Biography / Memoir

  • What is Beautiful in the Sky

    What is Beautiful in the Sky

    7.50
    Description
    ‘In these strange days Michael Harding’s route taking and wise words gently nudge us towards the future, steadying us as we navigate the great unknowns ahead’ Joe Duffy It’s dawn and in the early morning light, Michael Harding is walking in his garden in the hills above Lough Allen in Leitrim, dreaming of the new beginning in Donegal he had planned before the world changed in the early months of 2020. Here, in his stunning and intimate new book, we travel with Michael through this day as he looks back at a life lived within, and as part of, the Irish landscape. In doing so, he vividly brings to life what is at the heart of Irish identity: storytelling, love and human connection.
  • How to stay sane in an age of division

    How to stay sane in an age of division

    8.95

    Description
    The must-read, pocket-sized Big Think book of 2020It feels like the world is falling apart. So how do we keep hold of our optimism? How do we nurture the parts of ourselves that hope, trust and believe in something better? And how can we stay sane in this world of division?In this beautifully written and illuminating polemic, Booker Prize nominee Elif Shafak reflects on our age of pessimism, when emotions guide and misguide our politics, and misinformation and fear are the norm. A tender, uplifting plea for optimism, Shafak draws on her own memories and delves into the power of stories to reveal how writing can nurture democracy, tolerance and progress.

    And in the process, she answers one of the most urgent questions of our time.

  • Above Water

    Above Water

    9.95
    Description
    “When my parents signed me up to Trojan Swimming Club, they had no idea of the evil behind Gibney’s interest in me. As a thirteen-year-old, who knew nothing but kindness and love, I was ill-equipped to understand what was happening as he insidiously dominated my thinking and isolated me from anyone who might come between us. The process of entrapment was quick, and in full view of my family and team-mates I became a prisoner – bullied, manipulated and abused, unnoticed by those close to me.
  • I Loved Him From the Day He Died

    I Loved Him From the Day He Died

    9.95
    Description
    ‘I wanted him to be someone he wasn’t. I wanted me to be someone I wasn’t.’A stunning new book from the number one bestselling, award-winning author of All the Things Left Unsaid and Staring at Lakes. To mark his 70th birthday Michael Harding travelled to Spain and walked the Camino de Santiago.

    Yet, as he set off on his pilgrimage, he found he wasn’t alone. Accompanying him on his 126-kilometre walk in theheat of the Spanish sun was the ghost of his long-dead father, a distant and aloof figure whom he lost when he was only twenty-two years old. Here, with searing honesty and beautifully wrought prose, Harding examines how this man, who had diedalmost half a century ago, could have had such a profound effect on the writer’s life.

  • Powered to Fall, Empowered to Rise

    Powered to Fall, Empowered to Rise

    10.00

    About the Book

    I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis at the age of 30. At the same time I was looking to start a new life in Australia and had just met Des (my fiancé) while working at an Irish bar.

    Des stood by me through this illness and supported me in ways I could have never imagined with his love. After having to cancel our wedding in 2018 and give up work, we finally found our happy place in 2020.

    The love that Des showed me during this time and the illness inspired me to write a book so that I could help others who are also going through a difficult time. The book writes about the lessons I learnt in my own life on health, wealth, love and happiness.

    It is my hope that in sharing lessons from my own life that it will help others and inspire others that love will always shine through no matter how dark our days are. This book has been written from my heart to yours.

  • Overcoming A Memoir

    Overcoming A Memoir

    10.95
    Description
    Sunday 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

  • The Boy Who Started Celtic

    The Boy Who Started Celtic

    12.00

    THIS BOOK is the story of a boy, a calf and one of
    the biggest football clubs in the world.
    It is also a story of how one person can change
    many people’s lives.
    All great journeys begin with a single step. As a
    boy, Brother Walfrid did not know he was starting
    a great journey when he sold a calf at County
    Sligo’s Ballymote Fair and took the boat to
    Scotland.
    Every day, people are starting great journeys and
    they don’t even know it. They are just trying, like
    Walfrid, to make people’s lives better by helping
    others who are not as fortunate as them. Walfrid
    helped people and started one of the world’s most
    well-known football clubs.
    Perhaps readers of Brother Walfrid’s story may
    start a great journey of their own one day?

