Books

  • This Plague of Souls

    This Plague of Souls

    15.95

    How do you rebuild a world that seems to be falling apart? Nealon returns to his family home in Ireland after a long time away, only to be greeted by a completely empty house. No heat or light, no sign of his wife or child anywhere. It seems the world has forgotten that he even existed.

    The one exception is a persistent caller on the telephone, someone who seems to know everything about Nealon’s life, his recent bother with the law and, more importantly, what has happened to his family. All Nealon needs to do is talk with him. But the more he talks the closer Nealon gets to the same trouble he was in years ago, tangled in the very crimes of which he claims to be innocent.

    Part roman noir, part metaphysical thriller, This Plague of Souls is a story for these fractured times, dealing with how we might mend the world, and the story of a man who would let the world go to hell if he could keep his family together.

  • Heaney - The Classic Heaney Issue

    Heaney – The Classic Heaney Issue

    30.00

    A hardback reprint of the classic Irish Pages issue on Seamus Heaney to commemorate the tenth anniversary of his death on 30 August 2013, including four last poems by Seamus Heaney.

    Sven Birkerts and Helen Vendler on the man and the poet. A Suite of Obituaries & Global Reminiscences by leading poets and writers in Ireland, Britain and the United States. Poems by Kerry Hardie, Michael Coady, Paddy Bushe, Kathleen Jamie, Katie Donovan, Sean Lysaght, Damian Smyth, Ignatius McGovern, John F. Deane, Francis Harvey, Michael Longley, Alan Gillis, Moya Cannon and Harry Clifton. President Michael D. Higgins on John Hewitt and Richard Murphy on poetry and terror.

    Writing in Irish from Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Cathal O Searcaigh and others. PLUS: “Seamus Justin Heaney 1939-2013”, a unique photographic portfolio by Bobbie Hanvey.

  • A Day in the Life of Abed Salama

    A Day in the Life of Abed Salama

    30.00

    LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION

    A deeply immersive portrait of daily life in Israel and the West Bank‘ The Best Books to Understand the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Financial Times

    Brims over with just the sort of compassion and understanding that is needed at a time like this … when facts have become weapons in this seemingly endless conflict, this is a book that speaks with deep and authentic truth of ordinary lives trapped in the jaws of history‘ Observer

    A gripping, intimate story of one heartbreaking day in Palestine that reveals lives, loves, enmities, and histories in violent collision.

    Milad is five years old and excited for his school trip to a theme park on the outskirts of Jerusalem, but tragedy awaits: his bus is involved in a horrific accident. His father, Abed, rushes to the chaotic site, only to find Milad has already been taken away.

    Abed sets off on a journey to learn Milad’s fate, navigating a maze of physical, emotional, and bureaucratic obstacles he must face as a Palestinian. Interwoven with Abed’s odyssey are the stories of Jewish and Palestinian characters whose lives and pasts unexpectedly converge: a kindergarten teacher and a mechanic who rescue children from the burning bus; an Israeli army commander and a Palestinian official who confront the aftermath at the scene of the crash; a settler paramedic; ultra-Orthodox emergency service workers; and two mothers who each hope to claim one severely injured boy.

    A Day in the Life of Abed Salama is a deeply immersive, stunningly detailed portrait of life in Israel and Palestine, and an illumination of the reality of one of the most contested places on earth.

  • Home Kitchen

    Home Kitchen

    12.00

    Become a more confident, creative and instinctive home cook, with inspiration, tips, and delicious recipes from much-loved Irish cook Donal Skehan. In his new book, Donal brings us into the heart of his kitchen, showing us how he cooks for his family and what inspires him – from his granny’s handwritten recipes and his Irish heritage to his time living in LA. Donal shares delicious recipes from his many experiences and travels, as well as his decades as a home cook, that you’ll want to make time and again.

    Donal has all aspects of the week covered with chapters such as make-ahead Sundays, everyday dinners, weekday rush, slow-cooking weekend wins, and scrumptious desserts. Recipes include:Cauliflower Mac ‘n’ Cheese with Chorizo Crumbs; Sheet-Pan Sticky Korean Popcorn; Chicken with Rice and Slaw; Slow Cooker Butter Chicken; Prawn and Dill Rolls with Wild Garlic Mayo; Basque Burnt Cheesecake with Cherries; Irish Coffee, Hazelnut and Chocolate Tiramisu.

    Packed with amazing recipes, tips and tricks, this book will help you get the most out of every week and learn to truly love your own home kitchen.

