Non Fiction

It was love at first taste for fifteen-year old Tadhg Hickey when he drank a can of Scrumpy Jack on the night of his exam results. Straight away it provided a cure for that constant feeling of ‘something wrong, something not quite right’, a way of numbing anxiety and childhood trauma. He realised he was extraordinarily good at drinking and energetically threw himself into a life of pubs, parties and staying pissed, while also managing to become a comedian. But alcohol had the last laugh …

A Portrait of the Piss Artist as a Young Man shows us the often-hilarious lengths of self-deception an alcoholic will go to, the horrific consequences of addiction and the redemptive process of recovering from this deadly but ultimately treatable illness, and remaining sober. A deeply touching memoir and with a side of self-help, Tadhg’s easy-going writing style belies his serious message – that each of us has the power to change our lives.

Three very different men battle to control their destinies as they hurtle through the hall of mirrors of the global shadow economy.

Jack Kelly, a veteran US Drug Enforcement Administration agent, tasked with following a trail of dirty money across continents from a top-secret investigative unit based in Virginia.

Salvatore Pititto is an ambitious Mafia capo working on a vast cocaine shipment who becomes unexpectedly pulled into an arms-smuggling conspiracy.

Mustafa Badreddine is a ghost-like master terrorist wanted by governments across the world who has been secretly dispatched to Syria for his final mission.

Each man, born in radically different circumstances in the 1960s, is in his own way grappling with the powerful and unstoppable forces that shape the world around us; forces which topple governments, send refugees fleeing across borders, and put guns in the hands of mercenaries and militias. Each has devoted his whole life to an institution – the DEA, the Mafia and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah – and each will eventually be destroyed or betrayed by the thing they believe in the most.

Set during 2015 and 2016, as the global order began to implode under the pressures of the Syrian civil war and the European refugee crisis, CHASING SHADOWS looks back over the historical conflicts, events and personal histories that have shaped the lives of these three men. It’s a book that shows the betrayals, the disillusionment and the violence as Jack Kelly hunts down his targets.