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by Julia O’Faolain (Faber & Faber)

Julia O’Faolain is a Booker nominated novelist and a woman with a long history with her native Ireland. Her parents were both writers too, her mother Eileen Gould wrote children’s fiction and her father, Sean O’Faolain was a short story author aswell as being Director of Publicity for the IRA during the Civil War and the lover of the Anglo-Irish novelist, Elizabeth Bowen.

The O’Faolains were a family at odds with the ultra conservative Catholic culture in Ireland at the time of which Julia was sharply aware growing up as a child. She joins us today to discuss this and many more in her new memoir called Trespassers – A Memoir.

By Douglas A Blackmon

In Steven Spielberg’s new film Lincoln we follow the political manoeuvrings the President engaged in to ensure that the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was passed before the end of the Civil War thus enshrining freedom from slavery for all time. Or so we thought. Douglas A Blackmon in his explosive book on slavery after the Civil War - Slavery by Another Name, unearths shocking evidence that slavery persisted will into the 20th century and he joined Pat on the line from America.

By Andrew Solomon

In Far from the Tree, Andrew Solomon tells the stories of parents who not only learn to deal with their exceptional children but also find profound meaning in doing so.

Solomon’s startling proposition is that diversity is what unites us all.

He writes about families coping with deafness, dwarfism, Down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, multiple severe disabilities, with children who are prodigies, who are conceived in rape, who become criminals, who are transgender. While each of these characteristics is potentially isolating, the experience of difference within families is universal, as are the triumphs of love Solomon documents in every chapter.

Andrew Solomon spoke to Pat this morning

For 3 Millennia athletes and young adults have experimented with performance enhancing agents, and drugs. Throughout time the abusers have denied the practice, endeavoured to evade detection and hidden behind the veracity, or lack of, in the rules and laws governing sport.

But most of these men and women are heroes to the young people that seek to emulate their achievements and many of whom may look to performance enhancing substances at a young age in order to achieve the form or physique necessary to get to that next step.

In his book Drugs, Sport And The Young Adult, Dr Conor O’Brien who has spent over 20 years working in the area, highlights the nuts and bolts of drug misuse to the guardians and opinion formers of vulnerable young people.

Venezuela's revolution has no gulags, no torture chambers, but in wasted potential lies tragedy. Provoking adoration and revulsion in equal measure, Hugo Chávez is a leader like no other. He can boast genuine accomplishments. He put poverty and social exclusion at the forefront of debate. He made millions feel they had an ally in government. And he called time on US browbeating in Latin America. But the price was high – Gutted institutions, a caudillo (strongman) cult, and economic dysfunction. In his new book, Comandante, acclaimed journalist Rory Carroll sheds light on the inside story of Chavez’s life and his political court in Caracas.

In 2010, Irish Nationwide Building Society required a €5.4 billion state bailout and recently was liquidated as part of IBRC but every cent of that money must still be repaid. Michael Fingleton or ‘Fingers’, as he was widely known, survived for decades as a rogue banker in charge of the toxic building society which went to the heart of the Celtic Tiger. The implosion of Irish Nationwide was not an isolated incident but Irish Nationwide was unique. This was a building society dominated by one man for more than 37 years. Its mistakes were his mistakes and its failings, his failings.

Tom Lyons and Richard Curran claim that The Central Bank had the information and the powers needed to force the society to change direction. It knew what was going on but failed to take real action. The other banks were a calamity that would always have happened when the property bubble burst; Irish Nationwide was a financial disaster waiting to happen for many years in plain view. They have delved inside Irish Nationwide and join me in studio to discuss all of this in their new book Fingers – The Man who Brought Down Irish Nationwide and Cost Us €5.4bn.

By Mary Berry (published by BBC Books)

She’s known as the Queen of the Victoria Sponge and is one of TV's best-loved celeb chefs thanks to her judging on TV phenomenon The Great British Bake Off. She has more than 70 published cookery books to her name including her latest Mary Berry at Home, and to date has sold over five million cook books.

It seems too good to be true. A diet comes along which means you lost weight and almost halved your risk of breast cancer,.

But it is clinically proven and at its essence is good old fashioned fasting - for two days a week.

It was developed by a Dr Michelle Harvie and Professor Tony Howell, a Manchester based dietician and a consultant oncologist and they both joined Pat this morning.

by Andrew Wilson (Simon & Schuster)

On 11th February 1963, Sylvia Plath folded a cloth, placed it in her gas oven, and laid her head inside having first sealed the door of her children's bedroom. She was 30 and good reviews and a growing reputation were seemingly not enough for the troubled writer. Early 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of her sole novel, The Bell Jar just a few weeks prior to her death.

My next guest has written a new biography of the writer which includes new material about her life before Ted Hughes of which he says little is known called Mad Girls Love Song – Sylvia Plath and Life Before Ted.