Irish Writing

Night Swimming : How to swim through the darkness by Al Mennie ( paperback August 2025)

£14.99

Al grew up in Castlerock in Northern Ireland after moving there as a child. He became a fearless surfer and swimmer, with an emotional connection to the sea which he shares here in this hugely informative and original book. 

Discover the unmatched beauty of wild swimming by night. Combining motivational writing with evocative storytelling, international big wave surfer and night swimmer Al Mennie gives readers the tools to discover their own methods of navigating through darkness to find clarity and focus. Weaving together swim stories with the practicalities of how and when he swims at night, along with the benefits that connecting with nature has on the mind, this book is perfect for wild swimmers who want to experience their favourite waterhole after sundown. Discover what drew Al into the waters of the North Atlantic, how he found community after initially seeking isolation, his pre-swim rituals, and everything he has learnt along the way, including how he "found his moon" – something that shines brightly in his life.

The book will feature:Tides, currents, weather and seasonsHow the senses adaptNavigating by landscape, moon and starsPreparation, what to wear, pre-swim rituals Route planning, back-up plans and support teamsThe importance of community With illustrations of landscapes, moon phases, constellations and tidal patterns, and templates for planning routes and logging swims, this book will help readers find a new perspective on life, opening their mind to a deeper connection with themselves and with their local environment.

Hotel Lux : An Intimate History of Communism's Forgotten Radicals, by Maurice J Casey

£12.99

Shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards 2024: History Book of the Year

'Hotel Lux brings to life not only its protagonists but an entire world, and offering a new glimpse of a vanished past' Sally Rooney'

Hotel Lux follows Irish radical May O'Callaghan and her friends, three revolutionary families brought together by their vision for a communist future and their time spent in the Comintern's Moscow living quarters, the Hotel Lux. Historian Maurice Casey reveals the connections and disconnections of a group of forgotten communist activists whose lives collided in 1920s Moscow: a brilliant Irish translator, a maverick author, the rebel daughters of an East London Jewish family, and a family of determined German anti-fascists. The dramatic and interlocking histories of the O'Flahertys, Cohens and Leonhards offer an intimate insight into the legacies of the Russian Revolution from its earliest idealism through to the brutal Stalinist purges and beyond.

Hotel Lux uncovers a world of forgotten radicals who saw their hopes and dreams crash against reality yet retained their faith in a beautiful future for all. Culminating in a queer love story that saw the daughters of the Cohens and Leonhards create an enduring partnership even as their parents' political visions crumbled, this is a multi-generational rebel odyssey and a history of international communism, one which looks as much to the future as it does to the past.

Short Stories in Irish, Olly Richards ( paperback 2022)

£10.99

An unmissable collection of eight unconventional and captivating short stories for young and adult learners of Irish.

 A Mind for Numbers Short Stories in Irish for Beginners has been written especially for students from high-beginner to low-intermediate level, designed to give a sense of achievement, a feeling of progress and most importantly - enjoyment! Mapped to A1-B1 on the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) for languages, these eight captivating stories are designed to give you a sense of achievement and a feeling of progress when reading.

The book is written in standard Irish. The audio recording of this standard Irish text is by a native Irish speaker from Connemara. What does this book give you?- Eight stories in a variety of exciting genres, from science fiction and crime to history and thriller - making reading fun, while you learn a wide range of new vocabulary- Controlled language at your level to help you progress confidently- Realistic spoken dialogues to help you learn conversational expressions and improve your speaking ability- Accessible grammar so you learn new structures naturally, in a stress-free way- Pleasure! Research shows that if you're enjoying reading in a foreign language, you won't experience the usual feelings of frustration - 'It's too hard!' 'I don't understand!'Carefully curated to make learning a new language easy, these stories include key features that will support and consolidate your progress, including: - A glossary for bolded words in each chapter- Full plot summary- A bilingual word list- Comprehension questions after each chapter.

THIRST TRAP, Grainne O' Hare ( hardback June 2025)

£16.99

Sometimes friends hold you together. Sometimes they’re why you’re falling apart. Maggie, Harley and Róise are friends on the brink: of triumph, catastrophe, or maybe just finally growing up.

Their crumbling Belfast houseshare has been witness to their roaring twenties, filled with questionable one-night stands and ruthless hangovers. But now fault-lines are beginning to show. The three girls are still grieving the tragic death of their friend, Lydia, whose room remains untouched.

Their last big fight hangs heavy over their heads, unspoken since the accident. And now they are all beginning to unravel. Thirst Trap by Gráinne O'Hare is a blazing, bittersweet, bitingly funny, and painfully relatable story about the friendships that endure through the very best and the very worst of times.

