Irish Writing
From a Low and Quiet Sea, by Donal Ryan (paperback April 2019)
£9.99
From war torn Syria to small town Ireland, three men, all scarred by what they have loved and lost, are searching for some version of home.
Powerful and moving. Donal Ryan’s writing has the ability to take you straight to the heart of the character - and he makes it look easy !
***LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018******SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA NOVEL AWARD 2018*
Farouk's country has been torn apart by war. Lampy's heart has been laid waste by Chloe. John's past torments him as he nears his end.
The refugee. The dreamer. The penitent. Each is drawn towards a powerful reckoning, one that will bring them together in the most unexpected of ways.
Milkman, by Anna Burns (paperback, 2018)
£9.99
The Booker prize winning book of 2018, now available as paperback.
In an unnamed city, where to be interesting is dangerous, an eighteen-year-old woman has attracted the unwanted and unavoidable attention of a powerful and frightening older man, 'Milkman'. In this community, where suggestions quickly become fact, where gossip and hearsay can lead to terrible consequences, what can she do to stop a rumour once it has started? Milkman is persistent, the word is spreading, and she is no longer in control . .
. Winner of the International Dublin Literary Award 2020 and the Man Booker Prize 2018Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Women's Prize for Fiction, and the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction
Normal People, by Sally Rooney ( pb 2019)
£9.99
The second novel from young Irish writer Sally Rooney and already with a Booker Longlist nomination to its credit. This is a thoughtful and intimate coming of age story of Connell and Marianne, the novel moves between menace and tenderness with a truly original voice.
Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in the west of Ireland, but the similarities end there. In school, Connell is popular and well-liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation - awkward but electrifying - something life-changing begins.
Normal People is a story of mutual fascination, friendship and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find they can't.
Notes to Self, by Emilie Pine (pb)
£10.99
The extraordinary #1 bestseller - a word-of-mouth literary phenomenon'
Do not read this book in public: it will make you cry' Anne Enright'
I am afraid of being the disruptive woman. And of not being disruptive enough. I am afraid.But I am doing it anyway. In this dazzling debut, Emilie Pine speaks to the business of living as a woman in the 21st century - its extraordinary pain and its extraordinary joy. Courageous, humane and uncompromising, she writes with radical honesty on birth and death, on the grief of infertility, on caring for her alcoholic father, on taboos around female bodies and female pain, on sexual violence and violence against the self. Devastatingly poignant and profoundly wise - and joyful against the odds - Notes to Self offers a portrait not just of its author but of a whole generation.
Winner of the Bord Gais Non Fiction Irish Book Award in 2018.
Paperback, June 2019 ( pls note picture is of hardback)
When All Is Said, Anne Griffin ( June 2019 Paperback)
£8.99
Five toasts. Five people. One lifetime.
'A hugely enjoyable, engrossing novel, a genuine page-turner.' Donal Ryan'An extraordinary novel, a poetic writer, and a story that moved me to tears.' John Boyne'Griffin is a magical storyteller whose prose is effortless and clear. She conjures an intimate, poignant and ultimately enthralling portrait of a man who has battled loneliness and other demons throughout his life.' Fanny Blake'I'm here to remember - all that I have been and all that I will never be again.'At the bar of a grand hotel in a small Irish town sits 84-year-old Maurice Hannigan. He's alone, as usual -though tonight is anything but.
Pull up a stool and charge your glass, because Maurice is finally ready to tell his story. Over the course of this evening, he will raise five toasts to the five people who have meant the most to him. Through these stories - of unspoken joy and regret, a secret tragedy kept hidden, a fierce love that never found its voice - the life of one man will be powerfully and poignantly laid bare.
*** Now only available as £8.99 paperback ***
Being Various, New irish Short Stories ed. by Lucy Caldwell (paperback Oct 2020)
£9.99
Anthology of new writing from Ireland
Featuring brand new short stories from Kevin Barry, Eimear McBride, Belinda McKeon, Lisa McInerney, Danielle McLaughlin, Stuart Neville, Sally Rooney, Kit de Waal and many more. Ireland is going through a golden age of writing: that has never been more apparent.
Following her own acclaimed short-story collection, Multitudes, Lucy Caldwell guest-edits the sixth volume of Faber's long-running series of all new Irish short stories, continuing the work of the late David Marcus and subsequent guest editors, Joseph O'Connor, Kevin Barry and Deirdre Madden.
This is the new paperback edition.
