A powerful reflection on complex Irish loyalties, divisions and identities, a romantic drama, and a page-turning thriller.

Ambitious and powerful...superbly drawn...McMenamin's ambitious novel scores big

[A] violent and tender story where memorable characters battle love, loyalty and the terrible truths of war

There is a smooth grace to his prose...The tension between the compulsions of history and circumstance, and personal moral choice, are played out compellingly

Ciarán McMenamin confirms his exceptional talent with this admirably powerful and authentic novel about the First World War and the struggle for Irish independence. Tremendous.

This gripping novel shifts between [the] race to the south and a slow reveal of what happened between the three men on the Western Front...McMenamin never puts a foot wrong, expertly interweaving the historical and the imagined, right up to his masterly denouement

It's gorgeously written, it's cracking, it runs along with great vivid passages.'

McMenamin writes with verve and honesty

Ambitious and powerful...superbly drawn...a stirring novel broad in location and historical sweep...within a tradition that includes O'Connor, Liam O'Flaherty, Sebastian Barry and Frank McGuinness... Paramount in this tradition is the need to expose the big lies, to help us to see the conflict with fresh eyes - and on all of these counts, McMenamin's ambitious novel scores big

A masterful depiction of the human cost of war...reveals how even in the worst of horrors, and against all the odds, love can survive. McMenamin writes with a passionate intensity.

Set during WW1 and the Irish Civil War, turning on two pivotal stories in Ireland's history -- the foundation of the State, and the Protestant memory of WW1 - the novel follows the story of a brutal IRA man, who now needs the help of his childhood sweetheart, and sister of his dead friend, to cross the border to safety.

A gripping story of love, loss and tragic betrayal

What if you could write a novel whose main plot points are a death in combat, a suicide and the breakdown of family relations, and make it beautiful? What if you dared not to show the grimmest bits, but let them happen off-stage, while using elegant, beautiful prose to paint the spaces around them? Cressida Connolly is that brave writer and Bad Relations is her latest masterpiece . . . ravishing

Haunting

The characters in Bad Relations are so brilliantly real, so wonderfully compelling at their best, and at their worst, that I can't get them out of my head. A wonderful novel

A writer who seems able to peer directly into the human heart

Uncanny, evocative, atmospheric

Connolly is a terrifically subtle writer... [she] slyly sweeps her readers into the period drama as tensions tauten between families and social classes

Profound and moving and completely original, with a storyline that is completely satisfying. It'll be one of those novels that stays in my mind forever... it's a work of art

I finished it in two days flat and I've never read anything quite like it

A wonderfully subtle and interesting account of the Mosley women, with a compelling voice

Fascinating, moving

A gripping story of love, loss and tragic betrayal

A compelling family saga

A WOMAN'S WEEKLY BOOK CLUB READ

Daringly ambitious... a novel that invites the reader to immerse themselves in the sweep of history, the rich and detailed research... breathtaking

Great Circle is an epic trip-through Prohibition and World War II, from Montana to London to present-day Hollywood-and you'll relish every minute

Glitz and guts square off in Great Circle: a tale of two women set apart by a century, fighting to retain control of their own lives in a society that demands subservience. Shipstead is adept at writing so vividly, the reader can feel the thrill and pain of her characters. Cunningly crafted. . . richly layered, a joy to read . . . riveting

Mesmerizing

An enthralling epic about aviation and adventure. A big, baggy blast of a book bulging with sex and drugs, taking in Prohibition-era Montana, wartime London, present-day Hollywood, painting and physics. I loved it

A generous, escapist treat

A soaring epic of female adventure and wanderlust

Bestselling novelist Maggie Shipstead was struggling to depict a female adventurer. So she became one. The stakes of GREAT CIRCLE are high-for its heroine, literally life or death. Though Shipstead never learned to fly herself, she aligned with her main character Marian Graves in more important ways . . . She is interested in testing her limits

Relentlessly exciting . . . My top recommendation for this summer. Shipstead's sweeping new female-centered epic intertwines the story of Marian, an aviator who wants to circumnavigate the globe with that of actor Hadley Baxter, cast a century later to play Marian in a film. What can Marian's life tell Hadley about her own?

Dazzling prose in the service of an expansive story that covers more than a century and seems to encapsulate the whole wide world. With detailed brilliance, she lavishes heart and empathy on every character. She never wavers, pulls out a twist or two that feel fully earned, and then sticks the landing

Swinging from one century to the next, from the moneyed splendor of cities to the shifting Antarctic ice, Shipstead's prose overflows with meticulous detail

Enthralling. Moving and surprising at every turn

Sweepingly panoramic and immersive. An audacious epic

In a moment when our quarantined worlds have become so small, GREAT CIRCLE offers more than just wanderlust; it feels like a liberation.

Maggie Shipstead combines cinematic scope with a poet's eye for detail

The beginning of Maggie Shipstead's astounding novel, a Booker finalist, includes a series of endings: two plane crashes, a sunken ship and several people dead. The bad luck continues when one of the ship's young survivors, Marian, grows up to become a pilot-only to disappear on the job. Shipstead unravels parallel narratives, Marian's and that of another woman whose life is changed by Marian's story, in glorious detail. Every character, whether mentioned once or 50 times, has a specific, necessary presence. It's a narrative made to be devoured, one that is both timeless and satisfying.

Absolutely dazzling

Thrilling

GREAT CIRCLE flew us to a different world. A book to devour

A sweeping saga that alternates between the life of a tenacious female aviator in the 1930s and that of a millennial film star cast to play her in a biopic. In death, 'each of us destroys the world,' the author observes - but her engrossing novel is a moving reflection on the will to survive

Artfully constructed and exhuberantly entertaining

Shipstead soars in this expansive, beautiful novel about women and flight

Engrossing, ambitious, beautifully written

Completely engrossing from the very first page. You won't be able to put this down

A brilliant saga of a book. It will absolutely captivate you