Books

  • 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.

  • The Land of Lost Things

    The Land of Lost Things

    15.95

    Phoebe, an eight-year-old girl, lies comatose following a car accident. She is a body without a spirit, a stolen child. Ceres, her mother, can only sit by her bedside and read aloud to Phoebe the fairy stories she loves in the hope they might summon her back to this world.
    But it is hard to keep faith, so very hard.

    Now an old house on the hospital grounds, a property connected to a book written by a vanished author, is calling to Ceres.

    Something wants her to enter, and to journey – to a land coloured by the memories of Ceres’s childhood, and the folklore beloved of her father, to a land of witches and dryads, giants and mandrakes; to a land where old enemies are watching, and waiting.

    To the Land of Lost Things.

  • The Last Days Of Joy

    The Last Days Of Joy

    16.95

    Meet the Tobin Family…

    Joy, the complicated, troubled mother She’s spent her life running from her past while trying to raise her children as best she can. Conor, the high-achieving eldest child A high-profile media figure and CEO, he’s walking a fine line between self-promotion and self-detonation. Frances, the ‘perfect’ middle child Now a wife and mother, she’s about to make a mistake that could destroy her marriage.

    Youngest daughter, Sinead, the acclaimed writer Wrestling with writer’s block, she resorts to desperate measures to deliver her next bestselling book to her publishers. When Joy’s children receive the news that she has only days to live, they rush to her side, bringing with them all of the dysfunction and hurt they have been carrying since their childhoods. Each of them is at a crossroads in their lives – but there’s one more secret about their mother they need to learn.

    Will they finally be able to forgive their mother and, in doing so, face their futures together?

     

  • The Last Devil to Die

    The Last Devil to Die

    15.95

    THE FOURTH NOVEL IN THE RECORD-BREAKING, MILLION-COPY BESTSELLING THURSDAY MURDER CLUB SERIES. COMPLETE THEIR COLLECTION THIS CHRISTMAS!

    Shocking news reaches the Thursday Murder Club.

    An old friend in the antiques business has been killed, and a dangerous package he was protecting has gone missing.

    As the gang springs into action they encounter art forgers, online fraudsters and drug dealers, as well as heartache close to home.

    With the body count rising, the package still missing and trouble firmly on their tail, has their luck finally run out? And who will be the last devil to die?

  • The Last Lifeboat

    The Last Lifeboat

    15.95

    Liverpool 1940. Alice King stands on the deck of SS Carlisle, waiting to escort a group of children to Canada as overseas evacuees. She is finally doing her bit for the war. In London, as the Blitz bombs rain down and the threat of German invasion looms, Lily Nicholls anxiously counts the days for news of her son and daughter’s safe arrival. But when disaster strikes in the Atlantic, Alice and Lily – one at sea, the other on land – will quickly become one another’s very best hope.

    The events of one night, and the eight unimaginable days that follow, will bind the two women together in unforgettable ways. Inspired by a remarkable true story, The Last Lifeboat is a gripping and triumphant tale of love, courage and hope against the odds.

  • The Late Night Writers Club

    The Late Night Writers Club

    22.95

    A Graphic Novel

    A talented but annoying Debut Author, suffering from writer’s block and mysterious headaches, ghosted by his girlfriend and on his last chance with his bartender job, takes refuge in the National Library of Ireland, hoping for some last-minute inspiration within those hallowed walls.

    Tortured by literary inadequacy and disappointed love, can he somehow absorb the famous modesty of Yeats, the wit of Edgeworth, the charm of Binchy, the wisdom of Heaney? But a weird twist of fate or perhaps a guiding hand reveals all is not what it seems in the library after dark, and The Author soon discovers: be careful what you wish for. In rich and abundant illustrations, Annie West tells a rowdy story of artistic struggle, ego and unexpected kindness. You will never look at the Irish Literary Canon in the same way again.

  • The Lecher Antenna

    The Lecher Antenna

    20.00

    Paperback. This is Part 2 which is a Lecher Antenna Practical Guide and is an elaborate traning course in geobiology and bio-energy which will enable the reader to make their own Lecher antenna measurements. . . . .

