The last Saturday of the month is coming up, which means it's time to publish April's winning Hennessy New Irish Writing short story and poems.

In fiction, Eileen Battersby reports that Tiger Milk by Stefanie de Velasco, translated by Tim Mohr, is a raw and authentic tale of teenage love and friendship.

Sarah Gilmartin praises The Good Son by Paul McVeigh, a troubled tale of growing up in Troubles Belfast.

In Word for Word, Doireann Ní Bhriain celebrates an innovative children's literacy programme, while Sara Keating's ebooks column suggests newsletters are the best cure for the dreaded reader's block.

In non-fiction, author Ed O'Loughlin prescribes Adventures in Human Being by Gavin Francis as required reading, a doctor's travel guide to the human body.

Geoffrey Roberts, professor of history at University College Cork, says Richard Sakwa's Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands is a meticulous and balanced account of Kiev's war with Moscow which argues the EU and West have done damage with Russophobic misconception.

Denis Weaire, emeritus professor in the school of physics at Trinity College Dublin, admires William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse: Astronomy and the Castle in Nineteenth Century Ireland, edited by Charles Mollan.

Lewis Carroll's classic children's novels about Alice in Wonderland are 150 years old – but as The Story of Alice: Lewis Carroll and the Secret History of Wonderland by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst illustrates, their appeal is timeless, writes Patricia Craig.