Irish Fiction

  • Sugartown

    Sugartown

    14.95

    **NB: This title will only be shipped after its release date of 18th September**

    For fans of Sally Rooney and Megan Nolan comes a remarkable new Irish debut about growing up and moving backwards.

    What do you do when you’ve ruined your life? You go home to your mother, if you’re lucky enough still to have one. Saoirse Maher wouldn’t recommend it. Leaving home wasn’t supposed to be temporary. When she moved to London, Saoirse was leaving Ireland behind for good, and with it her messy, broken family.

    But it turns out that starting again isn’t as easy as she imagined, and when her five-year relationship goes south, Saoirse finds herself out of options. And so here she is, trudging back to her mother Máire’s house up a side road on the outskirts of Irish civilisation. Except the world she comes back to is nothing like the one she left behind. Her mother has a new family, and everyone else seems to be moving on.

    But between the drinking, drugs, and an entirely healthy, not-problematic-at-all-thanks relationship with Charlie, there’s plenty to distract her. Don’t look too closely, and everything’s fine. Saoirse is just fine.

  • The Bureau

    The Bureau

    16.95

    Lorraine would say afterwards that she was smitten straight off with Paddy Farrell. You could tell that he was occupying the room in a different way, he found the spaces that fitted him. She was the kind of girl the papers called vivacious, always a bit of dazzle to her.

    Could she not see there was death about him? Could he not see there was death about her?
    Paddy worked the border, a place of road closures, hijackings, sudden death.

    Everything bootleg and tawdry, nobody is saying that the law is paid off but it is. This is strange terrain, unsolid, ghosted through.

    There’s illicit cash coming across the border and Brendan’s backstreet Bureau de Change is the place to launder it. Brendan knows the rogue lawyers, the nerve shot policemen, the alcoholic judges and he doesn’t care about getting caught.

    For the Bureau crew getting caught is only the start of the game.

    Paddy and his associates were a ragged band and honourless and their worth to themselves was measured in thievery and fraud. But Lorraine was not a girl to be treated lightly. She’s cast as a minx, a criminal’s moll but she’s bought a shotgun.

    And she’s bought a grave.

  • Twist

    Twist

    16.95

    Fennell, a journalist, is in pursuit of a story buried at the bottom of the sea: the network of tiny fibre-optic tubes that carry the world’s information across the ocean floor – and what happens when they break. So he has travelled to Cape Town to board the George Lecointe, a cable repair vessel captained by Chief of Mission John Conway. Conway is a talented engineer and fearless freediver – and Fennell is quickly captivated by this mysterious, unnerving man and his beautiful partner, Zanele.

    As the boat embarks along the west coast of Africa, Fennell learns the rhythms of life at sea, and finds his place among the band of drifters who make up the crew. But as the mission falters, tensions simmer – and Conway is thrown into crisis. A terrible, violent tragedy is unfolding in the life he has left behind on land; and, trapped out at sea, it seems as if the vast expanse of the ocean is closing in.

    Then Conway disappears; and Fennell must set out to find him. As taut and propulsive as a thriller, and a timeless exploration of narrative and truth, Twist is the work of a master storyteller at the height of his powers.

  • The City Changes Its Face

    The City Changes Its Face

    16.95
    Description
    I’m just not sure how toWhat?Manage all this. All what? Well you and her. It’s 1995.

    Outside the filthy window, the city rushes by. But up in the flat, there is only Eily and Stephen, 19 and 40. Only their bodies, the churning bedsheets.

    Pagodas of takeaway boxes. The total obsession of new love. 18 months later, and the flat feels different.

    Their world is merging with the common place. The scars of the past are intruding. Stray emotions you’ve neglected to secure.

    Ambitions and secrets still to confess. And now Gracie, Stephen’s 17-year-old daughter, is about to arrive. The city changes its face.

  • The Wardrobe Department

    The Wardrobe Department

    16.95
    Description

    FINANCIAL TIMES BEST DEBUT OF 2025

    Mairead works all hours in a run-down West End theatre’s wardrobe department, her whole existence made up of threads and needles, running errands to mend shoes, fixing broken zips and handwashing underwear. She must also do her best to avoid groping hands backstage and the terrible bullying of the show’s producer.

    But, despite her skill and growing experience, half of Mairead remains in her windy, hedge-filled home in Ireland, and the life she abandoned there. In noughties London, she has the potential to be somebody completely new – why, then, does she feel so stuck? Between the bustling side streets of Soho, and the wet grass of Leitrim and Donegal, Mairead is caught, running from the girl she was but unable to reveal the woman she’d hoped to become.

