Books

Showing 65–80 of 983 results

Americanah
€12.50
A delicious, important novel’ The Times ‘Alert, alive and gripping’ Independent ‘Some novels tell a great story and others make you change the way you look at the world. Americanah does both’ Guardian As teenagers in Lagos, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are fleeing the country if they can.

The self-assured Ifemelu departs for America. There she suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze had hoped to join her, but post-9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London.

Thirteen years later, Obinze is a wealthy man in a newly democratic Nigeria, while Ifemelu has achieved success as a blogger. But after so long apart and so many changes, will they find the courage to meet again, face to face? Fearless, gripping, spanning three continents and numerous lives, the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning ‘Americanah’ is a richly told story of love and expectation set in today’s globalized world.

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Ammu
€29.95
Indian family food with heart – the mouthwatering new cookbook from Asma Khan, founder of the iconic Darjeeling ExpressThis book is a joyful celebration of the universal power of food to restore, and to comfort. It is a tribute to Ammu, Asma’s mother, to the simple home cooking from her kitchen in Calcutta, and an exploration of the inextricable link between food and love. These dishes will bring warmth to your kitchen when you need a meal or dish to share with your family and friends – from quick-and-easy Baghare Aloo and Shahi Paneer, a vegetarian staple all ages love, to Ammu’s Chicken Biriyani the much-requested Darjeeling Express favourite.

With over 100 recipes, easy-to-follow instructions and a photograph for every dish Ammu is an essential book for anyone wanting to make Indian comfort food at home. ‘This is the food I cook for my family every day, meals to restore and nourish. I give these recipes to you, with love.’ – Asma

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Amnesty
€9.95
ADIGA, ARAVIND

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An American Marriage
€10.95
Description
LONGLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION, 2019’A moving portrayal of the effects of a wrongful conviction on a young African-American couple.’ – Barack ObamaA Book of the Year according the i, Guardian, Sunday Times, Sunday MailNewlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of the American Dream. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. Until one day they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined.

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AN EQUAL MUSIC
€13.50
A chance sighting on a bus; a letter which should never have been read; a pianist with a secret that touches the heart of her music . . .

AN EQUAL MUSIC is a book about love, about the love of a woman lost and found and lost again; it is a book about music and how the love of music can run like a passionate fugue through a life. It is the story of Michael, of Julia, and of the love that binds them.

‘Will still be read with pleasure and absorption decades from now‘ Spectator

‘A wonder-work: irresistible, tense, deeply moving‘ Sunday Times

‘A novel that can stand being reread and reread, but the first time round is an emotional cliffhanger … secure a copy for yourself, settle down, and prepare for the unforgettable‘ Sunday Times

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An Irish Atlantic Rainforest
€21.95
Description

On the Beara peninsula in West Cork, a temperate rainforest flourishes. It is the life work of Eoghan Daltun, who had a vision to rewild a 73-acre farm he bought, moving there from Dublin with his family in 2009. An Irish Atlantic Rainforest charts that remarkable journey.

Part memoir, part environmental treatise, as a wild forest bursts into life before our eyes, we’re invited to consider the burning issues of our time: climate breakdown, ecological collapse, and why our very survival as a species requires that we urgently and radically transform our relationship with nature. This is a story as much about doing nothing as taking action – allowing natural ecosystems to return and thrive without interference, and in doing so heal an ailing planet. Powerfully descriptive, lovingly told, An Irish Atlantic Rainforest presents an enduring picture of the regenerative force of nature, and how one Irishman let it happen.

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An Irish Civil War Dugout Tormore Cave, County Sligo
€48.00
A brutal Civil War erupted across Ireland in June 1922. The IRA, in opposition to the development of a pro-Treaty government, returned to the familiar guerrilla tactics of the War of Independence. Hundreds of dugouts constructed in rural settings were key to the IRA campaign.

These secret places offered safe shelter to men on the run, while also allowing for supplies and arms to be stored and prisoners held. Tormore Cave, high in the mountains of County Sligo, in the northwest of Ireland, was one such dugout. Over 30 Republican men sought refuge there for six weeks in September and October 1922.

Like most dugouts, Tormore Cave was never mentioned in historical accounts or documentary sources, but its significance was remembered locally. Archaeological excavations conducted on the centenary of its occupation revealed the extensive modifications that had transformed this natural limestone cave into a habitable military dugout, a crucial refuge for combatants whose comrades had been executed or arrested by Government forces. The historical artefacts and environmental material recovered during the excavations, combined with detailed archaeological surveys and analyses, provide a fascinating insight into the conditions endured by those billeted there.

The lives of the men and women directly associated with the cave dugout are explored, including an in-depth study of IRA General Officer Commanding Billy Pilkington – a key figure during the Irish revolutionary period who has, until now, been largely overlooked. An Irish Civil War Dugout: Tormore Cave, County Sligo adopts a multidisciplinary approach, the first of its kind in an Irish context, combining archaeology, local and military histories, family memories, community recollections, and landscape studies. This groundbreaking study – the first archaeological excavation of a Civil War site in Ireland, facilitates a wider discussion of the role of dugouts in guerrilla warfare.

By focussing in detail on one site at a local level, this book provides a unique and valuable contribution to the Irish revolutionary period on a regional and national scale.

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Ancestry
€12.50
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION

Almost two hundred years ago, Abraham, an illiterate urchin, scavenges on a Suffolk beach and dreams of running away to sea … Naomi, a seventeen-year-old seamstress, imagines a new life in the big city … George, a private soldier of the 50th Regiment of Food, marries his Irish bride, Annie, in the cathedral in Manchester and together they face married life under arms.