  • Old Ireland in Colour 3

    Old Ireland in Colour 3

    24.95

    John 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.

  • The Food Pharmacy

    The Food Pharmacy

    24.95

    Jess Redden has always had a passion for food. Cooking together from scratch at home was the norm but as she grew up, stress, poor sleep and processed food on the go resulted in digestive issues, skin breakouts and low mood. Determined to address her symptoms without medication, Jess learned about the impact of food on well-being, turned her life around by taking a holistic approach that included diet, exercise and time to rest and recharge.

    Now a pharmacist, Jess brings her passion for nutrition and lifestyle to her work. Here she shares her knowledge of the most common ailments that present at the pharmacy counter and explains how food can be our first source for fuelling or fighting symptoms of disease. Here she shares over 100 easy, delicious recipes to optimise heart, gut, and bone health, balance hormone and blood sugars and much more!

  • Big Beacon

    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.

  • The Defector

    The Defector

    12.95

    Israel, late 1973. As the Yom Kippur War flares into life, a state-of-the-art Soviet MIG fighter is racing at breakneck speed over the arid scrublands below . . . and promptly disappears.

    NASA Flight Controller and former US Navy test pilot Kaz Zemeckis watches the scene from the ground – and is quickly pulled into a dizzying, high-stakes game of spies, lies and a possible high-level defection that plays out across three continents.

    The prize is beyond value: the secrets of the Soviets’ mythical ‘Foxbat’ MiG-25, the fastest, highest-flying fighter plane in the world and the key to Cold War air supremacy. But every defection is double-edged with risk, and Kaz must tread a careful line between trust and suspicion. Ultimately, he must invite the fox into the henhouse – bringing the defector into the heart of the United States’ most secret test site – and hope that, with skill and cunning, the game plays out his way.

    For Chris Hadfield’s second heart-stopping thriller, we move from Space to another rich and exciting part of Chris’s CV: his time as a top test pilot in both the US Air Force and the US Navy, and as an RCAF fighter pilot intercepting armed Soviet bombers in North American airspace.

    Full of insider detail, excitement and political intrigue drawn from real events, The Defector brings us the nerve-shredding rush of aerial combat, as told by one of the world’s best fighter pilots.

  • From Malin Head to Mizen Head

    From Malin Head to Mizen Head

    22.95

    The Sea Area Forecast is broadcast daily on RTE radio at 6 a.m. and midnight. Foretelling fair days or fierce storms coming in across our seas, it has become a national institution – its hypnotic, rhythmic language as reassuring as the Angelus.

    Acting as a gentle morning wake-up call and a soothing bedtime lullaby, it transports us to faraway places and describes weather patterns we can’t comprehend. From Mizen Head to Malin, Valentia to Loop Head, and Carlingford Lough to Hook Head – rising or falling slowly, backing south-east to north-east or veering south-to-south-west – it has a unique language all of its own, but what does it all mean? Here, meteorologist Joanna Donnelly takes readers on a journey around Ireland’s Sea Area Forecast, visiting the places that are a familiar part of the daily broadcast and explaining its unique history, language and science.

  • Michael Viney's Natural World

    Michael Viney’s Natural World

    17.95

    Not long before he died, Michael completed Michael Viney’s Natural World, which he described as ‘a personal popular narrative that gives a lot of my illustrations a further bit of life’. This highly visual publication contains over fifty of Michael’s meticulous illustrations in full colour, accompanied by a personal narrative full of keen insights and observations on nature, our relationship with nature, and a growing awareness of our vulnerability.

    ‘In the blunders of the Anthropocene, the era of human dominance,’ he writes, ‘we may not be “threatening the planet” – it will carry on without us – but we have affected the Earth’s systems in ways that make our own survival uncomfortable and insecure.’

    The foreword is written by his longtime friend, the poet Michael Longley, with whom the Vineys shared this ‘soul-landscape’ for almost half a century. Longley writes of Viney, ‘Born to write, born to draw and paint, this deep-souled creator reconciled poetry and science.’

  • The Lamplighters of the Phoenix Park

    The Lamplighters of the Phoenix Park

    12.00

    The Phoenix Park in Dublin holds a special place in the collective memory of Irish people. From the assassinations of 1882 and the destruction of several imperial monuments, to the arrival of Douglas Hyde as Ireland’s first president and Pope John Paul’s 1979 visit, it has been at the centre of Irish society for centuries. But the park is also part and parcel of daily life for many Dubliners – none more so than the Flanagan family, who have been lighting the gas lamps within its walls since 1890.