  • A Life Among The Dead

    A Life Among The Dead

    12.00

    MCGOWAN, DAVID

  • Big Sister Little Sister Red Sister

    Big Sister Little Sister Red Sister

    12.50
    Description
    *LONGLISTED FOR THE HWA NON-FICTION CROWN 2020*Meet the three women who helped shape the course of modern Chinese history; a gripping story of sisterhood and betrayal from the bestselling author of Wild Swans. They were the most famous sisters in China. As the country battled seismic transformations these three women left an indelible mark on history.

    Red Sister rose to be Mao’s vice-chair. Little Sister became first lady of pre-Communist Nationalist China. Big Sister made herself one of country’s richest women.

    Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister takes us on a sweeping journey from exiles’ quarters in Japan and Berlin to secret meeting rooms in Moscow, and from the compounds of the Communist elite in Beijing to the corridors of power in democratic Taiwan. By turns intimate and epic, Jung Chang reveals the lives of three extraordinary women who helped shape twentieth-century China.

  • The Gospel According to Blindboy

    The Gospel According to Blindboy

    12.95

    Description
    Sunday Business Post Book of the Year Blindboy Boatclub is one half of the Rubberbandits, Ireland’s foremost satirist and now the talented author of a collection of brilliant short stories and visual art. Published to critical acclaim, his first collection is powered by big themes and even bigger ideas. There are stories about a van fuelled by Cork people’s accents, Tipperary’s first ISIS recruit, a sexually aggressive banshee and a fridge dragged heroically through the streets of Limerick.

  • Mr. Attention To Detail

    Mr. Attention To Detail

    12.95

    KELLY, JOE

  • Constellations

    Constellations

    13.50
    Description
    *Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2020**Winner of non-fiction book of the year at the Irish Book Awards*’Utterly magnificent. Raw, thought-provoking and galvanising; this is a book every woman should read.’ -Eimear McBride, author of A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing. I have come to think of all the metal in my body as artificial stars, glistening beneath the skin, a constellation of old and new metal.
  • Rememberings

    Rememberings

    13.50

    THE 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.

  • Happy-Go-Lucky

    Happy-Go-Lucky

    13.50

    In Happy-Go-Lucky, David Sedaris once again captures what is most unexpected, hilarious, and poignant about recent upheavals, personal and public, and expresses in precise language both the misanthropy and desire for connection that drive us all. If we must live in interesting times, there is no one better to chronicle them than the incomparable David Sedaris.

    ‘Unquestionably the king of comic writing’ HADLEY FREEMAN, Guardian

    ‘Although Sedaris is famous for being funny, he does pain heartbreakingly well’ MELISSA KATSOULIS, The Times

    ‘His wickedly hilarious riffs are pyrotechnics in words’ PETER CONRAD, Observer

  • Teller of the Unexpected

    Teller of the Unexpected

    13.50

    Brand-new biography of Roald Dahl, re-evaluating the received narrative surrounding the life of the much-loved author and creator of numerous iconic literary characters – from one of our finest contemporary biographers. Roald Dahl was one of the world’s greatest storytellers.

    He considered his vocation to be as bold and exciting as an explorer’s and, in his writing for children, he was able to tap into a child’s viewpoint throughout his life. He crafted tales that were exotic in scenario, frequently invested with a moral, and filled with vibrant characters that endure in the public imagination to the present day.

  • All Down Darkness Wide

    All Down Darkness Wide

    13.50

    When Sean meets Elias, the two fall headlong into a love story. But as Elias struggles with severe depression, the couple comes face to face with crisis.

    Wrestling with this, Sean Hewitt delves deep into his own history, enlisting the ghosts of queer figures and poets before him. From a nineteenth-century cemetery in Liverpool to the pine forests of Gothenburg, Hewitt plumbs the darkness in search of solace and hope. All Down Darkness Wide is a mesmerising story of heartache and renewal, and a fearless exploration of a world that too often sets happiness and queer life at odds.

    WINNER OF THE ROONEY PRIZE FOR IRISH LITERATURE 2022