The Fire Starters, Jan Carson (Paperback, March 2020)
£9.99
**WINNER of the EU Prize for Literature**'One of the most exciting and original Northern Irish writers of her generation' SUNDAY TIMES'
At once grittily real, wildly magical and insanely alluring - a siren-song of a novel (Donal Ryan)
Dr Jonathan Murray fears his new-born daughter is not as harmless as she seems. Sammy Agnew is wrestling with his dark past, and fears the violence in his blood lurks in his son, too.
The city is in flames and the authorities are losing control. As matters fall into frenzy, and as the lines between fantasy and truth, right and wrong, begin to blur, who will these two fathers choose to protect?Dark, propulsive and thrillingly original, this tale of fierce familial love and sacrifice fizzes with magic and wonder.
Jan Carson's distinctive voice brings Belfast alive in this original novel, I thoroughly enjoyed it. - Linda
This Is Happiness, by Niall Williams ( paperback 2020)
£9.99
A new novel from the wonderful Niall Williams ( History of the Rain, Four Letters of Love).
One of my favourite books of 2020 - Linda
Change is coming to Faha, a small Irish parish unaltered in a thousand years. For one thing, the rain is stopping. Nobody remembers when it started; rain on the western seaboard is a condition of living.
But now - just as Father Coffey proclaims the coming of the electricity - the rain clouds are lifting. Seventeen-year-old Noel Crowe is idling in the unexpected sunshine when Christy makes his first entrance into Faha, bringing secrets for which he needs to atone. Though he can't explain it, Noel knows right then: something has changed.
As the people of Faha anticipate the endlessly procrastinated advent of the electricity, and Noel navigates his own coming-of-age and his fallings in and out of love, Christy's past gradually comes to light, casting a new glow on a small world. Harking back to a simpler time, This Is Happiness is a tender portrait of a community - its idiosyncrasies and traditions, its paradoxes and kindnesses, its failures and triumphs - and a coming-of-age tale like no other. Luminous and lyrical, yet anchored by roots running deep into the earthy and everyday, it is about the power of stories: their invisible currents that run through all we do, writing and rewriting us, and the transforming light that they throw onto our world.
Big Girl Small Town, by Michelle Gallen ( paperback Feb 2021)
£9.99
Already shortlisted for a Women Comedy writing award, this has been described as Derry Girls meets Milkman. The unique blend of comedy and tragedy, with Michelle Gallen's 'Majella', is outrageous and honest.
Other people find Majella odd. She keeps herself to herself, she doesn't like gossip and she isn't interested in knowing her neighbours' business. But suddenly everyone in the small town in Northern Ireland where she grew up wants to know all about hers.
Since her da disappeared during the Troubles, Majella has tried to live a quiet life with her alcoholic mother. She works in the local chip shop (Monday-Saturday, Sunday off), wears the same clothes every day (overalls, too small), has the same dinner each night (fish and chips, nuked in the microwave) and binge watches Dallas (the best show ever aired on TV) from the safety of her single bed. She has no friends and no boyfriend and Majella thinks things are better that way.
But Majella's safe and predictable existence is shattered when her grandmother dies and as much as she wants things to go back to normal, Majella comes to realise that maybe there is more to life. And it might just be that from tragedy comes Majella's one chance at escape. 'It's a smasher' Kathy Burke
The Art of the Glimpse (hardback, October 2020)
£25.00
An anthology of the very best Irish short stories, selected by Sinead Gleeson, author of Constellations. There have been many anthologies of the short story as it developed in Ireland, but never a collection like this. The Art of the Glimpse is a radical revision of the canon of the Irish story, uniting classic works with neglected writers and marginalised voices - women, LGBT writers, Traveller folk-tales, lost 19th-century voices and the first wave of 'new Irish' writers from elsewhere now making a life in Ireland.
Beautifully bound, with ribbon marker.
The collection paints a tremendous spectrum of experience: the story of a prank come good by Bram Stoker; Sally Rooney on the love languages of the new generation; Donal Ryan on the pains of ageing; Edna O'Brien on political entanglements; James Joyce on losing a loved one; and the internal monologue of a coma sufferer by Marian Keyes. List of contributing authors: Samuel Beckett, Sally Rooney, Melatu Uche Okirie, William Trevor, Marian Keyes, Kevin Barry, Edna O'Brien, Claire-Louise Bennett, Sheridan Le Fanu, Danielle McLaughlin, Mairtin O Cathain, Frances Molloy, Blindboy Boatclub, Elizabeth Bowen, Frank O'Connor, Chiamaka Emyi-Amadi, John McGahern, Anne Enright, Mike McCormack, Maeve Brennan, Oein de Bhairduin, Eimear McBride, Sean O Faolain, Cathy Sweeney.
