This Human Season By Louise Dean

A writer unafraid of unsexy subject matter - her debut was about octogenarian married life - Dean sets her second novel in Belfast during the Troubles. Switching between the lives of Kathleen Moran, a Catholic mother of four, and John Dunn, a British soldier turned prison officer, Dean examines the ways in which men and women disengage during times of conflict.

In a novel that firmly places sectarian violence in a domestic context, Dean paints memorable vignettes of old men arrested in their cardies, and children caught in the tea-time crossfire.