‘Genre-blending’, ‘genre-defying’, ‘unputdownable’, ‘joyful’, ‘ambitious’ and ‘a spiritual heir to Terry Pratchett’: these are just some of the responses to Natasha Pulley’s sensational new novel The Mars House (Gollancz, 2024). And rightly so. Charting in best recent sci-fi and fantasy listings, this is an action-packed novel brimming with warmth and humour whilst tackling some of the most urgent themes facing humanity.

The beginning of September brings unexpected warmth, blue skies and gorgeous shafts of sunlight and with it, three beautiful books. I spend the balmy evenings of the first week of the month with two novels and a short story sampler, each of them drawing me deep into story and characters so uniquely theirs.

Back in 2019, when my initial thoughts about the writing of Sandstone began to simmer, there were a number of ideas I was keen to explore. First of all, I really wanted to anchor the story in some way around Irish involvement in the Spanish Civil War, particularly around the lesser known, shelved history of the way in which Irish men divided their support for opposite sides of the war effort.