The Truth Must Dazzle Gradually, Helen Cullen ( PB 2021)
£10.99
AN IMMERSIVE AND HEARTFELT EXPLORATION OF FAMILY AND LOVE
A beautiful bittersweet story of love, loss and families all set in the most irresistible of locations. Tears were shed!' Graham Norton 'A compassionate portrayal of love, support and grief ... a writer whose skill is matched by an ability to surprise with each new work' John Boyne, Irish Times'
On an island off the west coast of Ireland, the Moone family are shattered by tragedy. Murtagh Moone is a potter and devoted husband to Maeve, an actor struggling with her most challenging role yet - being a mother to their four children.
Now Murtagh must hold his family close as we bear witness to their story before that tragic night. We return to the day Maeve and Murtagh meet, outside Trinity College in Dublin, and watch how one love story gives rise to another. And as the Moone children learn who their parents truly are, we journey onwards with them to a future that none of the Moones could predict .
Before My Actual Heart Breaks,Tish Delaney (paperback Oct 2021)
£9.99
_'If I could go back to being sixteen again, I'd do things differently.''Everyone over the age of forty feels like that, you total gom,' says my best friend Lizzie Magee. When she was young Mary Rattigan wanted to fly. She was going to take off like an angel from heaven and leave the muck and madness of troubled Northern Ireland behind.Nothing but the Land of Happy Ever After would do for her. But as a Catholic girl with a B.I.T.C.H. for a Mammy and a silent Daddy, things did not go as she and Lizzie Magee had planned.
Now, five children, twenty-five years, an end to the bombs and bullets, enough whiskey to sink a ship and endless wakes and sandwich teas later, Mary's alone. She's learned plenty of hard lessons and missed a hundred steps towards the life she'd always hoped for. Will she finally find the courage to ask for the love she deserves? Or is it too late?'
. . A touching tale of how one woman survives a tough beginning to eventually end up exactly where her heart belongs.' ANNE GRIFFIN, author of When All is Said
A Ghost in the Throat, Doireann ni Ghiofra (paperback October 2021)
£9.99
In the present day, a young mother narrowly avoids tragedy. On encountering the poem, she becomes obsessed with its parallels with her own life, and sets out to track down the rest of the story. A devastating and timeless tale about one woman freeing her voice by reaching into the past and finding another's.
Acts of Desperation, Megan Nolan (paperback Jan 2022)
£9.99
Discover this bitingly honest, darkly funny debut novel about a toxic relationship and secret female desire, from an emerging star of Irish literature. Love was the final consolation, would set ablaze the fields of my life in one go, leaving nothing behind.
I thought of it as a force which would clean me and by its presence make me worthy of it. There was no religion in my life after early childhood, and a great faith in love was what I had cultivated instead. Oh, don't laugh at me for this, for being a woman who says this to you.
I hear myself speak. Even now, even after all that took place between us, I can still feel how moved I am by him. Ciaran was that downy, darkening blond of a baby just leaving its infancy.
He was the most beautiful man I had ever seen. None of it mattered in the end; what he looked like, who he was, the things he would do to me. To make a beautiful man love and live with me had seemed - obviously, intuitively - the entire point of life.
My need was greater than reality, stronger than the truth, more savage than either of us would eventually bear. How could it be true that a woman like me could need a man's love to feel like a person, to feel that I was worthy of life? And what would happen when I finally wore him down and took it? 'A dark, intense account of an obsessive love affair. It's great on the elation of falling in love and then its flip side, the anxiety, fixation and self-doubt.
'Such brilliant writing about female desire, co-dependant love...Incredibly honest and visceral' Marian Keyes
The Sunken Road, Ciaran McMenamin ( Paperback Feb 2022)
£8.99
'Tremendous' William Boyd
A powerful and gripping novel about love, loyalty and obsession set during World War One and the Irish War of Independence. Francie, Archie and Annie grew up playing together in the hills and rivers of Fermanagh. But in 1914, the boys are seduced by the drama of the war in Europe and leave the village to join up.
Before they leave, Francie swears to Annie that he'll keep her little brother safe. Six years later Francie is hiding out in the barn of Annie's house. He hasn't seen her since that day.
He's on the run, a wanted man in the war for independence that is still igniting along the border. And the British officer who is obsessively pursuing him is his old commander from the Western Front. To reach safety Francie will need Annie's help getting over the border, and that means he'll have to confront the truth about why Archie never came back.
Powerfully gripping, Ciaran McMenamin's accomplished novel explores loyalty, love, heroism and the heartbreaking cost of violence.