'Compulsively readable and brilliant on friendship and grief. I raced through it' - Daily Mail'Like the literary love child of Miranda July and Carrie Fisher, transposed in Belfast - hilarious, smart and chaotic in the best way' - Louise Nealon, author of SnowflakeReaders are raving about Thirst Trap:'Made me laugh and cry in equal measure''Laugh-out-loud funny and deeply moving . .

The Benefactors- Wendy Erskine ( hardback June 2025)

£18.99

From the prize-winning author of Dance Move and Sweet Home, this is an astounding novel about intimate histories, class and money - and what being a parent means. Meet Frankie, Miriam and Bronagh: three very different women from Belfast, but all mothers to 18-year-old boys.

Gorgeous Frankie, now married to a wealthy, older man, grew up in care. Miriam has recently lost her beloved husband Kahlil in ambiguous circumstances. Bronagh, the CEO of a children's services charity, loves celebrity and prestige.

When their sons are accused of sexually assaulting a friend, Misty Johnston, they'll come together to protect their children, leveraging all the powers they possess. But on her side, Misty has the formidable matriarch, Nan D, and her father, taxi-driver Boogie: an alliance not so easily dismissed.

'Erskine's great gift is for character. Not a single figure in this novel feels contrived'Guardian

'A writer of an unrivalled range of imaginative empathy'Financial Times'

Bogboy by Patrick Kealey ( paperback June 2025)

£10.99

Alfie O'Brien, soon to rename himself Bogboy, is born an orphan into a house of dead things, presided over by his imperious, ailing aunt. This is a place where the past won't let the present go, where ghosts confer with the living, and where discovering who you are means coming face to face with some uncomfortable truths. It is a house cursed by shadows, secrets and dynasty.

While the wind blows in from the Atlantic across these Irish peatlands, old enmities bite down, and when Bogboy is left for dead, he must learn how to trust love, discover where he belongs, and reconcile himself with his destiny. The ancestors are gathering and Bogboy is about to become a man. An audacious, rousing story of hope and beauty rising out of the dying embers of a corrupt and redundant regime, Bogboy is a story for our times, reminding us that attention to the natural world offers solace and healing, and that love - wherever we may find it - is always stronger than hatred.

limited numbers of signed copies available August 2025  

Let Me Go Mad In My Own Way, Elaine Feeney

£16.99

Claire O’Connor’s life has been on hold since she broke up with Tom Morton and moved from London back home to the rugged West of Ireland to care for her dying father. But glimpses of her old life are sure to follow when Tom unexpectedly moves nearby.

As Claire is thrown into a love she thought she’d left behind, she questions if Tom has come for her or for himself. Living in her childhood home brings its own challenges. While Claire tries to maintain a normal life – getting lost online, going to work and minding her own business – Tom’s return stirs up haunting memories trapped within the walls of the old family house.

Let Me Go Mad in My Own Way is a story of love and resilience, rich with history and drama, and the legacies of violence and redemption. As the secrets of the past are revealed, Claire must confront whether she can escape her history to make a future for herself. '

Elaine Feeney is one of Irish literature's most gifted and persuasive storytellers' SINÉAD GLEESON

An uncanny understanding of the workings of the human heart. I loved this book' LOUISE KENNEDY

Darkness In the City of Light, Heidi Edmundson ( paperback May 2025)

£10.99

Vulpe Tempest is in charge of her uncle’s detective agency for the summer. Against the backdrop of a series of murders in which the victims are all mermaids, she takes on what appears to be the simple case of a missing person. To solve the mystery, she must descend into the dark underworld of the city, its rivalries and its fantastical stories. It's engagingly descriptive of a city which is 'almost' real but with magical elements. For fans of Jan Carson or Daphne Du Maurier. 

Heidi grew up in Northern Ireland and is also a doctor! This is her first fiction novel. 

To Avenge a Dead Glacier, Shane Tivenan ( paperback May 2025)

£13.99

Winner of the RTÉ Francis MacManus Short Story Prize and the John McGahern Award, this debut collection simmers with style, verve, tension and humour. Throughout the stories in To Avenge a Dead Glacier, Tivenan explores the lives of rural Irish outsiders.

His characters are artists, sean-nós singers, members of the queer community, the gifted, the neurodivergent, the environmentally concerned, people with memory problems, the spiritual people, the non-human. In the title story, a man attends the funeral of a glacier in Iceland without fully knowing why he is there. In another, a midlands graffiti artist warns his townspeople through his throw-ups about the dangers of the way they are living, but neglects his own mind in the process.

In 'Honey Brown', a ninety-two-year-old woman who suffers from Charles Bonnet syndrome tries to celebrate her birthday in a nursing home in Roscommon while fighting back the hallucinations brought on by her condition. In 'Resurrection of a Corncrake', a semi-retired plasterer is haunted by the silencing of the birds in his townland, a silencing which he knows he took part in. These are stories rich in the essential detail of human life, in the fraught exchanges that make up our every relationship, and very often of life lived beyond the confines of safety or simplicity.

