As Shakespeare would say, ‘From you have I been absent in the spring’. In other words, apologies for my tardiness with this edition of The Enzograph. I’ve been on holiday and having a little break due to things I want to overshare but won’t because I’ll only regret it, and this is a newsletter not free therapy for me.

It sucks that we are never fully grown up though, doesn’t it? I still want to lie face down on the sticky floor in middle of the supermarket and have the mother of all tantrums because I didn’t get what I wanted. I want to thrash my arms and legs and scream that "it’s not fair" over and over. I want a cool flannel and a "there, there." I want to be five years old and receive an "I was very brave" sticker and an orange sherbet lolly for trying my best. I don’t want to suck it up. I’m sick of being a hoover, (John-Cooper Clarke doesn’t have a clue what he’s asking). I am full of dirt and dead skin and discarded debris from under sofas. Maybe we are made from stardust but I’m also harbouring silverfish and termites and unfinished business.

With a big hat-tip and credit to K McDonald for the idea and inspiration, something a little different...

'Going Underground' is a short scripted scene. It's also brand new on my website. Check it out.

1: The Feast by Margaret Kennedy
A nice one to start us off. Utter escapist perfection. So funny, so well-paced. The language, the guests!

 Cornwall, Midsummer 1947. Pendizack Manor Hotel is buried in the rubble of a collapsed cliff. Seven guests have perished, but is it murder, and what brought this strange assembly together for a moonlit feast before this Act of God - or Man? Over the week before the landslide, we meet the hotel guests in all their eccentric glory: and as friendships form and romances blossom, sins are revealed, and the cliff cracks widen…

2: For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain by Victoria MacKenzie

Did you know what an Anchoress is? Me neither, until now. I was in love with the book from the title alone. Then I read it. In one sitting. Vivid, shocking, brave and so readable. These two women will stay with me. No spoilers but... that ending! Sorry, can we talk more about being an Anchoress..?

In the year of 1413, two women meet for the first time in the city of Norwich.

Margery has left her fourteen children and husband behind to make her journey. Her visions of Christ - which have long alienated her from her family and neighbours, and incurred her husband's abuse - have placed her in danger with the men of the Church, who have begun to hound her as a heretic.

Julian, an anchoress, has not left Norwich, nor the cell to which she has been confined, for twenty-­three years. She has told no one of her own visions - and knows that time is running out for her to do so.

The two women have stories to tell one another. Stories about girlhood, motherhood, sickness, loss, doubt and belief; revelations more the powerful than the world is ready to hear. Their meeting will change everything.

3: The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
Okay, time to bring you down, but oh God, it's worth it. This book will never leave you. None of these boys will ever leave me. This book led me down a rabbit hole of AIDS stories (Christodora by Tim Murphy, All The Young Men by Ruth Coker Burks and Kevin Caro O’Leary) but this is where it began.

In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup: bringing an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDs epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, he finds his partner is infected, and that he might even have the virus himself. The only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister.

Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago epidemic, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways the AIDS crisis affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. Yale and Fiona's stories unfold in incredibly moving and sometimes surprising ways, as both struggle to find goodness in the face of disaster.

4: The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

A masterclass in how to write characters, but also a story that never stops delivering. The kind of writer who makes you want to hide your TBR and read their back catalogue. I have yet to read Brokeback Mountain, but I will. Likened to works like The Book Of Form And Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki which I loved but can’t see what they have in common. That book makes me think of Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr which I’ll always recommend of course.

At thirty-six, Quoyle, a third-rate newspaperman, is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his two-timing wife meets her just deserts. He retreats with his two daughters to his ancestral home on the starkly beautiful Newfoundland coast, where a rich cast of local characters all play a part in Quoyle's struggle to reclaim his life. As three generations of his family cobble up new lives, Quoyle confronts his private demons--and the unpredictable forces of nature and society--and begins to see the possibility of love without pain or misery.

5: The Girl in Times Square by Paullina Simons

Don’t judge a book by its cover. This is a mystery, a love story, and a battle against leukaemia, all in one. I’ve read many, many, books (brag!) and I’ve never forgotten Lily or Spencer Patrick O’Malley and you won’t either. I've read many of Simons' books and they are brilliant (and more sexual than you’d think. Quite eyebrow raising in places!). Prepare to fall in love.

Meet Lily Quinn. She is broke, struggling to finish college, pay her rent, find love. Adrift in bustling New York City, the most interesting things in Lily’s life happen to the people around her. But Lily loves her aimless life … until her best friend and roommate Amy disappears. That’s when Spencer Patrick O’Malley, a cynical, past his prime NYPD detective with demons of his own, enters Lily’s world. And a sudden financial windfall which should bring Lily joy instead becomes an ominous portent of the dark forces gathering around her.

But fate isn’t finished with Lily.

She finds herself fighting for her life as Spencer’s search for the missing Amy intensifies, leading Lily to question everything she knew about her friend and family. Startling revelations about the people she loves force her to confront truths that will leave her changed forever.

6: Scarlet Feather by Maeve Binchy
Colm Toibin’s Long Island has made me want to go back and read Irish fiction I loved. I have to mention Tish Delaney here. If you’ve not read her, treat yourself please. Scarlet Feather is an old book, and it still makes me smile just to think of it. Excuse me while I go download it on audible.