Now these people exist only in the bare bones of registers and census lists but they were once real enough. Simon Mawer puts flesh on our ancestors’ bones to bring them to life and give them voice. There is birth and death; there is love, both open and legal but also hidden and illicit.

Yet the thread that connects these disparate figures is something that they cannot have known – the unbreakable bond of family.

‘Utterly absorbing, cleverly constructed and beautifully written’ The Times

‘Moving and exhilarating’ Spectator

‘Evokes the messiness and fragility of everyday life in the nineteenth century’ Daily Mail

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Animal Farm
€5.00
Description

In 1943, there was an urgent need for Animal Farm. The Soviet Union had become Britain’s ally in the war against Nazi Germany, and criticism of Stalin’s brutal regime was either censored or discouraged. In any case, many intellectuals on the left still celebrated the Soviet Union, claiming that the terrors of its show trials, summary executions and secret police were either exaggerated or necessary.

But, to Orwell, Stalin was always a “disgusting murderer” and he wanted to remind people of this fact in a powerful and memorable way. But how to do it? A political essay would never reach a wide enough audience; a traditional novel would take too long to write. Orwell hit on the inspired idea of combining the moralism of the traditional ‘beast fable’ with the satire of Gulliver’s Travels.

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ANIMAL FARM
€10.50
‘All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others.’ Mr Jones of Manor Farm is so lazy and drunken that one day he forgets to feed his livestock. The ensuing rebellion under the leadership of the pigs, Napoleon and Snowball, leads to the animals taking over the farm.

Vowing to eliminate the terrible inequities of the farmyard, the renamed Animal Farm is organised to benefit all who walk on four legs. But as time passes, the ideals of the rebellion are corrupted, then forgotten. And something new and unexpected emerges.

First published in 1945, Animal Farm – the history of a revolution that went wrong – is George Orwell’s brilliant satire on the corrupting influence of power.

‘Remains our great satire of the darker face of modern history‘ Malcolm Bradbury

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ANNA KARENINA
€5.00
Anna Karenina is one of the most loved and memorable heroines of literature. Her overwhelming charm dominates a novel of unparalleled richness and density. Tolstoy considered this book to be his first real attempt at a novel form, and it addresses the very nature of society at all levels,- of destiny, death, human relationships and the irreconcilable contradictions of existence.

It ends tragically, and there is much that evokes despair, yet set beside this is an abounding joy in life’s many ephemeral pleasures, and a profusion of comic relief.

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Another Fine Mess
€18.95
Description
?Annie West is one of very few people capable of making mirth from mortality and Another Fine Mess is a brilliant exploration of the funny side of doom. We meet the daft, the reckless and the just plain unlucky in a hilarious chronicle of creative croaks that will leave you asking, when your number finally comes up and it?s time to hand in your pail, ?O Death, where is thy ba-ZING???

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Apeirogon
€12.50
How do we continue living once we have lost our reason to live? Rami and Bassam live in the city of Jerusalem – but exist worlds apart, divided by an age-old conflict.

And yet they have one thing in common. Both are fathers; both are fathers of daughters – and both daughters are now lost. When Rami and Bassam meet, and tell one another the story of their grief, the most unexpected thing of all happens: they become best of friends.

And their stories become one story, a story with the power to heal – and the power to change the world.

‘The book goes anywhere and everywhere. It is a delirious and thrilling improvisation, a jazz solo spun out of that meeting … A spectacular structure of stories about everything‘ Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times

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Ardennes 1944, Hitlers Last Gamble
€29.95
From the bestselling author of Stalingrad, Berlin and D-Day, Antony Beevor’s Ardennes 1944: Hitler’s Last Gamble tells the story of the German’s ill-fated final stand.

On 16 December, 1944, Hitler launched his ‘last gamble’ in the snow-covered forests and gorges of the Ardennes. He believed he could split the Allies by driving all the way to Antwerp, then force the Canadians and the British out of the war. Although his generals were doubtful of success, younger officers and NCOs were desperate to believe that their homes and families could be saved from the vengeful Red Army approaching from the east. Many were exultant at the prospect of striking back.

The Ardennes offensive, with more than a million men involved, became the greatest battle of the war in western Europe. American troops, taken by surprise, found themselves fighting two panzer armies. Belgian civilians fled, justifiably afraid of German revenge. Panic spread even to Paris. While many American soldiers fled or surrendered, others held on heroically, creating breakwaters which slowed the German advance.

The harsh winter conditions and the savagery of the battle became comparable to the eastern front. And after massacres by the Waffen-SS, even American generals approved when their men shot down surrendering Germans. The Ardennes was the battle which finally broke the back of the Wehrmacht.

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Arise and Go
€17.95
Description
The idea of place runs like a river through the life and works of the poet and playwright W.B. Yeats. This book focuses on his time in Dublin, London, Sligo and elsewhere in the west of Ireland, embracing the homes, landscapes and people that impacted his life and stimulated his vast body of work

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AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS
€5.00
Around the World in Eighty Days (1873) relates the hair-raising journey made as a wager by the Victorian gentleman Phileas Fogg, who succeeds – but only just! – in circling the globe within eighty days. The dour Fogg’s obsession with his timetable is complemented by the dynamism and versatility of his French manservant, Passepartout, whose talent for getting into scrapes brings colour and suspense to the race against time. Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863) was Verne’s first novel.

It documents an apocryphal jaunt across the continent of Africa in a hydrogen balloon designed by the omniscient, imperturbable and ever capable Dr Fergusson, the prototype of the Vernian adventurer.

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Liber