Books

  • A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom

    A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom

    14.95
    Description
    Some stories are universal. Some are unique. They play out across human history, and time is the river that flows through them.

    This story starts with a family. For now, it is a father and a mother with two sons. One with his father’s violence in his blood.

    One with his mother’s artistry. One leaves. One stays.

    They will be joined by others whose deeds will determine their fate. It is a beginning. Their stories will intertwine and evolve over the course of two thousand years.

  • Oona

    Oona

    14.95
    Description

    What is the sound of a voice that is alienated from itself? How can one truthfully represent the creative process of an artist? Oona, an artist-in-the-making, lives in an affluent suburban culture of first-generation immigrants in New Jersey where conspicuous consumption and white privilege prevail, and the denial of death is ubiquitous. The silence surrounding death extends to the family home where Oona is not told while her mother lies dying of cancer upstairs. Afterwards, a silence takes hold inside her: her inner life goes into a deep freeze.

    Emotionally hobbled, she has her first encounters with sex, drugs and other trials of adolescence. Lyons’ first novel gives voice to a female character on her fraught journey into adulthood and charts her evolution as an artist, as her adolescent dissociation is thawed through contact with the physical world, the materials of painting and her engagement with Irish community, culture and landscape. Set during the era of the Celtic Tiger and its aftermath, this is a resonant story conveyed in an innovative form.

    Written entirely without the letter ‘o’, the tone of the book reflects Oona’s inner damage and the destruction caused by hiding, omitting and obliterating parts of ourselves.

  • Is There Anybody Out There

    Is There Anybody Out There

    14.95
    Description

    Science fiction meets science fact in this fully illustrated hilarious book from one of the UK and Ireland’s best-loved comedians. Genuinely qualified space expert, Dara O Briain, is here with all the answers to help you sort your science fiction from your science fact. Includes: * how life begins in the first place * how Earth was created * whether aliens might exist elsewhere in the Solar System * the search for other planets like our own * how we could possibly ever get there and .

    . . * would we really meet aliens? Alongside this runs the hilarious, but not very true story of Clara and her cat, Sputnik, who will join you on the journey of the book to help take you from novice alien-hunter to bona-fide space expert, with a brilliant final twist! So, is there anybody out there? NO.

  • Who They Was

    Who They Was

    14.95
    Description
    Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2020’A literary rendering of the Top Boy generation… I cannot conjure another work which captures this culture in such depth – or with such brutal honesty – as only lived experience can tell ‘ Graeme Armstrong, author of The Young Team’An astonishingly powerful book’ Cathy Rentzenbrink, author of The Last Act of LoveThis life is like being in an ocean. Some people keep swimming towards the bottom.
  • Life Sentences

    Life Sentences

    14.95
    Description

    The unforgettable tale of love, abandonment, hunger and redemption, from a rising star of Irish fiction

    ‘Eminently readable . . .

    My book of the year so far’ RYAN TUBRIDY

    *****

    At just sixteen, Nancy leaves the small island of Cape Clear for the mainland, the only member of her family to survive the effects of the Great Famine. Finding work in a grand house on the edge of Cork City, she is irrepressibly drawn to the charismatic gardener Michael Egan, sparking a love affair and a devastating chain of events that continues to unfold over three generations. Spanning more than a century, Life Sentences is the unforgettable journey of a family hungry for redemption, and determined against all odds to be free.

    This sweeping story of one family’s fight for survival goes on making the heart lurch long after the final page, and confirms Billy O’Callaghan as one of the finest living Irish writers.

  • Beyond Order

    Beyond Order

    14.95
    Description
    The long-awaited sequel to 12 RULES FOR LIFE, which has sold over 5 million copies around the worldIn 12 Rules for Life, acclaimed public thinker and clinical psychologist Jordan B. Peterson offered an antidote to the chaos in our lives: eternal truths applied to modern anxieties. His insights have helped millions of readers and resonated powerfully around the world.

    Now in this much-anticipated sequel, Peterson goes further, showing that part of life’s meaning comes from reaching out into the domain beyond what we know, and adapting to an ever-transforming world. While an excess of chaos threatens us with uncertainty, an excess of order leads to a lack of curiosity and creative vitality. Beyond Order therefore calls on us to balance the two fundamental principles of reality – order and chaos – and reveals the profound meaning that can be found on the path that divides them.

  • Clean and Green

    Clean and Green

    14.95

    Simple swaps and innovative ideas for cleaning and maintaining your home that won’t cost the Earth. Learn how easy it is to make simple swaps in your cleaning and tidying methods for a more eco-friendly home. This beautifully illustrated black and white guide with 101 hints and sustainable, natural cleaning tips and hacks will help you take small steps that have a massive positive environmental impact.