    Here, historian Donal Fallon speaks to brothers Frank and James Flanagan, lamplighters of the park, to give us a snapshot of a fading tradition, and a unique history of one of Ireland’s most beloved places. With stunning photographs, historical events and personal stories, The Lamplighters of the Phoenix Park shines a light on the park at the centre of our national identity, through the prism of this singular family, whose histories have been intertwined for more than 150 years.

  • This Is the Life

    This Is the Life

    16.95

    The GAA is Ireland’s largest civil society organisation, woven into the fabric of families and communities – and yet most books about Gaelic games focus on the greatest players and inter-county teams. This is the Life is a book about the 99 per cent: a witty and provocative look at grassroots GAA from the most intelligent and interesting Gaelic games pundit at work today.

    Ciarán Murphy – of Second Captains and the Irish Times – has an unmatched feel for the timeless elements of this world and a finger on the pulse of change. He looks at the plight of rural clubs that are losing their players to the cities – and he does so not only as a journalist but as a footballer who made the same move himself (and who once, flying home to play a club match, found himself alone on the plane with Jedward). He writes about working as an assistant in the clothing shop owned by the family of Jarlath Fallon – who was both Ciaran’s all-time sporting hero and the local postman. And he looks at things we usually prefer not to talk about, like the role of social class in the GAA.

    This is the Life is a book about the places the GAA comes from, the places it can take a person, and the things that make a local club worth fighting for.

  • Butter Boy

    Butter Boy

    40.00

    Butter Boy is the complete collection of all 152 articles and over 450 recipes from Paul Flynn’s tenure as food writer for the Irish Times from November 2019 to October 2022. Paul’s columns also chronicled what turned out to be the three most unusual and challenging years of our lives, when cooking and mealtimes took on new meaning.

    Paul’s food is simple, seasonal and family-oriented. It’s designed to give comfort at any time of year because after a hard day, cooking dinner can be soothing and eating it can be comforting. Afterwards, the world feels just that little bit better.

    Warm, witty and laugh-out-loud funny, reading and cooking from Butter Boy is like spending time in the kitchen with an old friend.

  • The Dictionary People

    The Dictionary People

    17.50

    The Oxford English Dictionary has long been associated with elite institutions and Victorian men; its longest-serving editor, James Murray, devoted 36 years to the project, as far as the letter T. But the Dictionary didn’t just belong to the experts; it relied on contributions from members of the public. By the time it was finished in 1928 its 414,825 entries had been crowdsourced from a surprising and diverse group of people, from archaeologists and astronomers to murderers, naturists, novelists, pornographers, queer couples, suffragists, vicars and vegetarians.

    Lexicographer Sarah Ogilvie dives deep into previously untapped archives to tell a people’s history of the OED.

    She traces the lives of thousands of contributors who defined the English language, from the eccentric autodidacts to the family groups who made word-collection their passion. With generosity and brio, Ogilvie reveals, for the first time, the full story of the making of one of the most famous books in the world – and celebrates to sparkling effect the extraordinary efforts of the Dictionary People.

  • The Lie Maker

    The Lie Maker

    16.95

    In this twisty thriller from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Take Your Breath Away, a man desperately tries to track down his father – who was taken into witness protection years ago – before his enemies can get to him. Your dad’s not a good person. Your dad killed people, son. These are some of the last words Jack Givins’s father spoke to him before he was whisked away by witness protection, leaving Jack and his mother to pick up the shattered pieces of their lives. Years later, Jack is a struggling author, recruited by the U.S. Marshals to create false histories for people in witness protection.

    Jack realises this may be a chance to find his dad – but then he discovers he’s gone missing, and he could be in serious danger. Jack knows he has to track him down. But how will he find a man he’s never truly known? And how will he evade his father’s deadly enemies – enemies who wouldn’t think twice about using his own son against him?

  • Show Me the Science

    Show Me the Science

    12.95

    Never Mind the B#ll*cks, Here’s the Science is Professor Luke O’Neill’s biggest runaway bestseller in which he grapples with life’s biggest questions and tells us what science has to say about them.

    Now adapted for children, Show Me the Science asks the same questions – Do we have control over our lives? Can we escape working in terrible jobs? Why do we need vaccinations? Are men’s and women’s brains different? Will we destroy the planet? – and encourages children to apply a scientific mindset in attempting to answer them.

    Covering topics from global pandemics to artificial intelligence, this is a celebration of science and all the brilliant answers it can offer us for a budding generation of professors!