Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan ( Paperback Dec 2022)
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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
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Women Behind the Door, Roddy Doyle (hardback Sept 2024)
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Booker-Prize winner Roddy Doyle’s spectacular return to his iconic heroine, Paula Spencer‘
At sixty-six, Paula Spencer – mother, grandmother, widow, addict, survivor – is finally living her life. A job at the dry cleaners she enjoys, a man – Joe – with whom she shares what she wants, friends who see her for who she is, and four grown children, now with families and petty dramas the likes of which Paula could only have hoped for. Despite its ghosts, Paula has started to push her past aside.
That is until Paula’s eldest, Nicola, turns up on her doorstep. Independent, affluent, a loving wife and mother, “a success” – Nicola is suddenly determined to leave it all behind. Over the next few days, as Nicola gradually confides in Paula the secret that unleashed this moment of crisis, mother and daughter find themselves untangling anecdotes, jokes, memory and revelation to confront the bruised but beautiful symmetry of what each means to the other.
Windfall : Irish Nature Poems to Inspire and Connect by Jane Clarke
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What does Ireland's nature poetry say about us as a people? How does it speak to us of our past, our inheritance, the values to which we aspire? What clues lie within its language that connect us to our deeper selves and our place within our communities and environments?As varied as our plants, animals and habitats, Windfall: Irish Nature Poems to Inspire and Connect presents a portrait of an ever-changing vista. Jane Carkill's captivating original illustrations of Ireland's rich and diverse natural world add to the sense of enchantment and wonder. Each poem pays attention to nature while also reflecting on the loves and losses of our everyday lives.Award-winning poet Jane Clarke's selection includes some of our best-known poets, from Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, Michael Longley, Paula Meehan, Nuala Ni Dhomhnail, Eilean Ni Chuilleanain and Paul Muldoon. There are poems here to make us laugh and cry, to help us celebrate and grieve; poems to put words on what can seem inexpressible as we connect to the other living beings with which we share this island.
Wild Houses, Colin Barrett ( hardback Jan 2024)
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**One of the Observer's Debut Novels of 2024**
A small-town feud. A madcap kidnapping. A wild weekend to change everybody's lives...
As Ballina prepares for its biggest weekend of the year, the simmering feud between small-time drug-dealer, Cillian English, and County Mayo's enforcers, Gabe and Sketch Ferdia, spills over into violence and an ugly ultimatum. When the reclusive Dev answers his door on Friday night he finds Doll - Cillian's teenage brother - in the clutches of Gabe and Sketch. Jostled by his nefarious cousins and goaded by his dead mother's dog, Dev is drawn headlong into the Ferdias' revenge fantasy.
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Wild Geese, Soula Emmanuel ( paperback May 2024)
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Searingly sharp, deliciously funny, profound' Danielle McLaughlinNew home, new name and newly thirty: Phoebe Forde has stepped into emigrant life in Copenhagen with her anxious dog, Dolly. Almost three years into her gender transition, she has learned to move through the world carefully, savouring small moments of joy. A woman without a past can be anyone she wants - that is, until an unexpected visit from Grace, her first love, brings memories of Dublin and a life she thought she'd left behind.
Over the course of a single weekend, as their old romance kindles something sweet and radically unfamiliar, Grace helps Phoebe to navigate the jagged edges of migration, nostalgia and hope.
Paperback May 2024
