A sneak preview of Saturday’s books pages

Danielle McLaughlin, author of the highly acclaimed Stinging Fly short story collection, Dinosaurs on Other Planets, addresses the sexism that permeated the syllabus when she was at school; Claire Connolly looks at the Irish connections to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as it turns 200; we publish the winning short story and poems from October’s Hennessy New Irish Irish Writing competition; as the vital US midterm elections loom, Stephen Phillips surveys the new books which seek to illuminate the darkening political and social landscape there; plus Anne Harris on Truly Frank: A Dublin Memoir by Frank McDonald; Seán Hewitt on Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know: The Fathers of Wilde, Yeats and Joyce; Geraldine Kennedy on Madam Politician by Martina Fitzgerald; Sarah Gilmartin on The Bus on Thursday by Shirley Barrett; Claire Hennessy on tyhe best new YA books; and Julie Parsons on Shah of Shahs by Ryszard Kapuscinski.

Plus, save €5 on The Innocent Wife by Amy Lloyd when you buy The Irish Times in any Eason store on Saturday.