Irish Fiction

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  • A Bit of a Writer Brendan Behan's Collected Short Prose

    A Bit of a Writer Brendan Behan’s Collected Short Prose

    €25.00

    Brendan Behan wrote over one hundred articles for Irish newspapers between 1951 and 1956 as he rose to international fame, with most of them written in a weekly column in the Irish Press. The articles reveal a serious writer capable of great comic set pieces and amusing yarns as well as thoughtful reflections on cultural and historical issues. They reflect his passion for working-class Dublin life and the history and folklore of the city, as well as his travels in Ireland and Europe.

    This edition gathers all the articles and essays that Behan published in newspapers from 1951 to his death in 1964. Selections of Behan’s articles have been published since his death (Hold Your Hour and Have Another, 1965; After the Wake, 1981; The Dubbalin Man, 1997). However, there has been no complete edition of Behan’s prose, and no edition has provided a detailed biographical and literary introduction, explanatory notes and suggestions for further reading.

    This volume is intended for publication during the centenary celebrations of Behan’s birth in 2023, with his birthday being 9 February.

  • How To Build A Boat

    How To Build A Boat

    €17.50

    Jamie O’Neill loves the colour red. He also loves tall trees, patterns, rain that comes with wind, the curvature of many objects, books with dust jackets, cats, rivers and Edgar Allan Poe. At age 13 there are two things he especially wants in life: to build a Perpetual Motion Machine, and to connect with his mother Noelle, who died when he was born.

    In his mind these things are intimately linked. And at his new school, where all else is disorientating and overwhelming, he finds two people who might just be able to help him.

    How to Build a Boat is the story of how one boy and his mission transforms the lives of his teachers, Tess and Tadhg, and brings together a community. Written with tenderness and verve, it’s about love, family and connection, the power of imagination, and how our greatest adventures never happen alone.

  • Close to Home

    Close to Home

    €16.95

    Luminous and devastating, a portrait of modern masculinity as shaped by class, by trauma, and by silence, but also by the courage to love and to surviveSean’s brother Anthony is a hard man. When they were kids their ma did her best to keep him out of trouble but you can’t say anything to Anto. Sean was supposed to be different.

    He was supposed to leave and never come back. But Sean does come back. Arriving home after university, he finds Anthony’s drinking is worse than ever.

    Meanwhile the jobs in Belfast have vanished, Sean’s degree isn’t worth the paper it’s written on and no one will give him the time of day. One night he loses control and assaults a stranger at a party, and everything is tipped into chaos. Close to Home witnesses the aftermath of that night, as Sean attempts to make sense of who he has become, and to reckon with the relationships that have shaped him, for better and worse.

    Drawing from his own experiences, Michael Magee examines the forces which keep young working class men in harm’s way, in a debut novel which shines with intelligence and humanity on every page. Close to Home is an extraordinary work of fiction about deciding what kind of a man you want to be and finding your place in the scarred city you call home.

  • Tell Me What I Am

    Tell Me What I Am

    €15.95

    Deena Garvey disappeared in 2004. She left behind a daughter and a sister. Deena’s daughter grows up in the country.

    She learns how to hunt, when to seed the garden, how to avoid making her father angry. Never to ask about her absent mother. Deena’s sister stays stuck in the city, getting desperate.

    She knows the man responsible for her sister’s disappearance, but she can’t prove it. Not yet. Over fourteen years, four hundred miles apart, these two women slowly begin to unearth the secrets and lies at the heart of their family, and the history of power and control that has shaped them both in such different ways.

    But can they reach each other in time? And will the truth finally answer the question of their lives: What really happened to Deena Garvey?

  • Old God's Time

    Old God’s Time

    €15.95

    Recently retired policeman Tom Kettle is settling into the quiet of his new home, a lean-to annexed to a Victorian castle overlooking the Irish Sea. For months he has barely seen a soul, catching only glimpses of his eccentric landlord and a nervous young mother who has moved in next door.

    Occasionally, fond memories return, of his family, his beloved wife June and their two children. But when two former colleagues turn up at his door with questions about a decades-old case, one which Tom never quite came to terms with, he finds himself pulled into the darkest currents of his past. A beautiful, haunting novel, in which nothing is quite as it seems, Old God’s Time is about what we live through, what we live with, and what may survive of us.