Exciting Times, Naoise Dolan ( paperback, March 2021)
£8.99
Likely to fill the Sally-Rooney-shaped hole in many readers' lives' IRISH TIMES
'Droll, shrewd and unafraid - a winning debut' Hilary Mantel
* Longlisted for Women's Prize for Fiction 2021 * NOW IN PAPERBACK ( cover as hardback)
When you leave Ireland aged 22 to spend your parents' money, it's called a gap year. When Ava leaves Ireland aged 22 to make her own money, she's not sure what to call it, but it involves: - a badly-paid job in Hong Kong, teaching English grammar to rich children; - Julian, who likes to spend money on Ava and lets her move into his guest room; - Edith, who Ava meets while Julian is out of town and actually listens to her when she talks; - money, love, cynicism, unspoken feelings and unlikely connections.
This is an acutely self conscious and clever tale.
Constellations: Reflections from Life, Sinead Gleason (paperback, Apr 2020)
£10.99
Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2020**Winner of non-fiction book of the year at the Irish Book Awards*'
I have come to think of all the metal in my body as artificial stars, glistening beneath the skin, a constellation of old and new metal.
A map, a tracing of connections and a guide to looking at things from different angles. How do you tell the story of a life in a body, as it goes through sickness, health, motherhood? How do you tell that story when you are not just a woman but a woman in Ireland? In the powerful and daring essays in Constellations Sinead Gleeson does that very thing. All of life is within these pages, from birth to first love, pregnancy to motherhood, terrifying sickness, old age and loss to death itself.
Throughout this wide-ranging collection she also turns her restless eye outwards delving into work, art and our very ways of seeing. In the tradition of some of our finest life writers, and yet still in her own spirited, generous voice, Sinead takes us on a journey that is both uniquely personal and yet universal in its resonance. H
Thirty Two Words for Field, Manchan Magan (hardback, Sept 2020)
£18.99
The Irish language has thirty-two words for field. Among them are:
Geamhar – a field of corn-grass
Tuar – a field for cattle at night
Réidhleán – a field for games or dancing
Cathairín – a field with a fairy-dwelling in it
The richness of a language closely tied to the natural landscape offered our ancestors a more magical way of seeing the world. Before we cast old words aside, let us consider the sublime beauty and profound oddness of the ancient tongue that has been spoken on this island for almost 3,000 years.
In Thirty-Two Words for Field, Manchán Magan meditates on these words – and the nuances of a way of life that is disappearing with them.
White City, Kevin Power ( PB March 2022)
£9.99
From the highly acclaimed author of Bad Day in Blackrock – inspiration for the 2012 award-winning film What Richard Did, directed by Lenny Abrahamson – comes a darkly funny, gripping and profoundly moving novel about a life spinning out of control, a life live without the bedrock of familial love, and the corruption of material wealth that tears at the soul.‘It was my father’s arrest that brought me here, although you could certainly say that I took the scenic route.’
Here is rehab, where Ben – the only son of a rich South Dublin banker – is piecing together the shattered remains of his life. Abruptly cut off, at the age of 27, from a life of heedless privilege, Ben flounders through a world of drugs and dead-end jobs, his self-esteem at rock bottom. Even his once-adoring girlfriend, Clio, is at the end of her tether. Then Ben runs into an old school friend who wants to cut him in on a scam: a shady property deal in the Balkans. The deal will make Ben rich and, at one fell swoop, will deliver him from all his troubles: his addictions, his father’s very public disgrace, and his own self-loathing and regret. Problems solved.
But something is amiss. For one thing, the Serbian partners don’t exactly look like fools. (In fact they look like gangsters.) And, for another, Ben is being followed everywhere he goes. Someone is being taken for a ride. But who?
Sweet Home, Wendy Erskine ( short story), paperback June 2020
£9.99
A gripping, wonderfully understated book that oozes humanity, emotion and humour.' Guardian
Warm, compassionate and funny, Sweet Home captures life in contemporary East Belfast, in all of its forms. Set in the author's native Belfast, the ten stories in Sweet Home lay bare the heartbreak and quiet tragedies that run under the surface of everyday lives. A lonely woman is fascinated by her niqab-wearing neighbours; a middle-aged teacher becomes obsessed with a young Gaelic football player; and an employer covers for his two employees caught having sex in a public toilet. Wendy Erskine offers perfectly formed, brilliantly observed portraits of people trying to carve out a life for themselves, all the while being buffeted by the loss, grief and regret that come their way.
Winner of the 2020 Butler Literary Award, Shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize 2019, Shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2019, Longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award 2019'A Book of the Year in the Guardian, The White Review, Observer, New Statesman, TLS.
