Biography / Memoir

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Born to be a Footballer
€19.95
“Being a footballer was my destiny.” After being expelled from school for playing football for his country, fifteen-year-old Liam Brady travelled to London to join Arsenal, and soon became an indispensable part of their glorious 1970s team. Rightly considered one of the Republic of Ireland’s best-ever footballers, he went on to enjoy successes with Juventus, Sampdoria and West Ham, as well as managing Celtic and Brighton and Hove, and becoming assistant manager of his national team. Today he is best known for his much-respected TV punditry and searingly intelligent insights into the game he adores.

Full of honest insights, amusing anecdotes and recollections of extraordinary times, with Born to be a Footballer Brady delivers a compelling story of a fifty-year career that is unparalleled in Irish sport.

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Big Beacon
€19.95
In Big Beacon, Norwich’s favourite son and best broadcaster, Alan Partridge, triumphs against the odds.

TWICE.

Using an innovative ‘dual narrative’ structure you sometimes see in films, Big Beacon tells the story of how Partridge heroically rebuilt his TV career, rising like a phoenix from the desolate wasteland of local radio to climb to the summit of Mount Primetime and regain the nationwide prominence his talent merits.

But then something quite unexpected and moving, because Big Beacon also tells the story of a selfless man, driven to restore an old lighthouse to its former glory, motivated by nothing more than respect for a quietly heroic old building that many take for granted, which some people think is a metaphor for Alan himself even though it’s not really for them to say.*

Leaving his old life behind and relocating to a small coastal village in Kent, Alan battles through adversity, wins the hearts and minds of a suspicious community, and ultimately shows himself to be a quite wonderful man.

* The two strands will run in tandem, their narrative arcs mirroring each other to make the parallels between the two stories abundantly clear to the less able reader.

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In My Own Words
€24.95
Born in Sligo into a family of travelling entertainers, Sandy Kelly has become one of the top musical performers in Ireland. Sandy was co-opted into the family variety show from an early age. As a teenager she sang on the social club circuit in the UK, playing an ever more prominent role.

When she returned to Ireland, she developed initially as a pop performer before following her instincts and concentrating on a music career. Her landmark 1989 recording of the Patsy Cline hit ‘Crazy’ led her to perform on stages all over the world, including the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville and the lead role in Patsy – The Musical in London’s West End. But the music industry can be a tough place.

Sandy has dealt with prejudice and financial pressures. Alongside the glamour of show business, she has experienced the heartaches of divorce, family illness and death, and faced the challenges of raising a daughter with special needs. Sandy has stood strong at the heart of Ireland’s music scene for over four decades.

Here, for the first time, she recounts the highs – and lows – of a lifetime in music, in her own words.

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Limitless
€19.95
The sea has always been a part of Nuala Moore’s life: her earliest memory is of jumping off her father’s fishing boat in Dingle Harbour and swimming back to shore. Since then, she’s swum in some of the coldest, most remote and dangerous waters in the world, from the Bering Strait to the Drake Passage. After years of marathon swimming, Nuala struggled to balance sacrifice and achievement.

Her work-life balance, coupled with caring for her father, forced a change in her pathway. She turned to ice swimming. For Nuala, these extreme situations offered freedom and a chance to find her true north.

Nuala believes that everyone is capable of greatness, whatever shape that might take. Limitless is her breathtaking memoir, detailing what goes through her mind when she’s in the water and how, when she returns home, she processes the fallout of pushing herself to the brink.

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Rambling Man – My Life on the Road
€18.95
In my fantasy of the Rambling Man who is something of a hobo, walking – or maybe jumping into the car of a moving train – is what he does. He slings his guitar or banjo over his shoulder and strides out along the road to the next town. There he plays a few songs at a local gig and meets a beautiful woman who feeds and shags him.

It’s a wonderful life, and a million miles better than sitting on your couch watching reality TV.

During his lifetime of global adventures, Sir Billy Connolly’s genuine curiosity and natural ability to connect with the people he meets on the road has made him a true ‘citizen of the world’.

A good trip, in my book, should be littered with little detours. Travelling from A to B is all very well, but you risk missing out on so much .

In RAMBLING MAN, Billy takes us with him on his incredible journeys criss-crossing the world.

But this is no conventional travel memoir. From Ireland to India, Australia to the Arctic, we join the Big Yin on an international voyage full of detours, digressions and the most eccentric of characters – all underscored by the chosen soundtrack of the ultimate ramblin’ man himself.