Cathy Scarlet and Tom Feather are on the brink of realising their dream: to open a catering company in the heart of Dublin, the eponymous Scarlet Feather. Friends since college, Cathy and Tom are sure of each other and united in their shared goal, but not everyone around them is so supportive of their ambitions.

A disapproving mother-in-law, an overworked husband, a distracted girlfriend and terrible twins, hell-bent on creating as much havoc and asking as many difficult (yet humorous) questions as they possibly can, stir up recipes for trouble. Passion could very well be a feature on the menu as Tom and Cathy turn increasingly to each other for support and grow ever closer in their shared aim of making Scarlet Feather the best catering company Dublin has ever seen.

7: The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson
All of her books are amazing, but this one stuck in my mind. She’s another author I went and ordered all her books from. My Berts Books subscription is great for this. I get two paperbacks a month and ribbons and bookmarks. I use this sub to pick up the books I missed or authors I just discovered. Such a lovely treat when that package floooops through my letterbox.

Arthur and Jake are brothers yet worlds apart.

Arthur is older, shy, dutiful and set to inherit his father's farm. Jake is younger, handsome and reckless, a dangerous man to know.

When Laura arrives in their rural community, the fragile balance of the brothers' rivalry is pushed to the edge of catastrophe...

8: The Painted Man by Peter V. Brett

I have to have a fantasy recommendation, and this is an excellent introduction to authors like Patrick Rothfuss and David A. Wells. My nerdy older brother got me into these. Fans of Legends and Lattes and Books and Bonedust by Travis Baldree might want to give them a go. I recommend audible. So absorbing. Also, devotees of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams might like (then read Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir obs). In fact, if T J Klune is your thing, you could give this a go. Not as fluffy and higher stakes but excellent world building.

Sometimes there is very good reason to be afraid of the dark…

Eleven-year-old Arlen lives with his parents on their small farmstead, half a day's ride from the isolated hamlet of Tibbet's Brook.

As dusk falls upon Arlen's world, a strange mist rises from the ground; a mist that promises a violent death to any foolish enough to brave the coming darkness, for hungry corelings – demons that cannot be harmed by mortal weapons – materialize from the vapours to feed on the living. As the sun sets, people have no choice but to take shelter behind magical wards and pray that their protection holds until the creatures dissolve with the first signs of dawn.

When Arlen's life is shattered by the demon plague, he is forced to see that it is fear, rather than the demons, which truly cripples humanity. Believing that there is more to his world than to live in constant fear, he must risk leaving the safety of his wards to discover a different path.

In the small town of Cutter's Hollow, Leesha's perfect future is destroyed by betrayal and a simple lie. Publicly shamed, she is reduced to gathering herbs and tending an old woman more fearsome than the corelings. Yet in her disgrace, she becomes the guardian of dangerous ancient knowledge.

Orphaned and crippled in a demon attack, young Rojer takes solace in mastering the musical arts of a Jongleur, only to learn that his unique talent gives him unexpected power over the night.

Together, these three young people will offer humanity a last, fleeting chance of survival.

9: The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley

People who like a cult story (I also recommend Wives of Halcyon by Eirinie Lapidaki for this) will love this very creepy tale. Maybe fans of Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward would like it too? It makes me think of Dark Matter by Michele Paver. I don’t know what has made me think of My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent as well, but I am. Maybe because I have fallen down a pit of true crime (including I Will Be Gone In The Dark by Michelle McNamara). I've just finished The Luckiest Girl In The World by Jessica Knoll which I read because I loved her Bright Young Women.

If it had another name, I never knew, but the locals called it the Loney - that strange nowhere between the Wyre and the Lune where Hanny and I went every Easter time with Mummer, Farther, Mr and Mrs Belderboss and Father Wilfred, the parish priest.

It was impossible to truly know the place. It changed with each influx and retreat, and the neap tides would reveal the skeletons of those who thought they could escape its insidious currents. No one ever went near the water. No one apart from us, that is.

I suppose I always knew that what happened there wouldn't stay hidden for ever, no matter how much I wanted it to. No matter how hard I tried to forget . . .

10: Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen

I don’t think we are supposed to like him, but I don’t want to know why because I loved this book so much. I listened to it on Audible and now want to read all his others and anything like it. If you love family sagas like Pachinko by Min Jin Lee or Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane this could be for you, Or Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver or even a classic Penny Vinchenzi . I love a family I can follow through the years (and Ethan Joella does this so well in Same Bright Stars).

It’s 23 December 1971, and the Hildebrandts are at a crossroads. Fifteen-year-old Perry has resolved to be a better person and quit dealing drugs to seventh graders. His sister Becky, the once straight-laced high school social queen, has veered into counterculture, while at college, Clem is wrestling with a decision that might tear his family apart. As their parents – Russ, a suburban pastor, and Marion, his restless wife – tug against the bonds of a joyless marriage, Crossroads finds a family, and a nation, struggling to do the right thing.

If I still haven't suggested something that takes your fancy, I've also just added LOADS more mini reviews and recommendations to the Reading section of my website. I'm too good to you lot!

[EDITOR'S NOTE: "Oh, Ambassador - you always spoil us with your magnificent balls."]