Irish Pints, A compendium ( hardback, Ali Dunworth - May 2025)

£13.00

A Compendium of Irish Pints : The Culture, Customs and Craic

In Ireland, a pint – having one, going for one, buying one – is a cultural institution. It’s about so much more than 568ml of beer in a glass. But how did a simple pint become such a phenomenon?  In A Compendium of Irish Pints, Ali Dunworth delves into the culture, customs and craic surrounding pints in Ireland, from airport pints to unplanned pints, pints for celebrations and pints for commiserations, festival pints, quiet pints, crisps and pints and everything in between.

With illustrations by Stephen Heffernan, aka Hephee, that perfectly capture the culture of pints in his iconic style, you’ll find yourself working up a thirst and sending that text we all love to get: ‘Pint?’

Ghost Wedding, David Park ( hardback May 2025)

£16.99

For fans of Sebastian Faulks, Donal Ryan and Anne Tyler comes this beautiful novel following two troubled men, separated by nearly a century, bound by the ghosts of their past.

When George Allenby is put in charge of building a lake in the grounds of an imposing Irish manor house, he intends to do the job as swiftly as possible and return to Belfast. Allenby is still wrestling with his time as an officer during the First World War, burdened by the many things he could have done differently. Almost a century later, Alex and Ellie are preparing for their wedding, sparing no expense to hire a venue overlooking the very lake Allenby built all those years ago.

Like Allenby before him, Alex is haunted by decisions he made in the past. Now, with the wedding drawing ever closer, he is at a crossroads. Telling the truth might free him from his guilt; it might also take away everything he cares about, including Ellie.

In this masterful portrait of love and betrayal, David Park reveals the many ways the past seeps into the present: destructive, formidable, but also hopeful, in the moments of fragile beauty that remain.

AIR, John Boyne ( hardback May 2025)

£12.99

From internationally bestselling author John Boyne, a contemplative story about one man trying to move forward from the trauma of his youth to become a better father to his son. Being in limbo, 30,000 feet in the air, offers time to reflect and take stock. For Aaron Umber, it’s an opportunity to connect with his 14-year-old son as they travel halfway across the world to meet a woman who isn’t expecting them.

Unsettled by his past, and anxious for his future, Aaron is at a crossroads in life. The damage inflicted upon him during his youth has made him the man he is, but now threatens to widen the growing fissures between him and his only child. This trip could bind them closer together, or tear them further apart.

In this penetrating examination of action and consequence, fault and attribution, acceptance and resolution, John Boyne gives us a redemptive story of a father and a son on a moving journey to mend their troubled lives.

This is book four in the Elements quartet ... each a standalone story but with added layers should you read all four.  These are all in the same small hardback format. 

'Among the world's greatest storytellers' Donal Ryan'

The Wildelings, Lisa Harding ( hardback April 2025)

£16.99

A vivid and compulsive story of obsession, control and guilt, set in Nineties Dublin – perfect for fans of dark academia'

Jessica and Linda have been best friends since the first day of school.

Both girls are from very different broken homes – and beautiful, wilful Jessica has always ensured their survival. Now eighteen, the two girls have come to Wilde – an elite university in the heart of Dublin, far away from their troubled childhoods. Jessica thrives immediately, and, with the faithful Linda at her side, finds herself at the heart of a new circle of friends.

But then Mark enters the picture. A philosophy student a few years older than them, he has strange and compelling ideas about self-discovery. When Linda and Mark start dating, Jessica is disturbed by the change in her friend – and how quickly she seems to have fallen under this abrasive, charismatic man’s control.

It turns out that Mark’s influence is not limited to Linda alone; and Jessica soon finds out that her whole group of friends are keeping secrets for him – culminating in a terrible tragedy that strikes at the end of their first year. Years later, Jessica is still grappling with her guilt over what happened at Wilde. And when Mark resurfaces, she knows she owes it to herself – and Linda – to set the record straight once and for all.

Fair Play, Louise Hegarty ( hardback April 2025)

£16.99

‘SALLY ROONEY MEETS THE SECRET HISTORY’ - The Sunday Times

This is a murder mystery. This is a story about love. Or is it? Abigail and her brother Benjamin have always been close.

To celebrate his birthday, Abigail hires a grand old house and gathers their friends together for a murder mystery party. As the night goes on, they drink too much and play games. Relationships are forged, consolidated or frayed.  Someone kisses someone they shouldn’t, someone else’s heart is broken. In the morning, everyone wakes up – except Benjamin. Suddenly everything is not quite what it seems.

