Irish Fiction

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1950s Dublin, in a lock-up garage in the city, the body of a young woman is discovered, an apparent suicide. But pathologist Dr Quirke and Detective Inspector Strafford soon suspect foul play.

The victims sister, a newspaper reporter from London, returns to Dublin to join the two men in their quest to uncover the truth. But, as they explore her links to a wealthy German family in County Wicklow, and to investigative work she may have been doing in Israel, they are confronted with an ever-deepening mystery.

With relations between the two men increasingly strained, and their investigation taking them back to the final days of the Second World War, can they join the pieces of a hidden puzzle?

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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.

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Forever Home
€12.50
Carol is a divorced teacher living in a small town in Ireland, her only son now grown.

A second chance at love brings her unexpected connection and belonging. The new relationship sparks local speculation: what does a woman like her see in a man like that? What happened to his wife who abandoned them all those years ago? But the gossip only serves to bring the couple closer. When Declan becomes ill, things start to fall apart.

His children are untrusting and cruel, and Carol is forced to leave their beloved home with its worn oak floors and elegant features and move back in with her parents. Carol’s mother is determined to get to the bottom of things, she won’t see her daughter suffer in this way. It seems there are secrets in Declan’s past, strange rumours that were never confronted and suddenly the house they shared takes on a more sinister significance.

In his tense and darkly comic new novel Norton casts a light on the relationship between mothers and daughters, and truth and self-preservation with unnerving effect.

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Juno Loves Legs
€15.95
She’s loved him since their first encounter at school in Dublin, where she fought the playground bullies for him.

He feels brave with her, she feels safe with him, and together they feel invincible, even if the world has other ideas. The two find their way from the backstreets and city’s pubs to its underground parties and squats, where, on the verge of adulthood, they find a breathing space to begin their real lives. Only Legs’s might be taking him somewhere Juno can’t follow.

Set during the political and social unrest of the 1980s, as families struggled to survive and their children struggled to be free, this beautiful, vivid novel of childhood friendship is about being young, being hurt, being seen and, most of all, being loved. ‘A heartbreaker, and absolutely unforgettable’ DONAL RYAN, bestselling author of The Queen of Dirt Island’This will break your heart in the very best way and leave you laughing in spite of yourself. A backstreet epic.

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Nothing Special
€15.95
A wildly original debut novel about two young women navigating the complex worlds of Andy Warhol’s Factory, and coming of age in 1960s New York.

New York City, 1966. Seventeen-year-old Mae lives in a run-down apartment with her alcoholic mother and her mother’s sometimes-boyfriend, Mikey. She is turned off by the petty girls at her high school, and the sleazy men she typically meets.

When she drops out, she is presented with a job offer that will remake her world entirely: she is hired as a typist for the artist Andy Warhol. Warhol is composing an unconventional novel by recording the conversations and experiences of his many famous and alluring friends. Tasked with transcribing these tapes alongside several other girls, Mae quickly befriends Shelley and the two of them embark on a surreal adventure at the fringes of the countercultural movement.

Going to parties together, exploring their womanhood and sexuality, this should be the most enlivening experience of Mae’s life. But as she grows increasingly obsessed with the tapes and numb to her own reality, Mae must grapple with the thin line between art and voyeurism and determine how she can remain her own person as the tide of the sixties sweeps over her. Nothing Special is a whip-smart coming-of-age story about friendship, independence and the construction of art and identity, bringing to life the experience of young women in this iconic and turbulent moment.

A 2023 HIGHLIGHT FOR: THE TIMES * TELGRAPH * STYLIST * GQ * GUARDIAN * HARPER’S BAZAAR * GOOD HOUSEKEEPING * WATERSTONES * i-D * IRISH TIMES * HUFFINGTON POST UK

‘I truly love Nicole Flattery’s writing’ SALLY ROONEY

‘In enviably elegant prose, she manages to be both arch and deadly serious’ LOUISE KENNEDY

‘A wry, witty and wonderful novel from a brilliantly captivating storyteller’ JOSEPH O’CONNOR

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Strange Sally Diamond
€14.95
From the Number 1 bestselling author of Our Little Cruelties and Skin DeepSally Diamond cannot understand why what she did was so strange. She was only doing what her father told her to do, to put him out with the rubbish when he died. Now Sally is the centre of attention, not only from the hungry media and police detectives, but also a sinister voice from a past she cannot remember.