Ireland’s Wild Plants, Niall Mac Coitir (paperback)
£15.99
Ireland's wild plants have been part of our culture and folklore from the earliest times, featuring in the Brehon Laws, early Irish poetry and herbal medicine. Plants are described in seasonal order and different aspects are examined: their roles in magical protection, charms and spells, emblems in children's games, Irish place names and folklore. This beautifully illustrated and comprehensive compilation of natural history, mythology and folklore will entertain and enlighten all interested in the wild plants of Ireland.
Shannon Country, Paul Clements ( large paperback, Sept 2020)
£13.99
In August 1939 the Irish travel writer Richard Hayward set out on a road trip to explore the Shannon region just two weeks before the Second World War broke out. His evocative account of that trip, Where the River Shannon Flows, became a bestseller. The book, still sought after by lovers of the river, captures an Ireland of small shops and barefoot street urchins that has long since disappeared.
Eighty years on, inspired by his work, Paul Clements retraces Hayward's journey along the river, following - if not strictly in his footsteps - then within the spirit of his trip. From the Shannon Pot in Cavan, 344 kilometres south to the Shannon estuary, his meandering odyssey takes him by car, on foot, and by bike and boat, discovering how the riverscape has changed but is still powerful in symbolism. While he recreates Hayward's trip, Clements also paints a compelling portrait of twenty-first century Ireland, mingling travel and anecdote with an eye for the natural world.
He sails to remote islands, spends times in rural backwaters and secluded riverside villages where the pub is the hub, and attempts a quest for the Shannon connection behind the title of Flann O'Brien's novel At Swim-Two-Birds. On a quixotic journey by foot, boat, bike and car, Paul Clements produces an intimate portrait of the hidden countryside, its people, topography and wildlife, creating a collective memory map, looking at what has been lost and what has changed. Beyond the motorways and cities, you can still catch the pulse of an older, quieter Ireland of hay meadows and bogs, uninhabited islands and remote towpaths. This is the country of the River Shannon that runs through literature, art, cultural history and mythology with a riptide pull on our imagination.
* signed copies available *
Snowflake, Louise Nealon ( Paperback April 2022)
£9.99
Tender, laugh-out-loud funny, and deeply moving' Louise O'Neill, author of After the Silence
Eighteen-year-old Debbie White lives on a dairy farm with her mother, Maeve, and her uncle, Billy. Billy sleeps out in a caravan in the garden with a bottle of whiskey and the stars overhead for company. Maeve spends her days recording her dreams, which she believes to be prophecies.
This world is Debbie's normal, but she is about to step into life as a student at Trinity College in Dublin. As she navigates between sophisticated new friends and the family bubble, things begin to unravel. Maeve's eccentricity tilts into something darker, while Billy's drinking gets worse.
Debbie struggles to cope with the weirdest, most difficult parts of herself, her family and her small life. But the fierce love of the White family is never in doubt, and Debbie discovers that even the oddest of families are places of safety. A startling, honest, laugh and cry novel about growing up and leaving home, only to find that you've taken it with you, Snowflake is a novel for a generation, and for everyone who's taken those first, terrifying steps towards adulthood.
Look! It’s a Woman Writer! Edited By Eilis Ni Dhuibhne (paperback, April 2021)
£30.00
This is a scholarly and yet intensely readable book. It takes female writers who were largely born in the 1950's and asks each one to reflect on her experience of being published, read and taken seriously as a writer in Ireland. The vast majority of these women do so, against a backdrop of raising families, holding down 'proper' jobs and generally swimming against the tide of what is expected from them. I found it inspiring, and humbling. In the words of Mark Twain, many of us might say "I'm writing a novel" to which his sharp reply was "Neither am I". These pioneers demonstrated through sheer will and dedication , to actually follow through. Some are more personal, some more academic, but an essential read for anyone interested in gender studies, writing in Ireland and creative endeavour.
Tennis Lessons, Susannah Dickey ( paperback April 2021)
£9.99
For readers who want to laugh and cry: the brave, beautiful, sometimes brutal story of a young misfit and her rocky road to womanhood, stopping at each year along the way. 'I loved Tennis Lessons so much' ELIZABETH DAY
You're strange and wrong. You've known it from the beginning.
This is the voice that rings in your ears. Because you never say the right thing. You're a disappointment to everyone.
You're a far cry from beautiful - and your thoughts are ugly too. You seem bound to fail, bound to break. But you know what it is to laugh with your best friend, to feel the first tentative tingles of attraction, to take exquisite pleasure in the affront of your unruly body.
You just need to find your place. From dead pets and crashed cars to family traumas and misguided love affairs, Susannah Dickey's revitalizing debut novel plunges us into the private world of one young woman as she navigates her rocky way to adulthood. 'Brilliant .