    Told with rare honesty and equal measures of warmth and bite, The Wardrobe Department is a story about reckoning with the past, finding the courage to change the present – and asking what comes next.

  • The Cleaner

    The Cleaner

    17.50
    Description

    ‘Domestic noir at its finest.’ I PAPER

    The Cleaner is a masterclass in tension.‘ – JENNIE GODFREY, Sunday Times bestselling author of The List of Suspicious Things

    Beautiful, dark, visceral, truly spellbinding.‘ – ANDREA MARA, Sunday Times No. 1 bestselling author

    Taut, twisty and beautifully atmospheric.‘ – KIA ABDULLAH, author of Waterstones Thriller of the Month Those People Next Door

    It’s not dust she’s looking for.
    It’s dirt.

    Esmie is supposed to be invisible. Just a cleaner with a foreign accent that no one quite has time to place.

    Her uniform of leggings and a duster allows her to explore the homes of the wealthy, unseen; an outsider creeping around the edges of privilege.

    But as she sweeps through the exclusive Woodlands gated neighbourhood, cleaning is the last thing on her mind. Treading silently over the polished wooden floorboards and cloud-soft carpets, Esmie gathers up the mess of broken marriages, quiet deceptions and careless failures. She tucks away their fragments, keeping them safe.

  • The Glass House

    The Glass House

    17.50
    Description
    ‘Lyrical prose with ominous secrets saturating its deepest core’ ALEX MARWOODThe window to the past can never be closed… 1963: At the stark and isolated modernist mansion of controversial political philosopher Richard Acklehurst, the glittering annual New Year’s Eve party has not gone quite as planned. Considered a genius by some, and something far darker by others, by the end of the evening Acklehurst will be dead in mysterious circumstances, casting a long shadow over the lives of his teenage daughters, Aisling and Stella.
  • Frogs for Watchdogs

    Frogs for Watchdogs

    16.95
    Description
    After years of moving from place to place, a young family finds shelter in an isolated house in the Irish countryside. Their father is missing, Mum is a healer and B a formidable big sister. In his strange new territory, a wild little boy gives voice to his experience.

    Jerry Drain, a local famer, is stealing hay from the barn, someone is making nasty phone calls to the house at night and darkness is gathering at the edges of their lives. With his ferocious imagination the boy will do everything in his power to protect his family. But Jerry will not go away and Mum seems to be falling under his spell.

    It will be a year of major wins and baffling defeats for the boy, as Jerry’s true nature insists on revealing itself. Dark, funny, tender and raw, Frogs for Watchdogs thrums with the intensity of childhood. Above all, it is an ode to the blended family: the bewildering joy, wary safety and profound new bonds of love.

  • Nice Weather For A Killing

    Nice Weather For A Killing

    16.95

    Before dawn on a cold, miserably wet Irish morning, Arthur Cummins arrives absurdly early for his wedding to rich girl, Hilary Fenton. He virtually breaks into the church to get out of the rain and falls

    over a murdered corpse in the apse.

    Arthur is desperate for the wedding to go ahead. He has borrowed money from the sinister Gizzard Man and is counting on a large cash wedding gift from Hilary’s daddy to clear the debt. But a body in the body of the church is certain to end the happy day before it begins.

    Arthur makes a spur-of-the-moment decision and hides the body in

    the basement, to be discovered some time in the future.

    Then everything spirals rapidly downwards, and Arthur finds himself the main suspect for the murder. And developing an unbefitting crush on investigating detective Francine Bluett only complicates matters.

    Enlisting the help of his offbeat friend Tom Farrington, and his now ex-fiancée Hilary, Arthur unwittingly wades deeper into a world of violence and betrayal.

    A dark and humorous tale of murder, a spoiled wedding and an almost love affair

  • Ghost Mountain

    Ghost Mountain

    20.00

    Ghost Mountain, is a simple fable-like novel about a mountain that appears suddenly, and the way in which its manifestation ripples through the lives of characters in the surrounding community. It looks at the uncertain fragile sense of self we hold inside ourselves, and our human compulsion to project it into the uncertain world around us, whether we’re ready or not. It is also about the presence of absence, and how it shadows us in our lives.

    Mountains are at once unmistakably present yet never truly fathomable.

  • The Coast Road

    The Coast Road

    16.95

    It’s 1994 in County Donegal, Ireland, and everyone is talking about Colette Crowley – the writer, the bohemian, the woman who left her husband and sons to pursue a relationship with a married man in Dublin. But now Colette is back, and nobody knows why. Returning to the community to try and reclaim her old life, Colette quickly learns that they are unwilling to give it back to her.