As she begins to discover the horrors of her childhood, Sally steps into the world for the first time, making new friends and big decisions, and learning that people don’t always mean what they say. But who is the man observing Sally from the other side of the world? And why does her neighbour seem to be obsessed with her? Sally’s trust issues are about to be severely challenged . . .

‘I loved every damn second of it’ Lisa Jewell

‘Liz Nugent has outdone herself. Twisted and twisty, dark and gripping, no one is going to forget Sally Diamond in a hurry!’ Graham Norton

‘Terrific’ Ian Rankin

‘So, so good! Sally gets under your skin and worms her way into your heart. I didn’t want it to end’ Jane Fallon

‘I’m lost in admiration for Liz and her writing . . . vivid, pacy, taut but so very moving’ Marian Keyes

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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?

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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.

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My Father’s House
€16.95
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.

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The Saint of Lost Things
€19.95
I had dreams once, but never for anything as extravagant as happiness. Still, Auntie Bell and me have fresh cream cakes every Saturday.

They’re sweet enough to take the edge off. I hope they’re enough to get me through being outed as a fraud. Turns out, I’m more my missing mother’s daughter than anyone first suspected.

There was a time when Lindy Morris escaped to London and walked along the Thames in the moonlight. When life was full and exciting. Decades later, Lindy lives back with her Auntie Bell on the edge: on the edge of Donegal and on the edge of Granda Morris’s land.

Granda Morris is a complicated man, a farmer who wanted sons but got two daughters: Auntie Bell and Lindy’s mother, who disappeared long ago. Now, Lindy and Bell live the smallest of lives, in a cottage filled with unfulfilled dreams. But when the secrets they have kept for thirty years emerge, everything is rewritten.

Will Lindy grasp who she is again?

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Brouhaha
€14.95
The razor-sharp, violent and darkly comic second novel from actor, comedian and writer Ardal O’Hanlon. Dove Connolly is dead. That’s not good for anyone in Tullyanna, never mind Dove.

Now his best friend Sharkey is home asking awkward questions about Dove’s death, about the strange graphic novel he left behind, and, most of all, about Sandra. Sandra Mohan. Missing now for over a decade, whereabouts unknown.

This, however, is a town dead-set on keeping its secrets. And Sharkey is already drawing attention from all the wrong quarters… A mystery, a black comedy, a satire on Ireland’s tangled politics of memory, Brouhaha is set in a small town on the Irish border during the uneasy transition to peace.

And peace doesn’t come easy in these parts. *****Over the past few days, Kevin, no flies on him, had sensed a tension in the town thanks to Dove Connolly’s poor decision to blow his own head off. It wasn’t just the act of self-harm itself, the pointless splattering of blood and bone and brain all over his bedroom wall, that was the issue, unsettling as that was.

In so doing, poor Dove had spread panic amongst the townspeople, raising all sorts of ugly questions, reviving all sorts of rumours, and inviting all sorts of unwelcome attention upon them. In Kevin’s mind, there was method in Dove’s madness. Showing a shocking assertiveness for possibly the first time in his life, and the last, says you, Dove blew the lid off the whole town.

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Ruth + Pen
€15.00
Description

The brilliant debut novel from Emilie Pine, author of the international bestseller NOTES TO SELF

Dublin, 7 October 2019

One day, one city, two women: Ruth and Pen. Neither known to the other, but both asking themselves the same questions: how to be with others and how, when the world doesn’t seem willing to make space for them, to be with themselves?

Ruth’s marriage to Aidan is in crisis. Today she needs to make a choice – to stay or not to stay, to take the risk of reaching out, or to pull up the drawbridge.

For teenage Pen, today is the day the words will flow, and she will speak her truth to Alice, to ask for what she so desperately wants.

Deeply involving, poignant and radiantly intelligent, it is a portrait of the limits of grief and love, of how we navigate our inner and outer landscapes, and the tender courage demanded by the simple, daily quest of living.

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None of This is Serious
€14.95
Dublin student life is ending for Sophie and her friends. They’ve got everything figured out, and Sophie feels left behind as they all start to go their separate ways. She’s overshadowed by her best friend Grace.

