William Alister Macdonald: Watercolours from Thurso, the Thames and Tahiti by Iain Macdonald (Unicorn Publishing, £30)
History is a ruthless excluder. We remember some artists and not others, and it is not always entirely down to talent. In exploring the life of his great-great-uncle, Maynooth University professor Iain Macdonald marries the mundane with the extraordinary. Born in Scotland in 1861, William Alister Macdonald worked as a bank clerk at the age of 15. How did he then wind up dying in his 90s on the island of Moorea, trailing a reputation as the Tahitian Turner? Macdonald’s story is one of friendships, feuds, adventure and insight, uncovered through family letters and meticulous research. Towards the end of the book, the author quotes DH Lawrence: “freedom is a gift inside one’s soul … you can’t have it if it isn’t in you”. But realising it is still a struggle. The story behind Macdonald’s calm watercolours could inspire great restlessness in the right reader. Gemma Tipton
A Visit from the Banshee: Irish Ghost Stories and Supernatural Tales, edited by Katie Mishler (MoLI Editions, €19.95)
A Visit from the Banshee is a finely curated collection of 13 chillingly beautiful ghost tales. Banshees lurk on the pages and between the lines, to be found by any reader with an interest in the Irish folkloric tradition. Most of the tales are Victorian, though more recently penned ones include an oral story from the Traveller community and a version of Nigerian folklore. The stories are full of frame narratives, or the telling of stories within stories, drawing their reader’s attention to the oral origins of the tradition. In fact, the collection’s editor, Katie Mishler, sets out to preserve the Victorian “practice of gathering around a blazing fire to share frightful tales”. Audio recordings are also available on Radio MoLI. Emily Formstone
Waste Wars: Dirty Deals, International Rivalries and the Scandalous Afterlife of Rubbish by Alexander Clapp (John Murray, £25)
Most of us like to believe that the plastic and paper we conscientiously place in our recycling bin is converted back into reusable materials. However, there’s a fair chance that your waste has been shipped to a developing country where instead of being recycled it’s either buried or burned. Journalist Alexander Clapp delves into the dirty world of waste, where rubbish from the world’s wealthiest countries often ends up smuggled or dumped in its poorest. Even when our cast-offs are recycled, they often end up in places such as Agbogbloshie in Ghana, “clouded with cancerous smoke, encircled by acres of poisonous dirt”, where “burner boys” melt down our old electronics to retrieve the precious metals inside for a couple of dollars a day. From ship-breakers in Turkey to rubbish mountains in rural Indonesia, Clapp brilliantly and terrifyingly unmasks the dodgy dealings at the heart of the global waste trade. John Walshe
The Carrion Crow by Heather Parry (Doubleday, £18.99)
This deliciously grotesque story, set in Victorian London, delves into a dark and dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship. Marguerite has been confined to the cloying filth of the attic by her mother, who insists this is necessary to prepare her for marriage. She is accompanied only by a crow fluttering ominously above her in the rafters. Her mother visits erratically, bringing vile food. But why are the visits becoming ever less frequent? Why is she no longer receiving letters from her betrothed? How long ago was the attic locked? Heather Perry is a gifted and original writer and Carrion Crow a claustrophobic, harrowing, heartbreaking and sublime work of fiction, to be indulged in and savoured – though perhaps not while eating. Julia Kelly
The 100 best Irish books of the 21st century: No 25 to No 1
The 100 best Irish books of the 21st century: No 50 to No 26
The 100 best Irish books of the 21st century: No 100 to No 51
The Age of Diagnosis by Suzanne O’Sullivan and No More Normal by Alastair Santhouse: Intelligently exploring questions of immense public importance
Vietdamned: How the World’s Greatest Minds Put America on Trial by Clive Webb (Profile Books, £22)
The awkward title and questionable subtitle should not detract from this thorough account of the seminal 1967 International Tribunal that examined whether or not the United States was committing war crimes following its invasion of Vietnam. Established by British philosopher and Nobel Laureate Bertrand Russell and chaired by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, the tribunal was attacked by the US government and media, but its conclusions were vindicated by later revelations about the outrageous My Lai massacre and countless similar atrocities in North and South Vietnam. Disastrous US interventions followed in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the Vietnam tribunal “seems to be a disappearing history”, the author laments. Ray Burke
Assembling Ailish by Sharon Guard (Poolbeg, €16.99)
In this stunning debut, broadly bookended between the two seismic abortion referendums of 1983 (the equal right to life of the mother and the unborn) and 2018 (its repeal), we explore the many hands that “assembled” Ailish. Now in middle-age, Ailish is attempting to recover and reassemble the mosaic of her life. Women are at the core of the novel – it is female shame, maternal guilt and the social and biological inequities of the sexes that propel the narrative – though too often, it is the choices of the “amorphous men” who inhabit their lives that shape their fate. Guard’s prose is pacy, her characters visceral, their internal and external narratives enthralling in equal measure, while the searing desperation and loneliness of young Ailish will have you primitively clutching your gut. Brigid O’Dea