    In Clean & Green, Nancy Birtwhistle shares the simple recipes and methods she has developed since making a conscious effort to live more sustainably, many of which are faster and easier than the go-to products and methods most of us use now. From everyday cleaning and laundry tips to zero-effort oven cleaner and guidance on removing tricky stains from clothing and furniture, these economical, practical methods are perfect for anyone looking to reduce their use of plastic and throwaway products. Nancy shares her tried-and-tested recipes for all-purpose cleaners, replacements for harmful chemicals that will keep both your home and the planet clean and green for future generations.

  • Ireland's Pirate Trail

    Ireland’s Pirate Trail

    14.95

    Bloodthirsty buccaneers and buried treasure, fierce sea battles and cold-blooded murders, Barbary ducats and silver pieces of eight. Des Ekin embarks on a road trip around the entire coast of Ireland, in search of our piratical heritage, uncovering an amazing history of swashbuckling bandits, both Irish-born and imported. Ireland’s Pirate Trail tells stories of freebooters and pirates from every corner of our coast over a thousand years, including famous pirates like Anne Bonny and William Lamport, who set off to ply their trade in the Caribbean.

    Ekin also debunks many myths about our most well-known sea warrior, Granuaile, the ‘Pirate Queen’ of Mayo. Thoroughly researched and beautifully told. Filled with exciting untold stories.

  • Still Life

    Still Life

    14.95
    Description
    ‘Sheer joy’ Graham Norton’Utterly beautiful … filled with hope’ Joanna Cannon’A bear-hug of a book’ Rachel JoyceFrom the author of When God was a Rabbit and Tin Man, Still Life is a big-hearted story of people brought together by love, war, art and the ghost of E.M. Forster.1944, in the ruined wine cellar of a Tuscan villa, as bombs fall around them, two strangers meet and share an extraordinary evening.Ulysses Temper is a young British soldier, Evelyn Skinner is a sexagenarian art historian and possible spy.

    She has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the wreckage and relive memories of the time she encountered EM Forster and had her heart stolen by an Italian maid in a particular Florentine room with a view.Evelyn’s talk of truth and beauty plants a seed in Ulysses’ mind that will shape the trajectory of his life – and of those who love him – for the next four decades.Moving from the Tuscan Hills and piazzas of Florence, to the smog of London’s East End, Still Life is a sweeping, joyful novel about beauty, love, family and fate.’Four course nourishment for all Winman fans’ PATRICK GALE’Extraordinary . . .

    my book of the year’ LIZ NUGENT’The kind of story that bolsters the heart and soul’ DONAL RYANSunday Times bestseller 31/03/2018

  • Joe's Family Food

    Joe’s Family Food

    14.95

    Spend less time in the kitchen and more time together with 100 brand new family-friendly recipes from Joe Wicks, aka The Body Coach, the nation’s favourite PE teacher and record-breaking bestselling author. With 100 healthy, tasty, simple recipes to feed the whole family, this book is sure to provide new favourite go-to meals for speedy suppers, celebrations and everything in between. As the proud dad of two kids, Joe understands the realities of life as a busy parent.

    Sometimes you’re short of time, and it’s hard to come up with a balanced meal when you have a thousand things to think about! This book does the hard work for you, so cooking and sharing nutritious food can become a social, fun activity for your family. Each recipe is specially designed to please every family member, leaving you all feeling healthy, happy and satisfied. Including:* Mexican chicken burgers with avocado smash and sweetcorn salsa* Peanut butter popcorn* Frying-pan pizzas with little trees and fennel sausage* Cheesy orzo-stuffed tomatoes* Broccoli and pancetta carbonaraFilled with swaps to cater to all tastes and ideas for involving the kids when you’re cooking, this flexible cookbook will soon become your family favourite.

    The man who kept the nation moving during lockdown, Joe has sold more than three million books in the UK alone. He has more than four million followers on social media, where fans share their personal journeys towards a happier, healthier lifestyle. All of his books have been non-fiction number one bestsellers.

  • The Echo Chamber

    The Echo Chamber

    14.95

    Description
    What a thing of wonder a mobile phone is. Six ounces of metal, glass and plastic, fashioned into a sleek, shiny, precious object. At once, a gateway to other worlds – and a treacherous weapon in the hands of the unwary, the unwitting, the inept.

    The Cleverley family live a gilded life, little realising how precarious their privilege is, just one tweet away from disaster.

    George, the patriarch, is a stalwart of television interviewing, a ‘national treasure’ (his words), his wife Beverley, a celebrated novelist (although not as celebrated as she would like), and their children, Nelson, Elizabeth, Achilles, various degrees of catastrophe waiting to happen.