An eminent detective arrives determined to find Benjamin’s killer. The house now has a butler, a gardener and a housekeeper. This is a locked-room mystery, and everyone is a suspect. As Abigail attempts to fathom her brother’s unexpected death in a world that has been turned upside down, she begins to wonder whether perhaps the true mystery might have been his life . . .

Louise Hegarty's Fair Play is the puzzle-box story that brilliantly lays bare the real truth of life - the terrifying mystery of grief.

Fun and Games, John Patrick McHugh ( hardback April 2025)

£16.99

One of the most exciting writers working in Ireland today’ SALLY ROONEY 'An utter joy to read' COLIN BARRETT '

 A stunning debut novel following a teenage boy as he comes of age on the west coast of Ireland, from the author of the acclaimed story collection Pure Gold. Seventeen-year-old John Masterson has no idea what he wants. It’s his last summer on the small island where he has grown up and he should be enjoying the weeks until his exam results come through.

Instead, he’s working mind-numbing shifts at the local hotel and trying to keep his head down after his mother’s nude sext to another man was leaked to the whole island. As John joins the local senior football team, gets caught up in fights and parties, and embarks on a tentative relationship with his slightly older co-worker Amber that he feels both proud and ashamed of, he can almost pretend that this summer will last forever. But soon John must face up to the choices before him: to stay or leave, to stand out or fit in, and whether to love and let himself be loved, despite or perhaps because of, the flaws that make us all human.

Fun and Games is a darkly comic, beautifully crafted debut novel that is full of feeling both harsh and tender. It takes in social class and its firm borders, manhood and its frailties, family and, of course, love.

A Year in the Woods, Paul Clements

£17.99

Montalto through the seasons: a lovely contemplation of woods, flora and fauna from Paul’s year spent on this Northern Irish estate. 

The Language of Remembering by Patrick Holloway (paperback Feb 2025)

£10.99

Returning from Brazil with his wife and daughter, Oisin is looking to rebuild a life in Ireland and reconnect with his mother, Brigid, who has early onset Alzheimer's. As her condition deteriorates, she starts to speak Irish, the language of heryouth, and reflect on her childhood dreams and aspirations. Mother andson embark on a journey of personal discovery and as past traumas are exposed,they begin to understand what has shaped them and who they really are.

'TheLanguage of Remembering' asks how we connect to the people we love and how wemove on from the past to find meaning in the present.

Twenty Twenty Vision, Mary Morrissy ( paperback March 2025)

£13.99

Twenty-Twenty Vision is a collection of interlinked short stories about hindsight and late middle-age regret subtly framed within the first year of the pandemic. It’s also a portrait, an emotional map of the 1950s generation moving into the third age with a mixture of apprehension and regret. 

Christine Beckett is faced with some home truths when her best friend, suffering from dementia, decides after a lifetime to be honest with her; Olivia Fletcher has an epiphany at a vaccination centre about a man who has loved her for decades; Bernard Travers revisits an unlikely romantic interlude with the mother of his teenage pen pal that has sustained him for 40 years

The characters make chastening discoveries – one finds after a lifetime that she’s a bullying victim, another draws up a curriculum vitae of her emotional life when there are no jobs left to apply for. The work focuses on a handful of characters – Christine, Olivia, Bernard, Freddie, Triona and Eva – as they revisit their past and grapple with late-life perspectives.

The overarching narrative is connected by character and situation, and united in theme, to form a tapestry of late middle-age reckoning.

Stories from Ireland, Brien Friel (paperback March 2025)

£12.99

Stories of Ireland is a brilliant, colourful compendium of mid-century Irish experience from one of Ireland’s greatest ever writers, Brian Friel. Demonstrating all of Friel’s peerless instinct for voice, scene, and the uncanny mystery found in the everyday, these tales tell of beauty, struggle and discovery: from the drowning of a man in the bog-black waters of Lough Keeragh, to the camaraderie of teenage potato gathers in County Tyrone, and from the careful work of the German War Graves Commission in Glenn na fuiseog, to trawlermen’s talk of sunken gold off the coast of Donegal.

Selected by Friel himself, and introduced by acclaimed author Louise Kennedy, this charming, heartful collection truly offers some of the best stories ever written. . 'They are everything short stories should be – deft, skilfully written, funny and quite often breathlessly sad' Edna O'Brien

Beidh Tu Alright : An Irish Language Journey by Joe McHugh ( PB Jan 25)

£18.00

In July 2014, Joe McHugh TD faced one of the most significant challenges of his political career. Appointed Minister for Natural Resources, the Gaeltacht and the Islands, McHugh was tasked with promoting the Irish language, despite having a limited grasp of the language himself. The outcry from the Irish-speaking community was immediate, with protestors chanting ‘Aire gan teanga, Aire gan clue’ (A Minister without a language is a Minister without a clue) outside Government Buildings. But instead of retreating, McHugh embraced this personal and public challenge, embarking on a journey to become a fluent Irish speaker. In Beidh Tú Alright, Joe McHugh shares his candid account of overcoming the daunting task of mastering Irish as an adult.