. . stays in the mind long after reading' IRISH TIMES'A beautifully written and psychologically incisive bildungsroman...the arrival of a young writer to watch' OBSERVER
Last Days in Cleaver Square, Patrick McGrath (paperback Feb 2022)
£9.99
Powerful...compelling and profoundly moving' Irish Times'
Heartbroken after a long, painful love affair, a man drives a haulage lorry from England to France. Travelling with him is a secret passenger - his daughter. Twenty-something, unkempt, off the rails.
With a week on the road together, father and daughter must restore themselves and each other, and repair a relationship that is at once fiercely loving and deeply scarred. As they journey south, down the motorways, through the service stations, a devastating picture reveals itself: a story of grief, of shame, and of love in all its complex, dark and glorious manifestations.
The Troubles With Us, Allie O’Neill (Paperback out June 2022)
£9.99
A hilarious memoir about growing up in Northern Ireland in the 90s towards the end of the Troubles and a brilliantly propelling narrative of the extraordinary background story of her mother. Her mother's vivid personality and witty colloquialisms dominate the book and help to give a social history of life in Belfast from the 1950s onwards. Growing up on the Falls Road in 1990s Belfast, Alix O'Neill has seen it all - burnt-out buses blocking the route to school, the police mistaking her father for a leading terrorist and a classmate playing hide and seek with her dad's prosthetic hand (blown off making a device for the IRA).Not that she or her friends are up to speed with the goings-on of the resistance. They're too preoccupied with the obsessions of every teenage girl - booze, boys and Boyzone - to worry about the violence on their doorstep. Besides, the odd coffee jar bomb is nothing compared to the drama about to explode in Alix's personal life.
Desperate to leave Northern Ireland and the trials of her mother's unorthodox family - a loving yet eccentric band of misfits - behind, she makes grand plans for the next stage. But it's through these relationships and their gradual unravelling that Alix begins to appreciate not only the troubled history of where she comes from, but the strength of its women. Warm, embarrassing and full of love and insight, The Troubles with Us is a hilarious and moving account of the madness and mundanities of life in Northern Ireland during the thirty-year conflict.
It's a story of mothers and daughters, the fallout from things left unsaid and the lengths a girl will go to for fake tan.
Pure Gold, John Patrick McHugh ( paperback June 2022)
£9.99
'Ireland produces writers the way some countries produce footballers, and the latest is John Patrick McHugh' Sunday Times 'One of the most exciting writers working in Ireland today' SALLY ROONEY, author of Normal People
You had to scrap for love. In this stunning debut short story collection exploring betrayal and longing on an imagined island off the west coast of Ireland, John Patrick McHugh takes us deep into a community of individuals who are lost, yearning, and self-deceiving.
We see two boys set fires while their worlds fall apart, follow a couple driving out to the hills in a last-ditch effort to save their marriage, watch a widow seek a stranger's help to bury her grief, see a horse crash a house party. Whether falling in love or turning on one another the residents here are united by a quest for connection in the treacherous waters of small-town boredom. In stories that are bitterly funny, profoundly moving and crackling with wild energy, McHugh embeds us in the fragile moments on which a life can twist and turn.
Pure Gold heralds the arrival of a thrilling new literary voice.
Here Is The Beehive, Sarah Crossan ( paperback July 2021)
£8.99
What would you do if you lost someone the world never knew was yours? For three years, Ana has been consumed by an affair with Connor, a client at her law firm. Their love has been consigned to hotel rooms and dark corners of pubs, their relationship kept hidden from the world. So the morning that Ana's company receives a call to say that Connor is dead, her secret grief has nowhere to go.
Desperate for an outlet, Ana seeks out the shadowy figure who has always stood just beyond her reach - Connor's wife Rebecca...
'Utterly gripping' RODDY DOYLE'
One of Paul and I's favourites - really engrossing read - Linda
The Weight of Love, Hilary Fannin ( paperback, March 2021)
£8.99
Robin and Ruth meet in the staff room of an East London school.
Robin, desperate for a real connection, instantly falls in love. Ruth, recently widowed and fragile, is tentative. When Robin introduces Ruth to his childhood friend, Joseph, a tortured and talented artist, their attraction is instant.
Powerless, Robin watches on as the girl he loves and his best friend begin a passionate and turbulent affair. Dublin 2017. Robin and Ruth are married and have a son, Sid, who is about to emigrate to Berlin.
Theirs is a marriage haunted by the ghost of Joseph and as the distance between them grows, Robin makes a choice that could have potentially devastating consequences. The Weight of Love is a beautiful exploration of how we manage life when the notes and beats of our existence, so carefully arranged, begin to slip off the stave. An intimate and moving account of the intricacies of marriage and the myriad ways in which we can love and be loved.