  • The Legend of Valentine Sorrow

    The Legend of Valentine Sorrow

    8.95

    Sligo 1832. The cholera epidemic sweeps across Ireland like a secret, bringing with it a family of four hundred year old Vampires.

    Unsuspecting orphan, Valentine, is unaware of the Vampires lurking in the shadows, until he finds himself flying through the star filled sky on his way to a Vampire’s Lair.

    Matilda, Valentine’s sister, returns home from the fever hospital to discover that her brother Valentine has vanished and she will stop at nothing to find him.

    Valentine embarks on the adventure of a lifetime; he is shipwrecked at the foot of an ancient lighthouse, battles with a Vampire Hunter, rescues a mermaid and works as an illusionist. Valentine takes up residence in Casino Marino, an exquisite temple in Dublin with hidden rooms and secret passageways.

    It is a race against the clock. Will Valentine ever see Matilda again? Can he overcome the Vampire’s curse? And does he have what it takes to defeat Lorenzo, a wicked Vampire, who has travelled through time to find him?

    The Legend of Valentine Sorrow is inspired by Bram Stoker’s mother Charlotte Thornley, and her incredible eyewitness account of the Cholera epidemic in Ireland. Many believe that Charlotte Thornley influenced Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula.

  • The Let Them Theory

    The Let Them Theory

    26.95
    Description

    New York Times Bestselling Author. Millions of books sold worldwide! A Life-Changing Tool Millions of People Can’t Stop Talking About What if the key to happiness, success, and love was as simple as two words? If you’ve ever felt stuck, overwhelmed, or frustrated with where you are, the problem isn’t you. The problem is the power you give to other people.

    Two simple words—Let Them—will set you free. Free from the opinions, drama, and judgments of others. Free from the exhausting cycle of trying to manage everything and everyone around you.

  • The Letters of Seamus Heaney

    The Letters of Seamus Heaney

    45.00

    Every now and again I need to get down here, to get into the Diogenes tub, as it were, or the Colmcille beehive hut, or the Mossbawn scullery. At any rate, a hedge surrounds me, the blackbird calls, the soul settles for an hour or two . . .

    For all his public eminence, Seamus Heaney seems never to have lost the compelling need to write personal letters. In this ample but discriminating selection from fifty years of his correspondence, we are given access as never before to the life and poetic development of a literary titan – from his early days in Belfast, through his controversial decision to settle in the Republic, to the gradual broadening of horizons that culminated in the award of a Nobel Prize and the years of international acclaim that kept him heroically busy until his death.

    Editor Christopher Reid draws from both public and private archives to reveal this story in the poet’s own words. Generous, funny, exuberant, confiding, irreverent, empathetic and deeply thoughtful, the letters encompass decades-long relationships with friends and colleagues, as well as showing an unstinted responsiveness to passing acquaintances. Moreover, Heaney’s joyous mastery of language is as evident here as it is in any of his writing for a literary readership.

    Listening to Heaney’s voice, we find ourselves in the same room as a man whose presence, when he lived, enriched the world immeasurably, and whose legacy continues to deepen our sense of what truly matters.

  • The Librarianist

    The Librarianist

    16.95

    Bob Comet is a retired librarian passing his solitary days surrounded by books in a mint-colored house in Portland, Oregon. One morning on his daily walk he encounters a confused elderly woman lost in a market and returns her to the senior center that is her home. Hoping to fill the void he’s known since retiring, he begins volunteering at the center.

    Here, as a community of strange peers gathers around Bob, and following a happenstance brush with a painful complication from his past, the events of his life and the details of his character are revealed. Behind Bob Comet’s straight man facade is the story of an unhappy child’s runaway adventure during the last days of the Second World War, of true love won and stolen away, of the purpose and pride found in the librarian’s vocation, and the pleasures of a life lived to the side of the masses. Comet’s experiences are imbued with melancholy but also a bright, sustained comedy; he has a talent for locating bizarre and outsized players to welcome onto the stage of his life.

    With his inimitable verve, skewed humor, and compassion for the outcast, Patrick deWitt has written a wide-ranging and ambitious document of the introvert’s condition. The Librarianist celebrates the extraordinary in the so-called ordinary life, and depicts beautifully the turbulence that sometimes exists beneath a surface of serenity.

