incel culture into the mainstream

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Richard Bradford’s The Durrells: The Story of a Family debunks the popular Corfu zoological myth as being ‘made up largely of lies’