Tom Sigafoos and I are both on the 2025 Fiction Longlist for the Carousel Awards for Irish Independent Authors, under the patronage of Booker prizewinner Paul Lynch. The shortlist will be announced in mid-August, and the winners on October 10 at Chapters Book Shop in Dublin.

Tom’s Pool of Darkness: Raymond Chandler in Ireland imagines a 1948 encounter between crime novelist Chandler and philosopher Wittgenstein in a remote corner of County Galway. As the two notoriously-reclusive men develop an unlikely friendship, they stumble into a conspiracy that involves former Nazis, the US House Un-American Activities Committee, and a cat belonging to the widow of William Butler Yeats. Theo Dorgan describes the book as “… a gem and a joy”…

LeafLight Moon – a novel of prehistoric Ireland will be launched by Susan O’Keeffe during Sligo’s Heritage Week. Closely researched and set 6000 years ago in the rich prehistoric landscapes of Sligo and the north-west, LeafLight Moon tells the story of the fateful encounter between Ireland’s first farmers and the hunter-gatherers of the Hearth of MotherMountain.