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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

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This Is My Sea
€17.50
Over the course of seven difficult years Miriam Mulcahy lost her mother, father and sister, each grief threatening to drown her. But instead of going under she discovered the lessons of the sea, letting the water teach her how to get through anything in life: one breath builds on another, another stroke, another kick and you will get home. THIS IS MY SEA takes our greatest fear, death, and wraps it up in language so fine and beautiful that the reader is carried along and comforted by how completely lost Miriam was and how she found solace in all the things that sustained her: books, music, art, friends, love, swimming, and of course the sea.

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Poor
€16.50
As 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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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.

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Adventures in Wonderland
€15.95
Irishman Paul Charles is one of the leading music agents on the planet. Over the past 40 years, he has worked with some of the biggest names in music, at different times managing the careers of Van Morrison, Ray Davies of The Kinks, Gerry Rafferty, The Waterboys and Dexys Midnight Runners, and launching Tanita Tikaram – the teenage star whose debut album sold almost 5 million copies – into the world.

In his role with the Asgard agency, he has also promoted shows featuring many of the leading artists in the world, including The Police, U2, Van Morrison, Dire Straits, Carole King, Meatloaf, David Gilmour, BB King, Emmylou Harris and John Lee Hooker.

Paul has also been involved since the early days with Glastonbury Festival, with his artists topping the bill on more than one occasion before he was invited by Glastonbury founder Michael Eavis to take on the daunting – and inspiring – task of booking the Acoustic Stage at the festival every year, a role he has carried out for the past 30 years.

Packed with jaw-dropping stories, including the time when he was almost burned alive along with his precious record collection, and pen pictures of the kind of stars we all want to know more about, Adventures In Wonderland is also one of the most complete insights into the world – and the business – of music that you will ever encounter. It is a must-read for every music fan – and for students of how the world of rock ’n’ roll works alike.

Powerfully honest, often hilarious, frequently touching, and with wonderfully evocative photos, Adventures in Wonderland is a thoroughly joyous trip that will inspire readers to fall in love with music – whether for the first time or, better still, all over again…

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I Will Be Good
€18.50
Meet Peig McManus, an unforgettable Dublin character whose story will make you laugh and cry. Her memoir of a 1940s’ childhood is recounted with candour and wit, as she describes her early years in the last of the city’s tenements, under the shadow of the Second World War. Even in the midst of sorrow, as the ravages of poverty and tuberculosis prevailed, there was always singing and laughter.

Peig recalls happy family gatherings in their tenement rooms before their way of life was shattered when the slums were cleared, making way for the migration of inner-city families to Dublin’s new suburbs. Peig learned early about class distinction, chastity and shame, and fought against social prejudice to become one of Ireland’s foremost campaigners for educational reform. But a quiet sorrow lay at the heart of her life, one which could not be hidden forever.

Now, in her eighties, Peig shares her story: an inspiring journey through the trials and triumphs of a remarkableIrish woman who refused to do what she was told.

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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

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Walfrid
€23.95
Andrew Kerins [Brother Walfrid] [1840 – 1915] was one of
the most significant Irish immigrants to Scotland. He
was an outstanding individual in relation to Catholic
education and charity in Glasgow and a major
contributor to the emergence of organised sport in
Scotland in the late nineteenth century.
He was but one individual, amongst countless thousands
of victims, who survived the catastrophe of An Gorta Mor
in Ireland, only to be forced to leave behind family,
community and homeland in the hope of finding a
better life overseas. Over one million others perished
owing to the prevalence of starvation and disease during
Ireland’s darkest period. Kerins left for Glasgow as a
fifteen-year-old boy and the spectre of hunger,
accompanied by a concern for the spiritual and physical
well-being of others, are motifs which endured
throughout his long and impactful life.

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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?

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Spare
€26.95
It was one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother’s coffin as the world watched in sorrow – and horror. As Diana, Princess of Wales, was laid to rest, billions wondered what the princes must be thinking and feeling – and how their lives would play out from that point on. For Harry, this is that story at last.

With its raw, unflinching honesty, Spare is a landmark publication full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief. Prince Harry wishes to support British charities with donations from his proceeds from Spare. The Duke of Sussex has donated $1,500,000 to Sentebale, an organisation he founded with Prince Seeiso in their mothers’ legacies, which supports vulnerable children and young people in Lesotho and Botswana affected by HIV/AIDS.

Prince Harry will also donate to the non-profit organisation WellChild in the amount of GBP300,000. WellChild, which he has been Royal patron of for fifteen years, makes it possible for children and young people with complex health needs to be cared for at home instead of hospital, wherever possible.

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Mr. Attention To Detail
€12.95
KELLY, JOE

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Liber