Mythical Irish Wonders
€22.95JOYCE, MARK
Showing 65–80 of 125 results
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Ninety-Nine Words for Rain
€21.95DescriptionMeet the néaladóirí (cloud-watchers) and réadóirí (stargazers) from our past who, without the luxury of Met Éireann at their disposal, observed birds, trees, animals, as well as markers on land and sea for signs of weather change. The sheer richness and variety of terms they amassed reveal the closeness with which they observed the world around them. Swallows flying low foretold rain.
The heron’s behaviour offered many hints: Aimsir chrua thirim nuair a bhíonn an corr éisc suas in aghaidh srutha chun na sléibhte (when the heron flies upstream to the mountains the weather will be dry but rough). Fearthainn nuair a thagann sí an abhainn anuas (when she goes downstream, it will rain). Evoking countless sodden, shivery experiences on this Atlantic-swept island of ours, this beautifully illustrated gift book uses Irish words to grasp an almost-lost world through the wisdom stored in the Irish language.
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Northern Protestants on Shifting Ground
€19.95Description
Twenty years on from her critically acclaimed book, ‘Northern Protestants: An Unsettled People’, Susan McKay talks again to the Protestant community in Northern Ireland. Based on almost 100 brand-new interviews, and told with McKay’s trademark passion and conviction, this is essential reading. This new title will be accompanied by a new edition of ‘Northern Protestants: An Unsettled People’.Containing interviews with politicians, former paramilitaries, victims and survivors, business people, religious leaders, community workers, young people, writers and others, it tackles controversial issues, such as Brexit, paramilitary violence, the border, the legacy of the Troubles, same-sex marriage and abortion, RHI, and the possibility of a United Ireland, and explores social justice issues and campaigns, particularly the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights. Interviewees include: Eileen Weir, Dee Stitt, Dawn Purvis, Chrissie Quinn, Clare Sugden, Toni Ogle, Kyle Black, Sammy Wilson and others, and ties in to topical debates around identity in the context of Brexit and the centenary of the foundation of Northern Ireland. Susan McKay is an award-winning writer and commentator and contributes regularly to print and broadcast media, including Guardian/Observer, New York Times, Irish Times and London Review of Books.
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Ok, Let’s Do Your Stupid Idea
€12.95‘Funny, smart, soulful and sometimes devastating … It made me laugh and cry’ EMILIE PINE, author of Notes to Self’Hilariously, painfully, Freynefully brilliant’ JOSEPH O’CONNORPatrick Freyne has tried a lot of stupid ideas in his life. Now, in his scintillating debut, he is here to tell you about them: like the time (aged 5) he opened a gate and let a horse out of its field, just to see what would happen; or the time (aged 19) he jumped out of a plane for charity, even though he didn’t much care about the charity and was sure he’d end up dead; or the time (aged old enough to know better) he used a magazine as a funnel for fuel when the petrol cap on his band’s van broke.
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Old Ireland in Colour 3
€24.95John Breslin and Sarah-Anne Buckley are back with the third installment of their record-breaking Old Ireland in Colour series. The authors have uncovered yet more photographic gems and breathed new life into them in glorious colour.
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On the Night
€50.00Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann – Musicians and Senior Ceili Band Winners 1951-2021
Philip Duffy is uniquely qualified to perform this invaluable task of chronicling the history of ceili bands. His own musical ability, his longstanding involvement in ceili bands, his vast experience of performance in Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann, and his deep understanding of the traditional music community at home and abroad all contribute to the depth and empathy of this book.
‘On the Night’ will be enjoyed by many different readers – the family member who wants to learn about their sibling or parent or relation who played with a band from the beginning; the local music enthusiast tracing the evolution of their favourite ceili band; the student of ethnomusicology intent on working out the origins and development of ceili music performance and competition; and the current ceili band members seeking to understand the heritage that has been handed down to them and who now play their own part in gifting this unique native art form on to the next generation.
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Overcoming A Memoir
€10.95DescriptionSunday Times Memoir of the Year 2019An Post Irish Book of the Year 2019When Vicky Phelan delivered an emotionally charged statement from the steps of the Four Courts in April 2018 – having refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement in the settlement of her action against the HSE – she unearthed the medical and political scandal of our times. It would emerge that, like Vicky, 220 other women who were diagnosed with cervical cancer were not informed that a clinical audit -carried out by the national screen programme CervicalCheck – had revised their earlier, negative smear tests. Their cancers could possibly have been preventable.Since then, Vicky has become women’s voice for justice on the issue, and her system-changing activism has made her a household name. In her memoir Overcoming, Vicky shares her remarkable personal story, from a life-threatening accident in early adulthood through to motherhood, a battle with depression, her devastating later discovery that her cancer had returned in shocking circumstances – and the ensuing detective-like scrutiny of events that led the charge for her history-making legal action. An inspiring story of rare resilience and power, Overcoming is an account of how one woman can move mountains – even when she is fighting for her own life – and of finding happiness and strength in the toughest of times.
‘Calls to mind the work of Emilie Pine, or the memoir by Maggie O’Farrell, I Am, I Am, I Am … Overcoming is more than the retelling of an extraordinary life. Its pacing and gentleness leaves plenty of room for tears and for reflection’ Irish Independent
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Poor
€13.95DescriptionThe No. 1 BestsellerBiography of the Year, Irish Book Awards 2023The Last Word Listeners’ Choice Award, Irish Book Awards 2023’One of the best [books] I have read about the complexities of poverty . .. one of the most remarkable people you will ever meet’ GuardianLike young girls everywhere Katriona O’Sullivan grew up bright, enthusiastic, curious. But she was also surrounded by abject poverty and chaos, and after she became pregnant and homeless at 15, what followed was five years of barely surviving.
