The inspiration for Niamh Boyce’s novel came from a 1942 news clipping from the Leinster Leader, about a herbalist who was arrested for ‘serious offences against girls’. Photograph: Alan Betson

Niamh Boyce’s fictional debut – about a 1930s potion seller whose real business is a dark secret – captures small-town Ireland of (...)

Jeffrey Tambor and Jason Bateman in Arrested Development

Jason Bateman, Portia Di Rossi and David Cross discuss the long-awaited return of ‘Arrested Development’

Photograph: Nancy Crampton

Her strong sense of identity reaches deep into the fiction of Taiye Selasi, one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists

Ayse Hassan, Gemma Thompson, Jehnny Beth and Fay Milton of Savages

It may have an anchor to the past, but Savages are blaringly of today – and Gemma Thompson and Jehn Beth are having an absolute rr(...)

The Cúirt festival brings a heavyweight literary line-up to Galway this week – here are 10 highlights

Heidi Talbot’s voice has taken her from Kildare to the upper echelons of folk – and gained some big fans along the way

Lucy Caldwell’s latest novel is inspired by an ancestor’s dramatic life, and her own career has taken her from the stage to the pa(...)

Cancer books suck, John Green writes in ‘The Fault in Our Stars’, but this one has made him a literary phenomenon

Deborah Levy: ‘In my teens I used to comb the bookshelves looking for ones that might have some sex in them. I took down Edna O’Brien’s Country Girls books and devoured them.’

Deborah Levy’s recent novel was declined for being ‘too literary’. A Booker-nomination followed

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