This is another timely recommendation as a new edition of Irish-born, Maeve Brennan’s short story collection The Springs of Affection has just been reprinted by the Dublin-based press Stinging Fly. I’d definitely urge readers to seek this out too, but personally I have a soft spot for her non-fiction. Between 1954 and 1968 Brennan supplied copy for the New Yorker’s Talk of the Town section under the fabulous pen name ‘The Long-Winded Lady’. Her vignettes of Manhattan life combine the detachment of the flaneuse with the lived experience of her own street-dwelling subjects – especially poignant given Brennan became homeless towards the end of her life and lived out of the ladies’ bathroom at the offices of the New Yorker. (Credit: Counterpoint)