Irish Fiction

When the Nazis take Rome, thousands go into hiding. One priest will risk everything to save them. September 1943: German forces occupy Rome.

SS officer Paul Hauptmann rules with terror. An Irish priest, Hugh O’Flaherty, dedicates himself to helping those escaping from the Nazis. His home is Vatican City, a neutral, independent country within Rome where the occupiers hold no sway.

He gathers a team to set up an Escape Line. But Hauptmann’s net begins closing in and the need for a terrifyingly audacious mission grows critical. By Christmas, it’s too late to turn back.

Based on a true story, My Father’s House is a powerful thriller from a master of historical fiction. It is an unforgettable novel of love, sacrifice and what it means to be human in the most extreme circumstances.

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.

A few years ago my husband recommended me for a job in his company, and I thought it would be fun, and soa woman named Rosaleen would ring me for a chat. Rosaleen was a senior director in the firm, and these were scheduled chats, but I was always unprepared, running from a room, looking for a pen, or out in the rain, pushing the baby in the pram. Rosaleen had a terse and serious manner that unwound into listless expectation when my turn came to speak.I would say something and she would wait for me to say something better. Rosaleen savoured a pause. The line burned with a shared misgiving even as Rosaleen made me an astounding offer …”‘Old Romantics’ is an acutely observed and hideously entertaining collection of linked short stories from an astonishing new talent.Slippery, flawed and acute, Maggie Armstrong’s narrator navigates a world of awkward expectation and latent hostility.