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*THE #3 IRISH BESTSELLER* 'Momentous and epic' BERNARD MACLAVERTY 'Superb and moving' JOHN BANVILLE 'A lovely, piercing book' SEBASTIAN BARRY Three generations. More than a century of famine, war, violence and love. At sixteen Nancy, the only member of her family to survive the Great Famine, leaves her small island for the mainland. Finding work in a grand house on the edge of Cork City, she feels irrepressibly drawn to the charismatic gardener Michael Egan, sparking a love affair that soon throws her into a fight for her life. In 1920, Nancy's son Jer has lived through battles of his own as a soldier in the Great War. Now drunk in a jail cell, he struggles to piece together where he has come from, and who he wants to be. And in the early 1980s, Jer's youngest child Nellie is nearing the end of her life in a council house, moments away from her childhood home; remembering the night when she and her family stole back something that was rightfully theirs, she imagines what lies in store for those who will survive her. 'Brilliantly immerses us in its respective time periods' SUNDAY TIMES
Belfast 1972. It's the bloodiest year of the Northern Irish 'Troubles', and 16-year-old Eimear O'Callaghan, a Catholic schoolgirl in West Belfast, bears witness in her new diary. What follows is a unique and touching perspective into the daily life of an ordinary teenager coming of age in extraordinary times. The immediacy of the diary entries are complemented with the author's mature reflections written 40 years later. The result is poignant, shocking, wryly funny, and, above all, explicitly honest. Belfast Days is unique book that comes at a time when Northern Ireland is desperately struggling to come to terms with the legacy of its turbulent past. It provides a powerful juxtaposition of t...
Donncha O'Callaghan is one of Ireland's leading international rugby players, and a stalwart of the Munster side. He was a key figure in the Irish team which won the IRB 6 Nations Grand Slam in 2009, and has won two Heineken Cup medals and two Magners League titles with Munster. But that success did not come easy. For such a well known player with a larger-than-life reputation, his long battle to make a breakthrough at the highest level is largely unknown. In this honest and revealing autobiography, Donncha talks in detail about the personal setbacks and disappointments at Munster and the unconventional ways he dealt with the frustration of not making the team for four of five years in his ea...
The critically acclaimed psychological chiller from a powerful new voice in Irish literary fiction. SHORTLISTED FOR THE KERRY GROUP IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2017 'As fine as it is frightening' JOHN BANVILLE 'This one will stay with you like your shadow' Guardian 'Extraordinary . . . pitch-perfect' Irish Times 'Strange, beautiful and quietly terrifying' DONAL RYAN, author of The Spinning Heart 'Like many great works, it could so easily have all gone wrong if it hadn’t been done exactly right' Sunday Independent It is the hottest August in living memory. A frightened girl bangs on a door. A man answers. From the moment he invites her in, his world will never be the same again. She will tell him about her family, and their strange life in the show home of an abandoned housing estate. The long, blistering days spent sunbathing; the airless nights filled with inexplicable noises; the words that appear on the windows, written in dust. Why are members of her family disappearing, one by one? Is she telling the truth? Is he? In a world where reality is beginning to blur, how can we know what to believe?
This is a comprehensive and nuanced historical survey of the death penalty in Ireland from the immediate post-civil war period through to its complete abolition. Using original archival material, this book sheds light on the various social, legal and political contexts in which the death penalty operated and was discussed. In Ireland the death penalty served a dual function: as an instrument of punishment in the civilian criminal justice system, and as a weapon to combat periodic threats to the security of the state posed by the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Through close examination of cases dealt with in the ordinary criminal courts, this study elucidates ideas of class, gender, community a...
'A poignant, piercing meditation on middle age and the passing of time... will linger with you long after the book is closed' Guardian *SHORTLISTED FOR THE ENCORE AWARD 2020* On a bitterly cold winter’s afternoon, Michael and Caitlin escape their unhappy marriages to keep an illicit rendezvous. Once a month, for the past quarter of a century, Coney Island has been their haven; these precious, hidden hours their only nourishment. But now, amid the howling of an angry snowstorm, the shut-down, out-of-season resort feels like the edge of the world. And their lives, suddenly, are on the brink – with news of serious illness on one side, and a move to the Midwest on the other.
Attempting to rebuild her life after a violent relationship, Maggie Turner, a successful young artist, moves from London to Allihies and buys an ancient abandoned cottage. Keen to concentrate on her art, she is captivated by the wild beauty of her surroundings. After renovations, she hosts a house-warming weekend for friends. A drunken game with a Ouija board briefly descends into something more sinister, as Maggie apparently channels a spirit who refers to himself simply as 'The Master'. The others are visibly shaken, but the day after the whole thing is easily dismissed as the combination of suggestion and alcohol. Maggie immerses herself in her painting, but the work devolves, day by day, until her style is no longer recognisable. She glimpses things, hears voices, finds herself drawn to certain areas: a stone circle in the nearby hills, the reefs at the west end of the beach behind her home ... A compelling modern ghost story from a supremely talented writer. From the Costa Short Story Award Finalist, Billy O'Callaghan. 'a welcome voice to the pantheon of new Irish writing' - Edna O'Brien
The balance of power in a marriage shifts, with shocking consequences. An elderly woman recounts a chilling childhood memory on the family farm. A taxi driver with a missing wife reveals unexpected skills. An inherited painting brings an eerily troubling legacy.Subtle, compelling and unsettling, Amanda O'Callaghan's stories work at the edges of the sayable, through secrets, erasures and glimpsed moments of disclosure. They shimmer with unspoken histories and characters who have a &‘taste for silence'
'Stylish, deft...an absolutely fascinating novel' Guardian 'Haunting, mesmerising, and so deeply intelligent' Kamila Shamsie, author of Women's Prize for Fiction winning Home Fire 'Powerful...compelling and profoundly moving' Irish Times 'Heartbreaking, sweetly logical and tentatively hopeful' Spectator 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, ...