'Delicate, powerful, hypnotic' DONAL RYAN'
Fannin's novel is already likely to be a serious contender for one of the books of the year' SUNDAY TIMES
Blank Pages, Bernard MacLaverty ( paperback August 2022)
£9.99
The extraordinary new story collection from one of Ireland's greatest writers and bestselling author of Midwinter Break. Bernard MacLaverty is a consummately gifted short-story writer and novelist whose work - like that of John McGahern, William Trevor, Edna O'Brien or Colm Toibin - is deceptively simple on the surface, but carries a turbulent undertow. Everywhere, the dark currents of violence, persecution and regret pull at his subject matter: family love, the making of art, Catholicism, the Troubles and, latterly, ageing.Blank Pages is a collection of twelve extraordinary new stories that show the emotional range of a master. 'Blackthorns', for instance, tells of a poor out-of-work Catholic man who falls gravely ill in the sectarian Northern Ireland of 1942 but is brought back from the brink by an unlikely saviour. The most recently written story here is the harrowing but transcendent 'The End of Days', which imagines the last moments in the life of painter Egon Schiele, watching his wife dying of Spanish flu - the world's worst pandemic, until now.
Much of what MacLaverty writes is an amalgam of sadness and joy, of circumlocution and directness. He never wastes words but neither does he ever forget to make them sing. Each story he writes creates a universe.
Iron Annie, Luke Cassidy ( paperback June 2022)
£8.99
The energy, the voice, the language, the characters, all real, raw and utterly convincing' Fiona Scarlett, author of Boys Don't Cry'
Aoife knows everyone in Dundalk's underworld. Too well, in some cases.
But when she meets Annie, a beautiful whirlwind of a woman, and brings her to the Town, she finds that she doesn't know nearly enough about her. Annie is magnetic and wild and Aoife's desire to learn more quickly becomes a need, and then an obsession - to know this dangerous woman, to love her, to keep her. So when Aoife's friend and collaborator the Rat King asks her to help him dispose of ten kilos of cocaine, swiped from a rival, she brings Annie along for a road trip through a Britain that she only knows as a place to be suspicious of.
So when Annie decides she doesn't want to return to Ireland, Aoife makes a decision that changes everything. Gritty and yet tender, tragic and yet hopeful, Iron Annie is a breakneck journey that crackles with energy, warmth and heart, and marks the arrival of a fresh and vibrant new voice in literary fiction. 'Full of wonder, grit, insight, sadness and joy' Donal Ryan, author of The Spinning Heart
The Letters of John McGahern ( hardback, Sept 2021 / paperback 2022)
£30.00
I am no good at letters. John McGahern, 1963
John McGahern is consistently hailed as one of the finest Irish writers since James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. This volume collects some of the witty, profound and unfailingly brilliant letters that he exchanged with family, friends and literary luminaries - such as Seamus Heaney, Sophia Hillen, Colm Toibin and Paul Muldoon - over the course of a well-travelled life. It is one of the major contributions to the study of Irish and British literature of the past thirty years, acting not just as a crucial insight into the life and works of a much-revered writer - but also a history of post-war Irish literature and its close ties to British and American literary life.
'One of the greatest writers of our era.' Hilary Mantel' McGahern brings us that tonic gift of the best fiction, the sense of truth - the sense of transparency that permits us to see imaginary lives more clearly than we see our own.' John Updike
The Battle for Perfect ( 3) Helena Duggan ( paperback 2019)
£7.99
Who is the evil genius plotting revenge in the town that used to be Perfect? Things are quiet in the town that used to be Perfect until Violet receives a strange note and she catches Tom sneaking about. When Violet and Boy follow Tom they uncover a lot more trouble brewing. Town is about to be taken over by a huge zombie army.Can Violet and Boy save themselves and their friends? It's a matter of life or death! A reissue of the highly charged finale to the bestselling series that began with A Place Called Perfect. Fans of Roald Dahl, Neil Gaiman and Tim Burton will love this quirky, creepy and unforgettable adventure series.
Dinner Party : A Tragedy, Sarah Gilmartin (paperback July 2022)
£16.99
** This is one of the most astute, enjoyable books I've read this year so far!** Linda
Kate has taught herself to be careful, to be meticulous. To mark the anniversary of a death in the family, she plans a dinner party - from the fancy table settings to the perfect Baked Alaska waiting in the freezer. Yet by the end of the night, old tensions have flared, the guests have fled, and Kate is spinning out of control.