  • Aisling And The City

    Aisling And The City

    €12.95

    The brand new, utterly hilarious and totally addictive romantic comedy from the No. 1 bestselling AISLING series. Aisling is 31, and she’s still a complete Aisling. With her cafe BallyGoBrunch flying and the door firmly closed on her relationship with boyfriend John, Aisling accepts an unexpected job offer and boards a business-class flight to New York in her best wrap dress and heels.

    As she finds her feet in the Big Apple, she throws herself into the dating game, grapples with ‘always-on’ work culture, forges and fights for new friendships and brings her good wedges to a party in the Hamptons, much to her friend, Sadhbh’s, dismay. But catching up with family and friends on WhatsApp and email is not the same as sitting in Maguire’s putting the world to rights over mini bottles of Pinot Greej and a shared bag of Taytos. And yet New York has so much to offer, not least in the fireman department.

  • Freckles

    Freckles

    €12.95

    Five people. Five chances. One woman’s search for happiness. Allegra Bird’s arms are scattered with freckles, a gift from her beloved father.

    But despite her nickname, Freckles has never been able to join all the dots. So when a stranger tells her that everyone is the average of the five people they spend the most time with, it opens up something deep inside. The trouble is, Freckles doesn’t know if she has five people. And if not, what does that say about her? She’s left her unconventional father and her friends behind for a bold new life in Dublin, but she’s still an outsider. Now, in a quest to understand, she must find not one but five people who shape her – and who will determine her future. Told in Allegra’s vivid, original voice, moving from modern Dublin to the fierce Atlantic coast, this is an unforgettable story of human connection, of friendship, and of growing into your own skin.

  • Station To Station

    Station To Station

    €13.00

    Diplomat Jack Lennon is posted to Spain in 2008 as the wheels are coming off the Spanish – and Irish – property boom. On the trail of a missing Irish government minister Jack encounters a coterie of property magnates, former celebrities, desperate bankers the remnants of Ireland’s ‘wine-geese’ and Franco’s Spain.

  • Line

    Line

    €13.95

    Willard, his mother and his girlfriend Nyla have spent their entire lives in an endless journey where daily survival is dictated by the ultimate imperative: obey the rules, or you will lose your place in the Line. Everything changes the day Willards mother dies and he finds an incomprehensible book hidden among her few belongings… In its Beckettian sparseness, Line pushes the boundaries of speculative, high concept fiction. Deeply moving, it also touches on many of the pressing issues of our turbulent world: migration and the refugee crisis, big data and the erosion of democracy, climate change, colonialism, economic exploitation, social conformity and religious fanaticism. A stunning debut from a major new voice in Irish literature.

  • O Now!

    O Now!

    €11.95

    A wise, tender, life-affirming return to the beloved town of Faha by the award-winning master of Irish literatureThis is the why of us. October in the parish of Faha, County Clare – the beginning of the season of spirits. Four nights a week, Bat Considine calls on his neighbour Mossie Crowe; a beloved widower known to all in the townland of Faha as Ganga.

    They sit by the fire and, as Bat reads the newspaper aloud, wait to see which of them will die first. But this week, Bat will make a discovery that changes this routine forever. In the coming days, Ganga’s small community will gather, and his family travel home from far away; to celebrate a quiet life, in all its miracles.

  • Stations

    Stations

    €17.95

    Róisín and Red meet as teenagers in their small Irish hometown in 1982. Brilliant, sharp-tongued and born to slip through the cracks, Red’s reputation for trouble precedes him – but Róisín finds herself swept up in his storm, and soon their connection deepens.

    When a brush with the law pushes Red into a corner, he escapes their town to start a new life in England. As the years pass, they remain tethered to one another, a fragile thread holding their once fierce friendship together. When Róisín arrives in London, the promise of freedom, of reinvention, and of finding her dear friend calls.

    But searching for Red leads Róisín to a truth darker than she could have imagined: when you go looking for someone you may uncover parts of yourself along the way that you’d rather stayed buried. And Red – bright, beautiful Red – might not want to be found at all. Stations is a devastating story of love and friendship, and a tender portrait of the choices we blithely make when we are young, unaware that the consequences will reverberate throughout our lives.