    The man to whom she is still married is denying her access to her children, and while the legalisation of divorce might be just around the corner, Colette finds herself caught between her old life and the freedom for which she risked everything. Desperate to see her children, she enlists the help of Izzy, a housewife and mother of two, and the women forge a friendship that will send them on a spiralling journey – one toward a path of self-discovery, and the other toward tragedy. Brilliantly observed from a sharp new literary talent, The Coast Road is a novel about a closed community and the consequences of daring to move against the tide.

  • The Honeymoon Affair

    The Honeymoon Affair

    15.95
    Description
    ‘A glitzy, glamorous rollercoaster of a romance – hugely entertaining and so satisfying . . .

    Sheila O’Flanagan at her sparkling best’ Veronica HenryThe irresistible, utterly satisfying new contemporary novel from No. 1 bestselling Sheila O’FlanaganIzzy is in the Caribbean on the honeymoon-that-isn’t after her fiancé broke her heart. She’s not looking for someone new.

    But when she meets Charles Miller, a successful writer holidaying alone, the electricity is undeniable. And what does she have to lose? In Ireland, Charles’s ex-wife and agent Ariel flits from party to party, glamorous and poised. She’s in constant contact with Charles.

    They’re very close. Ariel wonders if they should get back together. She’s an independent woman, but she liked being part of a power couple.

    And she’s sure she only has to say, and they’ll pick up where they left off. No matter how in control of life you think you are, it can shock and surprise you. As Izzy, Ariel and Charles are about to find out .

    . . Sheila O’Flanagan’s new novel tells a compelling and thought-provoking story about two strong women, one complicated man, and the secrets and dreams that draw them together – with explosive consequences .

  • My Favourite Mistake

    My Favourite Mistake

    16.95

    Anna has just lost her taste for the Big Apple…

    She has a life to envy. An apartment in New York. A well-meaning (too well-meaning?) partner.

    And a high-flying job in beauty PR. Who wouldn’t want all that?
    Anna, it turns out.

    Trading a minor midlife crisis for a major life event, she switches the skyscrapers of Manhattan for the tiny Irish town of Maumtully (population 1,217), helping old friends Brigit and Colm set up a luxury coastal retreat.

    Tougher than it sounds. Newflash: the locals hate the idea.

    So much so, there have been threats – and violence.

    Anna, however, worked in the beauty industry. There’s no ugliness she hasn’t seen. No wrinkle she can’t smooth over.

    There’s just one fly in the ointment – old flame Joey Armstrong.

    He’s going to be her wingman.
    Never mind their chequered history.

    Never mind what might have been.

    Because no matter how far you go, your mistakes will still be waiting for you . . .

  • Old Romantics

    Old Romantics

    16.00

    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.

  • Quickly, While They Still Have Horses

    Quickly, While They Still Have Horses

    17.50

    In sixteen sparkling stories, Jan Carson introduces us to worlds and characters that feel real enough to touch. All of life is here: the thrill of growing up, the grief when youth is over; first love, mature love, parenthood and loss – all shot through with profound compassion, warm wit, and boundless imagination.
    In ‘A Certain Degree of Ownership’, a distracted couple on a beach fail to notice their baby crawl perilously towards the sea.
    In ‘Troubling the Water’, a rumour spreads at a public swimming pool and chaos ensues. In ‘Fair Play’ a dishevelled father loses his two sons in an adventure park.
    Every so often, an irresistible suggestion of the other world will surprise and delight, reaffirming Carson as a thrillingly original and audacious talent, and making Quickly, While They Still Have Horses the perfect introduction for readers new to her work.

  • Hagstone

    Hagstone

    16.50

    The sea is steady for now. The land readies itself. What can be done with the woman on the cliff?On a wild and rugged island cut off and isolated to some, artist Nell feels the island is her home.It is the source of inspiration for her art, rooted in landscape, folklore and the feminine. The mysterious Inions, a commune of women who have travelled there from all over the world, consider it a place of refuge and safety, of solace in nature.All the islanders live alongside the strange murmurings that seem to emanate from within the depths of the island, a sound that is almost supernatural – a Summoning as the Inions call it. One day, a letter arrives at Nell’s door from the reclusive Inions who invite Nell into the commune for a commission to produce a magnificent art piece to celebrate their long history.In its creation, Nell will discover things about the community and about herself that will challenge everything she thought she knew.Beautifully written, prescient and eerily haunting, Sinead Gleeson’s debut novel takes in the darker side of human nature and the mysteries of faith and the natural world.