  • 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?

  • The Little Prince

    The Little Prince

    9.95

    The Little Prince is a modern fable, and for readers far and wide both the title and the work have exerted a pull far in excess of the book’s brevity. Written and published first by Antoine de St-Exupery in 1943, only a year before his plane disappeared on a reconnaissance flight, it is one of the world’s most widely translated books, enjoyed by adults and children alike. In the meeting of the narrator who has ditched his plane in the Sahara desert, and the little prince, who has dropped there through time and space from his tiny asteroid, comes an intersection of two worlds, the one governed by the laws of nature, and the other determined only by the limits of imagination.

    The world of the imagination wins hands down, with the concerns of the adult world often shown to be lamentably silly as seen through the eyes of the little prince. While adult readers can find deep meanings in his various encounters, they can also be charmed back to childhood by this wise but innocent infant. This popular translation contains the author’s own delightful illustrations, bringing to visual life the small being at the tale’s heart, and a world of fantasy far removed from any quotidian reality.

    It is also a sort of love story, in which two frail beings, the downed pilot and the wandering infant-prince who has left behind all he knows, share their short time together isolated from humanity and finding sustenance in each other. This is a book which creates a unique relationship with each reader, whether child or adult.

  • The Lock-Keeper's Wife

    The Lock-Keeper’s Wife

    15.95

    Julie McDermot has just been released from ‘The Mental’, the psychiatric institution where her husband committed her after the devastating loss of their two infant children. Returning to her narrow, lonely life along the canal, Julie is haunted by grief and the aching absence of what might have been. As she struggles to piece herself back together, an unexpected encounter with a stranger along the canal offers a glimmer of connection and the fragile possibility of hope.

    Their encounter also brings long-submerged realities to the surface, to a place where they can no longer be ignored; exploring Ireland’s dark history of institutional incarceration and offering a profound glimpse of hopein a stunning portrait of a woman’s life. Moving and deeply evocative, this novel is a powerful meditation on sorrow, isolation, and the surprising ways joy can return to even the most broken heart.

  • The Lodgers

    The Lodgers

    15.95

    One house. Three strangers. A second chance at happiness.

    Tessa’s life as an activist and volunteer worker takes a hit after a fall. At the ripe young age of 69, she’s no longer able to live alone and decides to take in two lodgers for free. After the recent death of his brother, Conn is riddled with grief and determined to make amends.

    A free room seems too good to be true – until he meets the other lodger. Chloe arrives at Tessa’s house to deliver a package and leaves with a room. But she takes an instant dislike to Conn, who refuses to say where he disappears to at night.

    With everyone so busy keeping their own secrets, the mysterious package is forgotten. It’s addressed to Tessa’s daughter who’s been missing for 10 years – and only the contents have the answer to what happened …

  • The Lost Spells

    The Lost Spells

    17.50

    Dazzlingly beautiful and wonderfully inventive, discover the magical new book from the creators of bestselling, critically acclaimed literary phenomenon, The Lost Words . . .

    ‘Luminously beautiful. An amulet in dark times, to be carried like a talisman out into the world, where it is very much needed’ Dara McAnulty. Kindred in spirit to The Lost Words but fresh in its form, The Lost Spells is a pocket-sized treasure that introduces a beautiful new set of natural spell-poems and artwork by beloved creative duo Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris. Each “spell” conjures an animal, bird, tree or flower — from Barn Owl to Red Fox, Grey Seal to Silver Birch, Jay to Jackdaw — with which we share our lives and landscapes.

    Moving, joyful and funny, The Lost Spells above all celebrates a sense of wonder, bearing witness to nature’s power to amaze, console and bring joy. Written to be read aloud, painted in brushstrokes that call to the forest, field, riverbank and also to the heart, The Lost Spells summons back what is often lost from sight and care, teaching the names of everyday species, and inspiring its readers to attention, love and care. Praise for The Lost Words: ‘Gorgeous to look at and to read.

    Give it to a child to bring back the magic of language’ Jeanette Winterson, Guardian ‘Breathtaking, magical . . Jackie Morris has created something that you could spend all day looking at’ New Statesman. ‘Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris have made a thing of astonishing beauty’ Observer