Danielle McLaughlin, author of the highly acclaimed Stinging Fly short story collection, Dinosaurs on Other Planets, addresses the sexism that permeated the syllabus when she was at school; Claire Connolly looks at the Irish connections to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as it turns 200; we publish the winning short story and poems from October’s Hennessy New Irish Irish Writing competition; as the vital US midterm elections loom, Stephen Phillips surveys the new books which seek to illuminate the darkening political and social landscape there; plus Anne Harris on Truly Frank: A Dublin Memoir by Frank McDonald; Seán Hewitt on Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know: The Fathers of Wilde, Yeats and Joyce; Geraldine Kennedy on Madam Politician by Martina Fitzgerald; Sarah Gilmartin on The Bus on Thursday by Shirley Barrett; Claire Hennessy on tyhe best new YA books; and Julie Parsons on Shah of Shahs by Ryszard Kapuscinski.

Plus, save €5 on The Innocent Wife by Amy Lloyd when you buy The Irish Times in any Eason store on Saturday.