He takes readers behind the scenes, revealing the emotional and intellectual struggles faced, and the deep connections he forged with the language, its history, and the Irish-speaking communities. McHugh’s journey was not just about learning a language but rediscovering its cultural significance.

From uncovering the meaning behind place names like Maam Cross and Gleann an Ghiolla Ghránna to finding inspiration in the landscapes of Bear Island and Gleann Cholm Cille, Beidh Tú Alright delves into how language can connect us to our heritage, our sense of place, and our own identity. Beidh Tú Alright is a powerful nod to the resilience of the human spirit, the importance of cultural heritage, and the joy of lifelong learning. McHugh’s personal story will inspire both those who have yet to start their Irish language journey and those who may have once given up.

The Bureau, Eoin McNamee ( hardback April 2025)

£18.99

The Bureau : a gritty tale of love and death in Northern Ireland

Lorraine would say afterwards that she was smitten straight off with Paddy Farrell. You could tell that he was occupying the room in a different way, he found the spaces that fitted him. She was the kind of girl the papers called vivacious, always a bit of dazzle to her.

Could she not see there was death about him? Could he not see there was death about her? Paddy worked the border, a place of road closures, hijackings, sudden death. Everything bootleg and tawdry, nobody is saying that the law is paid off but it is. This is strange terrain, unsolid, ghosted through.

There's illicit cash coming across the border and Brendan's backstreet Bureau de Change is the place to launder it. Brendan knows the rogue lawyers, the nerve shot policemen, the alcoholic judges and he doesn't care about getting caught. For the Bureau crew getting caught is only the start of the game.

Paddy and his associates were a ragged band and honourless and their worth to themselves was measured in thievery and fraud. But Lorraine was not a girl to be treated lightly. She's cast as a minx, a criminal's moll but she's bought a shotgun. And she's bought a grave.

Some of the most beautiful prose being written in Ireland today' Irish Times

Hitched, JF Murray ( paperback August 2024)

£9.99

LONGLISTED FOR BOOKTOK AUTHOR OF THE YEAR

Bridesmaids meets The Hangover in Hitched, the laugh-out-loud rom-com of the year!What happens in Vegas . . .doesn’t always stay there. Kate is the ultimate planner. She has her happily-ever-after all plotted out, starting with her dream wedding to successful dental surgeon, Norman, and an iconic Las Vegas hen party with her three best girlfriends.

Even running into her DJ ex, Trevor Rush, the man who broke her heart nine years ago, won’t ruin Kate’s vision for the perfect girls’ trip. But when an alcohol-fuelled night out leaves Kate and Trevor accidentally hitched, her plans are officially out the window. To make matters worse, Trevor has decided he wants Kate back, and won’t sign the annulment papers until she agrees to go on three last dates with him.

With her fairy tale wedding just days away, Kate is determined to fight her growing feelings for Trevor. But in the scorching heat of Sin City, is it time for her to tear up the rule book, and finally take a gamble on love?

‘The freshest, sexiest, funniest and most poignant book I’ve read in a very long time’ – Claudia Carroll‘

Hagstone, Sinead Gleeson ( paperback March 2025)

£9.99

For artist Nell, the island is her home and the source of inspiration for her art.

The Iníons, a reclusive community of women, consider it a place of refuge and solace in nature. All the islanders live there alongside strange murmurings that seem to emanate from the depths of the landscape, a sound that is almost supernatural – a Summoning, as the Iníons call it. One day, a letter from the Iníons arrives at Nell’s door.

They invite her to produce an artwork celebrating their Samhain anniversary and Nell cannot resist accepting. But as the fateful day approaches, Nell senses tensions building beneath the placid surface of the commune. Will she be able to unearth the truth behind the events unfolding around her? And how far will someone go to protect what they hold most dear? Beautifully written and gripping, Sinéad Gleeson’s debut novel takes in the darker side of human nature and the mysteries of faith and the natural world.

Perfect for readers of Margaret Atwood and Sarah Moss.

Wild Waterways : A Celebration of Life on an Irish River, by Robert O'Leary

£9.99

The River Dodder offers a serene escape into nature in Ireland’s capital city. Wild Waterways showcases the river’s rich biodiversity through stunning photography and informative text in Irish and English.

Irish Fairy and Folk Tales, by WB Yeats ( hardback with gilded edges)

£19.99

• Weight:976g
• Dimensions:192 x 238 x 31 (mm)

A beautiful gift edition, edited by WB Yeats and covering all the classic forms of folk and fairy tale. 