  • A Nation Once Again

    A Nation Once Again

    €16.95
    Description

    THE NO 1 BESTSELLERThe hilarious new satire from the bestselling author of the Ross O’Carroll-Kelly series‘Funny, smart. seriously thought-provoking’ Joseph O’Connor’Hilarious, bang-on, even slightly disturbing – everything I love about Paul Howard’s writing.’ Roddy Doyle‘I absolutely LOVED A Nation Once Again. It was such a huge pleasure to read, I laughed out loud so many times.

    Paul Howard is a literal genius.’ Marian Keyes—There’s only one idea more foolish than dividing Ireland – and that’s trying to put it back together again. Meet Fiach O’Bric: career diplomat, recent widower, and a man looking forward to a peaceful retirement. But just when he thinks he’s out, he is strong-armed into taking over a shadowy top-secret department tasked with preparing for a United Ireland — a job so surreal it makes his last posting, in Beijing, seem like a Buddhist retreat.

  • The Bridge

    The Bridge

    €13.95

    Miquel and his father are living an uneasy life together in his mother’s house in the Pyrenees, the house she had been returning to on the day she died. A new bridge, connecting the two valleys, is almost complete, which will end the valley’s isolation and create an easier route to smuggle contraband deep into the mountains. Where Miquel’s father imagines opportunity, Miquel foresees disaster and an exposure to a modern way of living for which his father is desperately unprepared.

    Colm Tóibín’s exhilarating short novel contains vast inner and outer worlds within its pages. With meticulous precision and an unerring eye Tóibín captures lives caught between the past and the present, and the journey of a young man seeking connection, haunted by loss. PRAISE FOR COLM TÓIBÍN’A writer at the height of his considerable powers’ – The Guardian’A giant amongst storytellers’ – The Telegraph’One of our finest contemporary writers’ – New Yorker

  • Love Unlocked

    Love Unlocked

    €16.95
    Description

    ‘A warm, romantic summer read’ Woman&HomeMelody has vowed never to fall in love again. Al is a hopeless romantic. So, when they quite literally bump into each other, there’s no reason sparks should fly.

    But the world seems a little upside down lately.A few weeks ago, Al ordered the removal of all the lovers’ padlocks from one of Dublin’s beautiful bridges. Ever since then, couples across the world have started splitting up. And as Melody begins investigating this mysterious wave of breakups for her podcast, it seems there might be a bigger story to tell.Together, they decide to uncover what’s unravelling so many love stories.

  • Where Are the Kings

    Where Are the Kings

    €17.95
    Description
    Tender, moving, full of warmth, crackling with humour and the love of family, the exquisite new novel from the author of HEART BE AT PEACE, winner of the Orwell Prize for Fiction and the Irish Book of the Year‘Beautiful, hilarious and completely gripping’ RACHEL JOYCE, author of The Handmade God’No one gets inside the heart like Donal Ryan’ KIT DE WAAL, author of The Best of Everything‘Donal Ryan conjures up characters so solid, so complete and authentic, it immediately feels as though you have known them for your entire life’ JOANNA CANNON, author of An Unlikely Visitor***Something terrible has happened to Jack but no one seems to want to talk about it. His uncles can tell him about everything from quantum physics to how to hunt for deer, but they can’t seem to tell him anything about their own sister or why Jack doesn’t feel sad for her in the way he should, or why Grandad tries to shoot Jack’s dad when he gets out of the hospital. Still, there’s work to be done in the oily wonderland of his uncles’ garage; there’s his beautiful aunt Rose to hypnotise him and his loving grandparents to console him; then there’s JJ, who wants to fight him one day and save him the next.
  • The Red Mouth

    The Red Mouth

    €17.50
    Description
    ‘An absolute tour de force … One of the most powerful writers at work today’ COLIN WALSH’When the book burners knock on your door, this is one to hide in the flour barrel’ ANNIE PROULX’I’ll read almost anything in sentences so finely made’ SARAH MOSS’Songlike in its beauty … A work of uncanny power and great depth’ LOUISE KENNEDYFrom a rising star in literary fiction comes a story of two discoveries made deep in an Irish bogland, threading together four lives across time.

    When a dog finds a strange, alien antler in a restored bog, the owner’s first thought is to keep it for himself. But when he realises the value of his find, he is drawn back to the rich peat to keep searching. It is not one stag skeleton that is buried there, but dozens – an ancient dying ground of the Great Irish Elk.