October's book club suggestions from Kerr's Bookshop Clonakilty

IT'S often easy to get lost in the sheer amount of books on offer, so Kerr's Bookshop cut through the crowd to give only the best recommendations.

And they've done so again this month with their latest round of books to read as part of their book club picks for October.

As always, they've chosen a great variety of novels and memoirs which should please those with a variety of interests.

And Finally - Henry Marsh

'As a neurosurgeon, I lived in a world filled with fear and suffering, death and cancer. But rarely, if ever, did I think about what it would be like if what I witnessed at work every day happened to me.'

This book is the story of how neurosurgeon and best-selling author Henry Marsh dealt with becoming a patient himself following his retirement and subsequent diagnosis with prostate cancer.

Described as 'fearlessly frank' by The Guardian, this is a book which could have been all about death, but ends up a book about life and what matters in the end.

Best of Friends - Kamila Shamsie

Fourteen-year-old Maryam and Zahra have always been the best of friends, despite their different backgrounds. This year, 1988, anything seems possible for the girls; and for Pakistan, emerging from the darkness of dictatorship into a bright future under another young woman, Benazir Bhutto.

But a snap decision at a party celebrating the return of democracy brings the girls' childhoods abruptly to an end. Its consequences will shape their futures in ways they cannot imagine.

Chosen as book of 2022 by a number of outlets, Best of Friends is about Britain today, about power and how we use it, and about what we owe to those who've loved us the longest.

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida - Shehan Karunatilaka

Winner of the prestigious Booker Prize for 2022, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida has an interesting premise: Maali Almeida—war photographer, gambler, and closet gay—has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. His dismembered body is sinking in the serene Beira Lake and he has no idea who killed him.

In a country where scores are settled by death squads, suicide bombers, and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long, as the ghouls and ghosts with grudges who cluster round can attest.

But even in the afterlife, time is running out for Maali. He has seven moons to contact the man and woman he loves most and lead them to the photos that will rock Sri Lanka.

Shehan Karunatilaka’s second novel has been described as a searing, mordantly funny satire set amid the murderous mayhem of a Sri Lanka beset by civil war.

The Change - Kirsten Miller

In the Long Island oceanfront community of Mattauk, three different women discover that midlife changes bring a whole new type of empowerment…

Kirsten Miller's The Change is a  gloriously entertaining and knife-sharp feminist revenge fantasy about three women whose midlife crisis brings unexpected new powers—putting them on a collision course with the evil that lurks in their wealthy beach town.

Marian Keyes is a huge fan, describing the novel as 'a roar of rage, a pacy page-turner'.

Shrines of Gaiety - Kate Atkinson

1926, and in a country still recovering from the Great War, London has become the focus for a delirious new nightlife. In the clubs of Soho, peers of the realm rub shoulders with starlets, foreign dignitaries with gangsters, and girls sell dances for a shilling a time.

Shrines of Gaiety is the latest in a long line of popular novels by internationally renowned Kate Atkinson.

Atkinson transports us to the dazzling London of the Roaring Twenties in a whirlwind tale of corruption, seduction, and debts that have come due.

The Romantic - William Boyd

Set in the 19th century, The Romantic is the story of life itself.

Following the roller-coaster fortunes of a man as he tries to negotiate the random stages, adventures and vicissitudes of his existence, from being a soldier to a pawnbroker, from being a jailbird to a gigolo to a diplomat - this is an intimate yet sweeping epic.

William Boyd has a hugely impressive back catalogue of novels, plays, short stories and more, with The Romantic the latest in a long list.