The Glass House, Rachel Donohue (paperback from August 2025)

£9.99

The window to the past can never be closed... 1963: At the stark and isolated modernist mansion of controversial political philosopher Richard Acklehurst, the glittering annual New Year's Eve party has not gone quite as planned. Considered a genius by some, and something far darker by others, by the end of the evening Acklehurst will be dead in mysterious circumstances, casting a long shadow over the lives of his teenage daughters, Aisling and Stella.

1999: Richard Acklehurst's remains are defiled in the country graveyard where they have lain undisturbed for over thirty years, forcing his daughters to return to their childhood home where they must finally confront the complex and dark dynamic at the heart of their family.

Moving from the West of Ireland to Dublin, London, Florence and back, The Glass House is a captivating and compelling tale of two sisters and their secrets, of love, regret and vengeance. 'Gorgeously atmospheric and darkly brooding' CAROLE HAILEY

The Wardrobe Department, Elaine Garvey ( hardback Feb 2025)

£16.99

A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST DEBUT OF 2025

Mairéad works all hours in a run-down West End theatre's wardrobe department, her whole existence made up of threads and needles, running errands to mend shoes, fixing broken zips and handwashing underwear. She must also do her best to avoid groping hands backstage and the terrible bullying of the show's producer. But, despite her skill and growing experience, half of Mairéad remains in her windy, hedge-filled home in Ireland, and the life she abandoned there.

In noughties London, she has the potential to be somebody completely new - why, then, does she feel so stuck? Between the bustling side streets of Soho, and the wet grass of Leitrim and Donegal, Mairéad is caught, running from the girl she was but unable to reveal the woman she'd hoped to become. Told with rare honesty and equal measures of warmth and bite, The Wardrobe Department is a story about reckoning with the past, finding the courage to change the present - and asking what comes next.

May All your skies Be Blue, Fiona Scarlet ( paperback 28 August 2025)

£9.99

From the author of the beloved debut Boys Don't Cry - an unforgettable story of love and loss and how the ones we love never really leave us. He's leaning in. I'm leaning in.

'The future is ours to make, Shauns,' he says, lips almost touching. Summer, 1991. Dean: sun-stung and sticky with cool ice-pop juice, walks to the middle of The Green to get a good gawk at the new salon.

And at the owner's kid. Hands deep in his pockets, his jet-black mop of hair hides the tension in his face at the thought of going back home. Shauna: stands well hid behind her ma - her eyes dark and haunted like the rest of her.

The salon is theirs, a fresh start. The smell of her ma's Body Shop perfume clings to her jumper - Shauna can't be anywhere else other than here. Instantly inseparable, their friendship blooms.

But as time passes and tell-tale blushes and school fights develop into something deeper, conflicting responsibilities threaten to pull Shauna and Dean apart. When all seems lost, will they find each other under the same blue sky?

A beautiful, deeply affecting story.' DONAL RYAN'Hugely compelling and utterly persuasive.' JOSEPH O'CONNOR  Fíona has a rare talent. For writing, beautiful and sensitively, without resorting to sentimentality.

PAPERBACK FROM END AUGUST 2025

Frogs for Watchdogs, Sean Farrell ( large paperback Feb 2025)

£14.99

After years of moving from place to place, a young family finds shelter in an isolated house in the Irish countryside. Their father is missing, Mum is a healer and B a formidable big sister. In his strange new territory, a wild little boy gives voice to his experience.

Jerry Drain, a local famer, is stealing hay from the barn, someone is making nasty phone calls to the house at night and darkness is gathering at the edges of their lives. With his ferocious imagination the boy will do everything in his power to protect his family. But Jerry will not go away and Mum seems to be falling under his spell.

It will be a year of major wins and baffling defeats for the boy, as Jerry’s true nature insists on revealing itself. Dark, funny, tender and raw, Frogs for Watchdogs thrums with the intensity of childhood. Above all, it is an ode to the blended family: the bewildering joy, wary safety and profound new bonds of love.

I loved the boy's voice in this, how one feels his dark and sinister suspicions and how that too, gradually lifts. A clever and beguiling narrative... Linda 

The City Changes Its Face, Eimear McBride ( hardback Feb 2025)

£20.00

'Eimear McBride does extraordinary things with language . . .she breaks every rule in the grammar book and gleefully gets away with it.' GUARDIAN

'A typical McBride work. Praise doesn't come much higher.' FINANCIAL TIMES

So, all would be grand then, as far as the eye could see. Which it was, for a while.
Up until the city, remembering its knives and forks, invited itself in to dine. It's 1995. Outside their grimy window, the city rushes by.

But in the flat there is only Stephen and Eily. Their bodies, the tangled sheets. Unpacked boxes stacked in the kitchen and the total obsession of new love.
Eighteen months later, the flat feels different. Love is merging with reality. Stephen's teenage daughter has re-appeared, while Eily has made a choice, the consequences of which she cannot outrun.
Now they face a reckoning for all that's been left unspoken - emotions, secrets and ambitions. Tonight, if they are to find one another again, what must be said aloud?Love rallies against life. Time tells truths.

