The headline from The Maningpool Telegraph read: TRAGIC DEATH OF SIR NOEL GRAMPIAN – shot during performance – Symphony Concert Calamity.

As a rousing Strauss piece is reaching its crescendo in Maningpool Civic Hall, the talented yet obnoxious conductor Sir Noel Grampian is shot dead in full view of the Municipal Orchestra and the audience. It was no secret that he had many enemies – musicians and music critics among them – but to be killed in mid flow suggests an act of the coldest calculation.

Told through the letters and documents sent by D.I. Alan Hope to his wife as he puzzles through the dauntingly vast pool of suspects and scant physical evidence in the case, this is an innovative and playful mystery underscored by the author’s extensive experience of the highly-strung world of music professionals. First published in 1941, this new edition returns Farr’s only crime novel to print to receive its long-deserved encore.

Not long after Ougai Mori takes the reins of the Port Mafia, his accomplice Osamu Dazai has a dreadful run in with Chuuya Nakahara, a boy known as the Sheep King who is capable of manipulating gravity. But when strange rumors about the mysterious being Arahabaki start spreading throughout Yokohoma, the duo must put aside their differences and get to the bottom of things. Before they achieved infamy as the fearsome pairing Twin Dark, Dazai and Chuuya were just boys. Was their first encounter a harbinger of hope, or an ill omen of things to come...?

"A very neat version of the 'sealed room' mystery ... provides [Miss Brand] with excellent opportunities to indulge her sense of character and her pleasantly malicious wit, as well as her gift for posing an ingenious problem." - Times Literary Supplement, 1949 At Elysian Hall, a grand exhibition space in post-War London, a cast has been assembled for a medieval-themed pageant show replete with knights in coloured armour, real horses and a damsel in a rickety tower on high. With death threats discovered by members of the troupe before the show, the worst comes to pass when the leading lady is thrown from the tower before the eyes of the audience by an unknown assailant - with all doors backstage also under observation. Faced with a seemingly impossible case, the wizened Inspector Cockrill and the fresh-faced Inspector Charlesworth begrudgingly join forces to uncover the killer hiding in plain sight. First published in Britain in 1949, Brand's exuberant novel is still regarded as one of the great masterpieces of the classic mystery genre for its fiendishly constructed puzzle, memorable setting, dumbfounding acts of misdirection and thrilling denouement.

After a disastrous defeat at the 2018 World Cup, Japan's team struggles to regroup. But what's missing? An absolute Ace Striker, who can guide them to the win. The Japan Football Union is hell-bent on creating a striker who hungers for goals and thirsts for victory, and who can be the decisive instrument in turning around a losing match...and to do so, they've gathered 300 of Japan's best and brightest youth players. Who will emerge to lead the team... and will they be able to out-muscle and out-ego everyone who stands in their way? After Sae Itoshi and Ryusei Shidou enter their "flow" and lead the U-20 representatives in a ferocious attack, Blue Lock plays their trump card: swapping in Barou. The match quickly goes beyond all planning and strategies, as both sides expend their utmost energy trying to surpass their limits in the "flow" state. Will Isagi and the rest of Blue Lock be the ones to open the door to a new era of Japanese soccer?!"

Sunday Business Post Book of the Year Blindboy Boatclub is one half of the Rubberbandits, Ireland's foremost satirist and now the talented author of a collection of brilliant short stories and visual art. Published to critical acclaim, his first collection is powered by big themes and even bigger ideas. There are stories about a van fuelled by Cork people's accents, Tipperary's first ISIS recruit, a sexually aggressive banshee and a fridge dragged heroically through the streets of Limerick. The Gospel According to Blindboy questions and challenges the complacencies and contradictions at the heart of modern Ireland. Whip-smart, provocative and animated by his unmistakable dark wit, it is one of the most original collections of short stories to emerge in recent years. 'Mad, wild, hysterical, and all completely under the writer's control - this is a brilliant debut.' Kevin Barry 'There is genius in this book, warped genius. Like you'd expect from a man who for his day job wears a plastic bag on his head but something beyond that too. Oddly in keeping with the tradition of great Irish writers.' Russell Brand 'If you've ever witnessed (there's no other word for it) a Rubberbandits video you'll be anxious (there's no other word for it) to read this collection of short stories from one of the originators. I hesitate to use the word author as the experience is as close to reading a traditional short story as being burnt by a blow torch. Essential, funny and disturbing.' Danny Boyle 'One of Ireland's finest and most intelligent comic minds delivers stories so blisteringly funny and sharp your fingers might bleed. In language so delicious you can taste it, we're shown holy and unholy Ireland: a land of lock-ins, nettle stings, stone-mad Cork birds, gas cunts and Guiney's jeans. No one is safe - we all have the unmerciful piss ripped out of us and there's no escape from the emotional gut punches, expertly dealt.' Tara Flynn 'Demented, dishevelled and deeply surreal - Blindboy Boatclub's book will shock and delight.' Irish Independent 'It's not for the faint-hearted.' Joe.ie 'You won't be disappointed. It will take you to places unexpected.' Ryan Tubridy

The bestselling modern classic, Milan Kundera’s iconic novel of love and politics in communist Czechoslovakia.

A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon; a man torn between his love for her and his womanising. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals; while her other lover stands to lose everything because of his noble qualities. In a world where lives are shaped by choices and events, and everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance and weight – and we feel ‘the unbearable lightness of being’.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being encompasses passion and philosophy, infidelity and ideas, the Prague Spring and modern America, political acts and private desires, comedy and tragedy – in fact, all of human existence.