Summer in the Heart is a lyrical evocation of the innocence, fun and liberation of growing up in the 1960s. Moving into and through his teens, Jim Mitchell must put his County Antrim village childhood behind him and adapt to the wider world of grammar school and the life of Belfast city.

In the process the reader accompanies Jim on a series of marvellous episodes. There is the self-conscious torture of his first school dance; playing truant from the formidable Cheyenne Bodie's maths class; and the secrecy and fear that...

Rupert Carr has enjoyed an idyllic childhood growing up on a small island off the north coast of Ireland. When at sixteen he goes to stay with his aunt and uncle in County Tyrone, to complete his schooling, Rupert meets and falls for Eilish,
a perceptive and uninhibited convent girl. Through her he is drawn into the nascent civil rights' movement and brought face to face with the political reality of the Six Counties when their peaceful protest march comes under vicious attack from loyalists with the tacit approval of the RUC.

It is the beginning of the Troubles. Rupert...