She’s been in love with Finn for as long as she’s known him. And she’s about to meet Rory, who’s suddenly available to her online. At a party, what was already unstable completely falls apart and Sophie finds herself obsessively scrolling social media, waiting for something (anything) to happen.

None of This Is Serious is about the uncertainty and absurdity of being alive today. It’s about balancing the real world with the online, and the vulnerabilities in yourself, your relationships, your body. At its heart, this is a novel about the friendships strong enough to withstand anything.

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Seven Steeples
€14.95
The mountain remained, unclimbed, for the first year that they lived there. Bell and Sigh, a couple in the infancy of their relationship, cut themselves off from friends and family. They turn their backs on a city divided by scores of streets and hundreds of sterile cherry trees, by a foul river and a declining population of house sparrows.

Them in and the world out. From the top of the nearby mountain, they are told, you can see seven standing stones, seven schools, and seven steeples. All you have to do is climb.

Taking place in a remote house in the south-west of Ireland, this rich and vivid novel spans seven years and speaks to the times we live in, asking how we may withdraw, how better to live in the natural world, and how the choices made or avoided lead us home.

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All Along the Echo
€15.95
An absolute marvel’ Max Porter, bestselling author of Lanny
‘Feels like a living thing, dancing and dodging, surprising and poignant’ Lisa McInerney
‘An unruly, provocative and stunning novel’ Cillian Murphy

FIRST VOICE: Why are we listening?
SECOND VOICE: I dunno, I mean, what else is there to do?

Tony Cooney, a local-radio DJ, spends his days on air, talking to the listeners of Cork. They call in to tell him about overturned sewage trucks and nuisance graffiti artists, each story a small testimony to the bustle of life that goes on in the county. Off air, however, Tony is beginning to feel unsettled.

His long marriage is strained, his teenage daughter is struggling with her mental health, and then out of the blue an old girlfriend gets in touch and suggests he come to visit.

Lou Fitzpatrick, Tony’s young radio-show producer, is having her own off-air problems. She wants children, but her girlfriend has other ideas; they’ve lost their beloved cat and her father’s drinking is way past problematic.

Which is why both Tony and Lou are relieved to leave Cork and drive across Ireland as part of a radio publicity stunt organized by a local car dealership. Their aim is to give away the Mazda 2 that they’re driving, the catch being that it must go to one of the many emigrants who have recently returned home to escape a wave of escalating terror attacks in London. But as they navigate dual-carriageways and Travelodges, giving airtime and narrative to the great cacophony of voices calling into the show, the car competition transforms into a surreal quest: Tony to find his first love, Lou to find answers to impossible questions, and all the while two mysterious voices listen in, making their own estimations…

A mighty tale of radios, road trips and of the noisy static of life, All Along the Echo asks us whether our lives ever add up to more than the stories we tell ourselves. Funny, warm and in the wilding spirit of George Saunders or Samuel Beckett, Danny Denton’s novel is a bravura capturing of modern Ireland, one that shows us the possibilities of fiction, the nature of love and death, and what it is for each of us to be only the briefest signal in life’s splendid broadcastttzchidhcmxc [static].

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Trespasses
€12.50
* LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2023 *
* WINNER OF THE AN POST IRISH BOOK AWARDS NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2022 *
* SHORTLISTED FOR BRITISH BOOK OF THE YEAR: DEBUT FICTION *
* SHORTLISTED FOR THE WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE 2022 *
* AN OBSERVER BEST DEBUT NOVELIST OF 2022 *
* A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK AT BEDTIME *

One by one, she undid each event, each decision, each choice. If Davy had remembered to put on a coat. If Seamie McGeown had not found himself alone on a dark street.

If Michael Agnew had not walked through the door of the pub on a quiet night in February in his white shirt. There is nothing special about the day Cushla meets Michael, a married man from Belfast, in the pub owned by her family. But here, love is never far from violence, and this encounter will change both of their lives forever.

As people get up each morning and go to work, school, church or the pub, the daily news rolls in of another car bomb exploded, another man beaten, killed or left for dead. In the class Cushla teaches, the vocabulary of seven-year-old children now includes phrases like ‘petrol bomb’ and ‘rubber bullets’. And as she is forced to tread lines she never thought she would cross, tensions in the town are escalating, threatening to destroy all she is working to hold together.

Tender and shocking, Trespasses is an unforgettable debut of people trying to live ordinary lives in extraordinary times.

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