As autumn truly rolls in and people bed down on the couch, with a cup of tea, a pack of biscuits, and a warm blanket, Phoebe from Skibbereen Bookshop is reading and recommending The Complete Stories of Truman Capote.

‘I read Truman Capote’s novel In Cold Blood over the summer, and wanted to read more. This collection of stories spans his entire, albeit short, writing career, and it’s interesting to see the subtle changes in style, theme and focus over time’.

‘The stories are a fantastic mix of the Southern Gothic style and social commentary and include semi-autobiographical detail, mostly from his childhood. It’s atmospheric, at times bleakly funny and totally compelling reading. 

He captures people and their motivations so well. It’s by no means feel-good, but the stories are short and immediately engaging so it’s easy to dip in and out of, or equally just to binge in one sitting!’

Meanwhile, a little over the road Trish Kerr,  f the eponymous Clonakilty bookshop is stuck into a newly published book, Boy from the Sea by Garrett Carr.

‘This wonderful novel was published in February, and it has continued to be a top seller all summer long. In a close-knit, old-fashioned, gossipy, compassionate community on Ireland’s West Coast, a baby is found abandoned on a beach by a local fisherman. Ambrose and his wife take the baby into their home, but they already have a son, Declan, who bitterly resents the newcomer, Brendan’.

‘The story is set against the background of the fishing industry in 1973, and Brendan as the baby, the child, the teen, and later the adult becomes a source of fascination for a town not connected by the internet and the storm of a fast-changing world, but by tight human bonds’.

‘The reader is absorbed into the often mundane and inconsequential lives of the novel’s characters. This is a book that remained in my thoughts for days after I had finished it’.