But all we have is ourselves, her father once said, all we have is family. Set between the 1990s and the present day, from a farmhouse in Carlow to Trinity College, Dublin, Dinner Party is a dark, sharply observed debut that thrillingly unravels into family secrets and tragedy. As the past catches up with the present, Kate learns why, despite everything, we can't help returning home.
Life Without Children : Stories, by Roddy Doyle ( paperback Oct 2022)
£9.99
A brilliantly warm, witty and moving portrait of our pandemic lives, told in ten heart-rending short stories. Love and marriage. Children and family. Death and grief.
Life touches everyone the same. But living under lockdown, it changes us alone. In these ten, beautifully moving short stories mostly written over the last year, Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle paints a collective portrait of our strange times.
A man abroad wanders the stag-and-hen-strewn streets of Newcastle, as news of the virus at home asks him to question his next move. An exhausted nurse struggles to let go, having lost a much-loved patient in isolation. A middle-aged son, barred from his mother's funeral, wakes to an oncoming hangover of regret.
Told with Doyle's signature warmth, wit and extraordinary eye for the richness that underpins the quiet of our lives, Life Without Children cuts to the heart of how we are all navigating loss, loneliness, and the shifting of history underneath our feet.
( image featured is hardback. New Paperback is red cover)
Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan ( Paperback Dec 2022)
£9.99
It is 1985, in an Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant, faces into his busiest season. As he does the rounds, he feels the past rising up to meet him - and encounters the complicit silences of a people controlled by the Church.
The perfect novella, cannot recommend this highly enough! Linda
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize - WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE AND THE KERRY GROUP IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR
The Raptures, Jan Carson ( paperback from Jan 2023)
£9.99
When several children from the same village start succumbing to a mysterious illness, the quest to discover the cause has devastating and extraordinary consequences. It is late June in Ballylack. Hannah Adger anticipates eight long weeks' reprieve from school, but when her classmate Ross succumbs to a violent and mysterious illness, it marks the beginning of a summer like no other.As others fall ill, questions about what - or who - is responsible pitch the village into conflict and fearful disarray. Hannah is haunted by guilt as she remains healthy while her friends are struck down. Isolated and afraid, she prays for help.
Elsewhere in the village, tempers simmer, panic escalates and long-buried secrets threaten to emerge. Bursting with Carson's trademark wit, profound empathy and soaring imagination, The Raptures explores how tragedy can unite a small community - and tear it apart. At its heart is the extraordinary resilience of one young girl.
As the world crumbles around her, she must find the courage to be different in a place where conforming feels like the only option available. Darkly funny, highly inventive and deeply moving, The Raptures is an unmissable novel of 2022.
The Devil’s Advocate Steve Cavanagh ( paperback Jan 2022)
£9.99
DON WINSLOW : HE'S WON EVERY TRIAL. BECAUSE HE'S BEHIND EVERY MURDER. Ambitious District Attorney Randal Korn lives to watch prisoners executed. Even if they are not guilty.
An innocent man, Andy Dubois, faces the death penalty for the murder of young girl. Korn has already fixed things to make sure he wins a fast conviction. The one thing Korn didn't count on was Eddie Flynn.
Slick, street smart and cunning, the former con artist turned New York lawyer has only seven days to save an innocent man against a corrupt system and find the real killer. In a week the Judge will read the verdict, but will Eddie be alive to hear it?
This is the 3rd book in the Eddie Flynn series, following 'Thirteen' and ' Fifty Fifty' although it works as a standalone story.
'Addictive, unpredictable and timely' WILL DEAN'Gripping, twisty and smart' JANE FALLON'THE beach read of the summer of 2021' ADRIAN MCKINTY'Like a binge-worthy boxset in book form' PHILIPPA PERRY'This is Steve Cavanagh's best yet' JO SPAIN
Ulysses: A Reader’s Odyssey ( Daniel Mulhall, Pb Jan 2022)
£13.99
Marking the centenary of Ireland’s – and possibly the world’s – most famous novel, this joyful introductory guide opens up Ulysses to a whole new readership, offering insight into the literary, historical and cultural elements at play in James Joyce’s masterwork.
Both eloquent and erudite, this book is an initiation into the wonders of Joyce’s writing and of the world that inspired it, written by Daniel Mulhall, Ireland’s ambassador to the United States and an advocate for Irish literature around the world.
One hundred years on from that novel’s first publication, Ulysses: A Reader’s Odyssey takes us on a journey through one of the twentieth century’s greatest works of fiction. Exploring the eighteen chapters of the novel and using the famous structuring principle of Homer’s Odyssey as our guide, Daniel Mulhall releases Ulysses from its reputation of impenetrability, and shows us the pleasure it can offer us as readers.
