The series succeeds in the same way Patrick Radden Keefe’s book did: It makes you love these people.

The new government in Ireland (which looks remarkably like the last one) faces a housing crisis that has become an economic and demographic emergency.

Michael Longley, the Irish poet whose long career included more than 40 books, died last week. He was lauded by literary, social and political figures alike for his many contributions to Irish literature and to the cause of social reconciliation.

Before it is a thriller, before it is a dark comedy, “Bad Sisters” is a love story.

The Irish tradition has long been that on Nollaig na mBan, this final day of the busy Christmas season, women get to put their feet up and enjoy a day of socializing. In some versions of the tradition, men take over the household chores.

John Banville is surely the only crime novelist in recent memory who has won the Booker Prize and is regularly rumored to be in the running for the Nobel Prize in Literature.