The city changes its face.

Children’s Children, Jan Carson ( paperback Feb 2025)

£9.99

Read the debut short story collection from the multi-award-winning author of The Raptures, now updated with a new bonus story. '

A floating six-year-old tethered to the backyard fence; two siblings watching their parents argue inside a greenhouse; a human statue who’s lost the ability to move; a support group for the haunted: the characters in Children’s Children are all falling apart in their own peculiar ways. Told in Jan Carson’s distinctive voice, her debut short story collection contains absurdist, darkly humorous and heartbreaking stories which explore the concept of legacy, and the impact of one generation upon the next.

'These stories are pure magic, funny, sharp, heartbreaking, the short form at its absolute best. Jan Carson is a unique and very special writer, one of the greatest of the modern fabulists' DONAL RYAN, author of Heart, Be at Peace'Story after story glints with the strange, hard magic of the North . .

The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth, Adrien Duncan ( paperback Jan 2025)

£12.99

IRISH INDEPENDENT AND IRISH TIMES BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2025'An original voice' Colm Tóibín'

During winter season in a secluded Alpine city, John Molloy, an Irish restorative sculptor, meets Bernadette, an enigmatic Italian sociologist. As John falls in love, a distressing moment from his youth rises into view, the disastrous fallout of which has reverberated unchecked through his life. Years later, a letter from home arrives, asking him to pray for the speedy death of an ailing friend.

Over a day-long odyssey through the ancient streets and churches of Bologna, John is forced to confront his present, his past and the bedrock of his psyche. A delicately crafted novel of two halves, a decade apart, The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth is a masterful excavation of human desires, inhibitions, and the patterns of habit to which we unwittingly fall prey.

'A deliberative and delicate reading experience, revelatory in the truest sense of that word' Guardian

Nesting- Roisin O’Donnell ( hardback Jan 2025)

£16.99

An extraordinary and urgent debut by a prize-winning Irish writer, NESTING introduces an unforgettable new voice in fiction. On a bright spring afternoon in Dublin, Ciara Fay makes a split-second decision that will change everything. Grabbing an armful of clothes from the washing line, Ciara straps her two young daughters into her car and drives away.

Head spinning, all she knows for certain is that home is no longer safe. This was meant to be an escape. But with dwindling savings, no job, and her family across the sea, Ciara finds herself adrift, facing a broken housing system and the voice of her own demons.

As summer passes and winter closes in, she must navigate raising her children in a hotel room, searching for a new home and dealing with her husband Ryan’s relentless campaign to get her to come back. Because leaving is one thing, but staying away is another. What will it take for Ciara to rebuild her life? Can she ever truly break away from Ryan’s control – and what will be the cost?Tense, beautiful, and underpinned by an unassailable love, hope and resilience, this is the story of one woman’s bid to start over.

 ‘Here is a novelist who has powerful news to tell, and an impressive range of narrative gifts with which to tell it’ Kevin Power, Irish Times

The Ghosts of Rome, Joseph O’Connor ( hardback Jan 2025)

£20.00

February 1944. Six months since Nazi forces occupied Rome. Inside the beleaguered city, the Contessa Giovanna Landini is a member of the band of Escape Line activists known as ‘The Choir’.

Their mission is to smuggle refugees to safety and help Allied soldiers, all under the nose of Gestapo boss Paul Hauptmann. During a ferocious morning air raid a mysterious parachutist lands in Rome and disappears into the backstreets. Is he an ally or an imposter? His fate will come to put the whole Escape Line at risk.

Meanwhile, Hauptmann’s attention has landed on the Contessa. As his fascination grows, she is pulled into a dangerous game with him – one where the consequences could be lethal. 'As thrilling, beautiful and sensational a novel as you'll read this year or any year' Donal Ryan,, Sunday Times

Confessions, Catherine Airey ( hardback Jan 2025)

£16.99

It is late September in 2001 and the walls of New York are papered over with photos of the missing.

Cora Brady’s father is there, the poster she made taped to columns and bridges. Her mother died long ago and now, orphaned on the cusp of adulthood, Cora is adrift and alone. Soon, a letter will arrive with the offer of a new life: far out on the ragged edge of Ireland, in the town where her parents were young, an estranged aunt can provide a home and fulfil a long-forgotten promise.

There the story of Cora's family is hidden, and in her presence will begin to unspool…An essential, immersive debut from an astonishing new voice, Confessions traces the arc of three generations of women as they experience in their own time the irresistible gravity of the past: its love and tragedy, its mystery and redemption, and, in all things intended and accidental, the beauty and terrible shade of the things we do.

