"Epic Reads for the Road: Stories to Make Every Journey Fly By" 

'Tense, forensically realistic and compulsively readable. Genuinely urgent... A real achievement' SUNDAY TIMES

 

'A moving portrait of life inside the housing system and the courage it takes to try to build a home in society’s cracks' GUARDIAN

 

Roisín O’Donnell is an award-winning Irish author. She won the prize for Short Story of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards in 2018, and was shortlisted for the same prize in 2022. She is the author of the story collection Wild Quiet, which was longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize and shortlisted for the Kate O’Brien Award. Her short fiction has featured in The Stinging Fly, The Tangerine, the Irish Times and many other places. Other stories have been selected for major anthologies such as The Long Gaze Back, and have featured on RTÉ Radio. Nesting is her first novel. She lives near Dublin with her two children.

 

On a bright spring afternoon in Dublin, Ciara Fay makes a split-second decision that will change everything. Grabbing an armful of clothes from the washing line, Ciara straps her two young daughters into her car and drives away. Head spinning, all she knows for certain is that home is no longer safe. This was meant to be an escape. But with dwindling savings, no job, and her family across the sea, Ciara finds herself adrift, facing a broken housing system and the voice of her own demons. As summer passes and winter closes in, she must navigate raising her children in a hotel room, searching for a new home and dealing with her husband Ryan’s relentless campaign to get her to come back. Because leaving is one thing, but staying away is another.

 

What will it take for Ciara to rebuild her life? Can she ever truly break away from Ryan’s control – and what will be the cost?

 

SPOTLIGHT

 

Reading this can be emotional at times; it's hard to comprehend the changes in circumstance Ciara and her family have to somehow manage. This book offers a powerful insight into the issues of people living in controlling relationships. Gaslighting, abusive behaviour and a sense of selflessness finally push Ciara over the edge and into the unknown.

 

This book captures the hardship experienced by many people, the battles with bureaucracy and the lengths people have to go just to feel safe, provide security for the family unit and regain an individual sense of purpose. It's gritty, it shows the housing crisis as it is, and it hits a nerve. If you like reading books that firmly put you in the shoes of others, then this is one you will not want to miss – but be warned, you may need a tissue.

‘Downer covers a vast amount of territory… shamans and shoguns, geishas and courtesans, samurai warriors and hardheaded businessmen… This concise volume brilliantly fills the gaps in our knowledge.’ NICK RENNISON, The Mail on Sunday

 

Japan is a country of islands, strung like a necklace around the Asian mainland… Ever since US Commodore Matthew Perry forced Japan to open its borders in 1853, the culture of this remarkable and distant archipelago has enriched western life. At the same time the country has embraced foreign institutions from baseball to barber shops. Yet for centuries under the rule of the shoguns, the islands were largely sealed off from the outside world. In charting a course between openness and insularity, Japan has found a way to become ultra-modern while breathing new life into its own unique traditions.

In The Shortest History of Japan, Lesley Downer brings an expert storyteller’s eye to the sweep of Japanese history. Here are the emperors and warlords, the samurai and women warriors, the merchants and geisha who shaped this extraordinary modern society.

From the hunter-gatherers who fashioned the world’s first pots to the novel‑writing ladies of the eleventh‑century Heian court, from the devastation of Hiroshima to today’s economic and cultural powerhouse, this is an indispensable, riveting history of the land of the rising sun.

 

SPOTLIGHT

 

 

A Short History of Japan succeeds at exactly what it promises: a compact, engaging introduction to one of the world’s most fascinating civilizations. It’s the kind of book that sparks curiosity and invites readers to explore further. For a blog audience, it’s easy to recommend—especially to those who want to understand Japan beyond anime, sushi, and samurai stereotypes.