By Denise O’Donoghue
BBC presenter Graham Norton will publish his third fiction novel in the autumn.
The "compelling" Home Stretch will be published by Coronet in October and Norton, from Bandon, Co Cork, will narrate the audiobook himself.
"Like many, I had always wanted to write a novel, but quietly assumed it would remain an unrealised ambition. I am, therefore, both astonished and delighted to find myself talking about my third book," Norton said.
"Home Stretch is my most personal story to date and I look forward to readers meeting these new characters. The choices we make as young people can have long-lasting consequences, sometimes unexpected, and often devastating.
"Home Stretch is a book that begins with a catastrophic accident. Three people survive, but are they really the lucky ones?"
Home Stretch is set in a small Irish community in 1987 and focuses on the wedding of two young locals not long out of school.
"They're barely adults, not so long out of school and still part of the same set of friends they've grown up with. As the friends head home from the beach that last night before the wedding, there is a car accident. Three survive the crash but three are killed. And the reverberations are felt throughout the small town," the synopsis says.
"Connor, the young driver of the car, lives. But staying among the angry and the mourning is almost as hard as living with the shame, and so he leaves the only place he knows for another life. Travelling first to Liverpool, then London, by the Noughties he has made a home—of sorts—for himself in New York. The city provides shelter and possibility for the displaced, somewhere Connor can forget his past and forge a new life.
"But the secrets, the unspoken longings and regrets that have come to haunt those left behind will not be silenced. And before long, Connor will have to meet his past."
Norton’s previous novels, Holding and A Keeper, became instant bestsellers in the UK and Ireland, with Holding winning the Irish Book Award for Popular Fiction.
"Graham Norton brings fine skill and tenderness to his writing," said publisher Hannah Black.
"In his new novel Home Stretch, Norton turns his focus on the stories we tell ourselves, the tension between the draw of home and the longing for escape, and the inevitable reckoning that comes when we try to conceal our truth.
"This is Graham’s storytelling at its best: intelligently plotted, darkly knowing and, as ever, beautifully told."
The announcement of Norton's book comes a day after his fellow Cork writer Louise O'Neill shared the details of her next novel.
O'Neill's After the Silence is set on Inisrún, an island off the coast of west Cork and will be published in August.
It follows a team of documentary makers who arrive on the island to solve a 10-year-old murder mystery.
"It’s like The Virgin Suicides meets Big Little Lies with Making A Murderer thrown in for good measure and you guys, I know you’re not allowed to pick a favourite of your novels but... this is it. This is my favourite. I’m so proud of this book and I hope you’ll like it too," O'Neill said.
