April's Read - Belturbet Reading Group

Elizabeth is missing by Emma Healey

Lately, Maud's been getting forgetful. She keeps buying peach slices when she has a cupboard full, forgets to drink the cups of tea she's made and writes notes to remind herself of things. But Maud is determined to discover what has happened to her friend, Elizabeth, and what it has to do with the unsolved disappearance of her sister Sukey, years back, just after the war.

Catch-up with Cootehill Reading Group

March-April 2016 - The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

Rachel catches the same commuter train every morning. She knows it will wait at the same signal each time, overlooking a row of back gardens. She's even started to feel like she knows the people who live in one of the houses. 'Jess and Jason', she calls them. Their life - as she sees it - is perfect. If only Rachel could be that happy. And then she sees something shocking. It's only a minute until the train moves on, but it's enough. Now everything's changed. Now Rachel has a chance to become a part of the lives she's only watched from afar. Now they'll see; she's much more than just the girl on the train.

February-March 2016 - This House is Haunted

1867. Eliza Caine arrives in Norfolk to take up her position as governess at Gaudlin Hall on a dark and chilling night. As she makes her way across the station platform, a pair of invisible hands push her from behind into the path of an approaching train. She is only saved by the vigilance of a passing doctor.

When she finally arrives, shaken, at the hall she is greeted by the two children in her care, Isabella and Eustace. There are no parents, no adults at all, and no one to represent her mysterious employer. The children offer no explanation. Later that night in her room, a second terrifying experience further reinforces the sense that something is very wrong.

From the moment she rises the following morning, her every step seems dogged by a malign presence which lives within Gaudlin’s walls. Eliza realises that if she and the children are to survive its violent attentions, she must first uncover the hall’s long-buried secrets and confront the demons of its past

April's Read: Bailieborough Reading Group

Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

In this striking literary debut, Carol Rifka Brunt unfolds a moving story of love, grief, and renewal as two lonely people become the unlikeliest of friends and find that sometimes you don’t know you’ve lost someone until you’ve found them.

1987. There’s only one person who has ever truly understood fourteen-year-old June Elbus, and that’s her uncle, the renowned painter Finn Weiss. Shy at school and distant from her older sister, June can only be herself in Finn’s company; he is her godfather, confidant, and best friend. So when he dies, far too young, of a mysterious illness her mother can barely speak about, June’s world is turned upside down. But Finn’s death brings a surprise acquaintance into June’s life - someone who will help her to heal and to question what she thinks she knows about Finn, her family, and even her own heart.

At Finn’s funeral, June notices a strange man lingering just beyond the crowd. A few days later, she receives a package in the mail. Inside is a beautiful teapot she recognises from Finn’s apartment and a note from Toby, the stranger, asking for an opportunity to meet. As the two begin to spend time together, June realises she’s not the only one who misses Finn, and if she can bring herself to trust this unexpected friend, he just might be the one she needs the most.

16 Lives - A collection

The Easter Rising of 1916 was an attempt by armed revolutionaries to overthrow British rule in Ireland. A small group of Irishmen and Irishwomen seized key building in Dublin and fought a pitched battle with British soldiers for one week. The execution of sixteen men awakened a generation to the cause of Irish freedom.

16 Lives will record the full story of those executed leaders …

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March's Read: Bailieborough Library

The Scrap: a true story from the 1916 Rising by Gene Kerrigan

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Charlie Saurin, Frank Henderson, Oscar Traynor and Boss Shields lived on the north side of Dublin in 1916. The Scrap follows them through the week of the Easter Rising - from their F Company base in Fairview, where they fought one of the first skirmishes with the British, and into the centre of Dublin, where they were involved in increasingly bloody fighting. Using highly personal documents from the Bureau of Military History, the story is one of gripping detail, as we follow F Company into the GPO and see icons of Irish history as the rank and file Volunteers saw them. From there to the panic and pain of Moore Street, where the leaders began to consider surrender, and some of the members of F Company faced the ultimate test. Observing the rank and file Volunteers as they faced a turning point in history,  The Scrap is full of the dramatic, funny and contradictory detail of ordinary men and women dealing with extraordinary events.

March's Read - Cavan Library Reading Group

Wild: a journey from lost to found by Cheryl Strayed

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At twenty-six, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's rapid death from cancer, her family disbanded and her marriage crumbled. With nothing to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to walk the Pacific Crest trail - eleven-hundred miles of the west coast of America - from the Mojave Desert, through California and Oregon, and into Washington state - and to do it alone. She had no experience of long-distance hiking and the journey was nothing more than a line on a map. But it held a promise - a promise of piecing together a life that lay in ruins at her feet. Strayed's account captures the agonies - both mental and physical - of her incredible journey; how it maddened and terrified her, and how, ultimately, it healed her.

February's Read - Cavan Library

This month the group will be reading from George Eliots body of work...

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