    Together they will go on a journey of discovery through the Hogarthian jungle of the modern living where past presumptions count for nothing and carefully curated reputations can be destroyed in an instant. Along the way they will learn how volatile, how outraged, how unforgiving the world can be when you step from the proscribed path.

  • The Book of St. Brigid

    The Book of St. Brigid

    14.95

    Description
    Feminist, farmer, abbess, bishop, convent founder and miracle worker, St. Brigid has inspired Irish women and men down through the ages. She cared for the poor, healed the sick, and managed monastic settlements.

    She became patron saint of revolutionaries and women fighting for their rights. She is also credited with inventing the Rosary beads, brewing ale, and inspiring the first tiered wedding cake and Buy Irish campaign. Pirate Queen Grace O’Malley, Lady Gregory and Maud Gonne MacBride regarded her as a guiding light.

    All of them, including Brigitte Bardot, Bridget Hitler and Cromwell’s daughter Bridget, are featured in this book. The book also describes her holy wells, St. Brigid’s Crosses, churches, miracles and cures – providing you with all you will ever need to know about Ireland’s female patron saint.

  • Seven Steeples

    Seven Steeples

    14.95

    The mountain remained, unclimbed, for the first year that they lived there. Bell and Sigh, a couple in the infancy of their relationship, cut themselves off from friends and family. They turn their backs on a city divided by scores of streets and hundreds of sterile cherry trees, by a foul river and a declining population of house sparrows.

    Them in and the world out. From the top of the nearby mountain, they are told, you can see seven standing stones, seven schools, and seven steeples. All you have to do is climb.

    Taking place in a remote house in the south-west of Ireland, this rich and vivid novel spans seven years and speaks to the times we live in, asking how we may withdraw, how better to live in the natural world, and how the choices made or avoided lead us home.

  • None of This is Serious

    None of This is Serious

    14.95

    Dublin student life is ending for Sophie and her friends. They’ve got everything figured out, and Sophie feels left behind as they all start to go their separate ways. She’s overshadowed by her best friend Grace.

    She’s been in love with Finn for as long as she’s known him. And she’s about to meet Rory, who’s suddenly available to her online. At a party, what was already unstable completely falls apart and Sophie finds herself obsessively scrolling social media, waiting for something (anything) to happen.

    None of This Is Serious is about the uncertainty and absurdity of being alive today. It’s about balancing the real world with the online, and the vulnerabilities in yourself, your relationships, your body. At its heart, this is a novel about the friendships strong enough to withstand anything.

  • Brouhaha

    Brouhaha

    14.95

    The razor-sharp, violent and darkly comic second novel from actor, comedian and writer Ardal O’Hanlon. Dove Connolly is dead. That’s not good for anyone in Tullyanna, never mind Dove.

    Now his best friend Sharkey is home asking awkward questions about Dove’s death, about the strange graphic novel he left behind, and, most of all, about Sandra. Sandra Mohan. Missing now for over a decade, whereabouts unknown.

    This, however, is a town dead-set on keeping its secrets. And Sharkey is already drawing attention from all the wrong quarters… A mystery, a black comedy, a satire on Ireland’s tangled politics of memory, Brouhaha is set in a small town on the Irish border during the uneasy transition to peace.

    And peace doesn’t come easy in these parts. *****Over the past few days, Kevin, no flies on him, had sensed a tension in the town thanks to Dove Connolly’s poor decision to blow his own head off. It wasn’t just the act of self-harm itself, the pointless splattering of blood and bone and brain all over his bedroom wall, that was the issue, unsettling as that was.

    In so doing, poor Dove had spread panic amongst the townspeople, raising all sorts of ugly questions, reviving all sorts of rumours, and inviting all sorts of unwelcome attention upon them. In Kevin’s mind, there was method in Dove’s madness. Showing a shocking assertiveness for possibly the first time in his life, and the last, says you, Dove blew the lid off the whole town.

  • Warrior Queens and Quiet Revolutionaries

    Warrior Queens and Quiet Revolutionaries

    14.95
    Description
    ‘One brilliant woman writing about so many other brilliant women, this is a wonderful treasure chest of women’s lives, full of wit, verve and emotion . . .

    Epic, unputdownable, gripping. I loved it’ – Professor Kate Williams”My hope is that this book will inspire as I have been inspired. It’s a love letter to the importance of history and about how, without knowing where we come from – truthfully and entirely – we cannot know who we are.”Warrior Queens & Quiet Revolutionaries is a celebration of unheard and under-heard women’s history.