Yet today Katriona is an award-winning academic whose work explores barriers to education for girls like her. What set Katriona on this unexpected path were the mentors and supporters who truly saw her. The teachers who showed her how to wash in the school toilets or turned up at her door to convince her to sit at least one GCSE.
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Poor
€16.50As the middle of five kids growing up in dire poverty, the odds were low on Katriona O’Sullivan making anything of her life. When she became a mother at 15 and ended up homeless, what followed were five years of barely coping.
This is the extraordinary story – moving, funny, brave, and sometimes startling – of how Katriona turned her life around. How the seeds of self-belief planted by teachers in childhood stayed with her. How she found mentors whose encouragement revived those seeds in adulthood.
Katriona is now an award-winning lecturer whose work challenges barriers to education. Poor is her stirring argument for the importance of looking out for our kids’ futures. Of giving them hope, practical support and meaningful opportunities.
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Rememberings
€13.50THE LANDMARK MEMOIR OF A GLOBAL MUSIC ICON
Sinead O’Connor’s voice and trademark shaved head made her famous by the age of twenty-one. Her recording of Prince’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ made her a global icon. She outraged millions when she tore up a photograph of Pope John Paul II on American television.
O’Connor was unapologetic and impossible to ignore, calling out hypocrisy wherever she saw it. She has remained that way for three decades. Now, in Rememberings, O’Connor tells her story – the heartache of growing up in a family falling apart; her early forays into the Dublin music scene; her adventures and misadventures in the world of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll; the fulfilment of being a mother; her ongoing spiritual quest – and through it all, her abiding passion for music.
Rememberings is intimate, replete with candid anecdotes and full of hard-won insights. It is a unique and remarkable chronicle by a unique and remarkable artist.
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Rosses Point and its Surrounds
€50.00Rosses Point and Its Surroundings is an illustrated history of one of Sligo’s most celebrated coastal areas spanning centuries, from the early Christian period to the land confiscations of the 17th century, the development of shipping and other maritime industries.
It details the evolution of Rosses Point village from a traditional clachan settlement to a fashionable ‘watering place’ in the 19th century, examines the history of education on the peninsula.
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Rot
€19.95In the 1800s, as Britain became the world’s most powerful industrial empire, Ireland starved. The Great Famine fractured long-held assumptions about political economy and ‘civilisation’, threatening disorder in Britain. Ireland was a laboratory for empire, shaping British ideas about colonisation, population, ecology and work.
In Rot, Padraic Scanlan reinterprets the history of this time and the result is a revelatory account of Ireland’s Great Famine. In the first half of the nineteenth century, nowhere in Europe – or the world – did the working poor depend as completely on potatoes as in Ireland. To many British observers, potatoes were evidence of a lack of modernity among the Irish.
However, Ireland before the famine more closely resembled capitalism’s future than its past. While poverty before and during the Great Famine was often blamed on Irish backwardness, it did in fact stem from the British Empire’s embrace of modern capitalism.
Uncovering the disaster’s roots in Britain’s deep imperial faith in markets and capitalism, Rot reshapes our understanding of the Famine and its tragic legacy.
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Running from Office
€17.95Description‘A wonderfully engaging, honest and witty portrait of the humiliations, idealism, nobility and banality of democratic life’ – Rory Stewart, author of Politics on the Edge’Wryly self-deprecating, but also informative and illuminating’ – Matt CooperAs Ireland’s Minister for Housing, Eoghan Murphy took on one of the toughest briefs in government, one that continues to be a challenge today. Looking back at his life in the build-up to parliamentary office and at his time in the cabinet, Eoghan brings a self-lacerating and deeply personal view of the life of a modern politician trying – and often failing – to make the positive change he hoped to deliver. Brutal and sometimes harrowing, Eoghan’s tale is also surprisingly funny, though the humour is only ever at the author’s expense. -
Sacred Trees Of Ireland
€17.95Trees mirror in many ways the life cycle of human beings: they are born from seed, they breathe and drink, they grow to maturity, reproduce and eventually die from age or disease. Their branches, roots and the veins of their leaves resemble human blood vessels, and certain species even ooze a reddish, blood-like sap when damaged. From ancient times, people appreciated the spiritual value of trees, singling out individual trees for special veneration. In Ireland the roots of tree worship reach deep into pagan Celtic religion and spirituality.
Christine Zucchelli looks at these trees, from Fairy Thorns to Rag Trees, from Mass Bushes to Monument Trees. This fascinating exploration of their stories and legends reveals their spiritual, social and historical functions from pagan times to the present.
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Setting the Land Free : Visions of a Rewilded Ireland
€24.95Description‘A powerful beacon of hope’ Seán RonayneAs a mass Irish rewilding movement takes shape, Eoghan Daltun takes to the high roads and byroads to meet those leading a quiet revolution on the land. Rewilding, already proven in Scotland, is gathering momentum in Ireland. It offers a radical reimagining of our relationship with the natural world, restoring balance to landscapes long dominated by extraction, industrialised farming and monoculture forestry.By creating space for nature to recover, on land and at sea, it promises renewed biodiversity, resilient ecosystems and a future less defined by depletion. Yet the challenge is stark: Ireland remains one of the most ecologically altered countries in Europe. In Setting the Land Free, Daltun travels across Ireland and beyond to Scotland and Costa Rica, encountering pioneers restoring bogs, reintroducing native species and regenerating forests and coastlines.
Their work is practical, urgent and deeply hopeful, rooted in the belief that repair is still possible. This is not just a chronicle of change, but an inspiring call to imagine differently – and act.
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