Belfast Song, Mary Marken ( paperback August 2024)

£10.99

At the heart of Belfast Song are Nan Rose Murphy and Bridie Corr, childhood friends, who have been taken on as millies at a Belfast spinning mill when the story opens in 1911. They come of age against a tempestuous background of a city and a country seething with conflict – as workers struggle for a living wage, as women organise for the right to vote, and as nationalists and unionists prepare to fight each other over Irish independence from England. Then two shots in Sarajevo in 1914 spark a war across Europe and spin them, their families and their tight knit community off in directions they could never have imagined.

When those who survive the war return home, the women have to deal with the consequences of war on the men they love, and on themselves and their families. Nan Rose narrates the story up until January 1914. Then, other voices join in through letters from Sheffield and the French WW1front, in voices as individual as fingerprints. ( Written with a great ear for dialogue and local idiom, this looks great! Linda )

Tidings, An Anthology of Christmas Stories, ed Sean Farrell ( hardback Nov 2024)

£14.99

Tidings is an anthology of freshly commissioned Irish Christmas writing - short stories and essays by some of Ireland’s best writers, written on the theme of ‘Christmas parties’. This astounding array of writers all also have one thing in common – they have all been published by The Lilliput Press, over our 40 years of publishing. 

Contributors include Elske Rahill; Lorcan Roche; Donal Ryan; Alice Lyons; Kevin Power; Michael Harding; Oona Frawley; Mike McCormack; Julia Kelly; Martina Devlin; Rob Doyle along with a remarkable new short story by a debut Irish writer.

These are stories of family, remembrance, parties, passion, loss and humour that mark a beautiful addition to the uniquely rich trove of Irish writing around the Christmas period, and the perfect gift for readers of Irish literature. Celebrating 40 years in publishing, we wanted to look back on what has gone before while also looking forward to what is to come. 

A Lethal Legacy : A History of Ireland in 18 Murders by Fin Dwyer (paperback Sept 024)

£10.99

 From the creator of The Irish History Podcast comes a fascinating look at Irish history through the lens of murder. In A Lethal Legacy, Fin Dwyer charts 200 years of Irish history, opening up our past as never before, by observing the grand societal changes of our times through the intimate lens of eighteen murders and the lives and communities they altered forever. 

From the desperate retributions of the Land War of the nineteenth century, through the unprecedented tumult of the revolutionary years, to the causes that helped to shape contemporary Ireland, these previously overlooked cases of human tragedy offer a fresh perspective on a history we think we know. Astonishing, illuminating and compelling, A Lethal Legacy chronicles Ireland’s turbulent past through one of our most enduring fascinations – the act of killing – and in mapping the causes and aftermath of these cases, Dwyer offers us a fresh new understanding of the fires that forged modern Ireland.

Murmurations, James Crombie ( hardback Oct 2024)

£22.99

A truly stunning book of photography for fans of this natural phenomenon .

In the dusk hours of a November evening in 2020, James Crombie set out for the shore of Lough Ennell, Co. Westmeath with no goal except to find a brief reprieve from the chaos of modern life. One of Ireland’s most lauded sports photographers, Crombie had spent months each year travelling the globe, snapping glimpses of sporting glory amid roaring crowds.

Once the pandemic arrived however, he found himself suspended in an unfamiliar moment of stillness, where his focus could roam beyond the pitch. When a close friend came to him in a moment of grief, the pair made for the lake. What Crombie found on the shore that evening - an undulating murmuration of starlings, dancing above the surface of the water - would change his life forever.

Desperate to capture the beauty of the murmurations, and to better understand this phenomenon and the surroundings of the lake itself, Crombie began a four-year journey, travelling to lake shore for over 100 days per year. In his efforts to capture the formations of the magical birds, Crombie managed to chart the stunning natural cycles of the lake and the surrounding countryside. An incredible combination of narrative and photography, this is a book about one man’s quest to capture the beauty of an Irish natural phenomenon, and about how our local environments harbour a wealth of beauty and complexity, if only we’re able to look closely enough.

Time of the Child, Niall Williams ( hardback October 2024)

£16.99

Slow, rich, immaculate ... One of the most affecting books I've ever read’ The Times

Doctor Jack Troy was born and raised in the little town of Faha, but his responsibilities for the sick and his care for the dying mean he has always been set apart from his community. A visit from the doctor is always a sign of bad things to come.

His youngest daughter, Ronnie, has grown up in her father’s shadow, and remains there, having missed her chance at real love – and passed up an offer of marriage from an unsuitable man. But in the advent season of 1962, as the town readies itself for Christmas, Ronnie and Doctor Troy’s lives are turned upside down when a baby is left in their care. As the winter passes, father and daughter’s lives, the understanding of their family, and their role in their community are changed forever.