Books

  • The Wildflowers of Ireland

    The Wildflowers of Ireland

    16.95

    Description
    Discover the fascinating world of Ireland’s diverse and astonishing collection of native wildflowers. This new edition reflects the many changes to our botanical knowledge since The Wildflowers of Ireland was first published in 2014. There’s updated information on the distribution of native wildflowers, along with more than 90 additional species, all beautifully photographed by the author.

    For ease of identification, the species are divided into colour categories and within each category the species are grouped by, for example, the number of petals in the flower or whether the species carries its flowers in a cluster or a spike. In easily understood terminology, focus is put on the main identifying features of each plant, by colour, size, shape of flower, leaf, habitat, flowering season, and where in Ireland it might be found. This is a must for enthusiasts of all ages and levels of experience.

  • The Wind Knows My Name

    The Wind Knows My Name

    17.50

    Vienna, 1938. Samuel Adler is five years old when his father disappears during Kristallnacht the night their family loses everything. As her child s safety seems ever harder to guarantee, Samuel s mother secures a spot for him on the last Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to England. He boards alone, carrying nothing but a change of clothes and his violin.

    Arizona, 2019. Eight decades later, Anita Diaz and her mother board another train, fleeing looming danger in El Salvador and seeking refuge in the United States. But their arrival coincides with the new family separation policy, and seven-year-old Anita finds herself alone at a camp in Nogales. She escapes her tenuous reality through her trips to Azabahar, a magical world of the imagination.

    Meanwhile, Selena Duran, a young social worker, enlists the help of a successful lawyer in hopes of tracking down Anita s mother. Intertwining past and present, The Wind Knows My Name tells the tale of these two unforgettable characters, both in search of family and home. It is both a testament to the sacrifices that parents make, and a love letter to the children who survive the most unfathomable dangers and never stop dreaming.

  • The Wisdom of Farmers

    The Wisdom of Farmers

    14.95

    ‘There is hard-won wisdom here, and good cheer, and a reminder that the world is much wider, older and more interesting than you’d think’ BILL McKIBBEN’Kind, wise and immensely readable’ TIM FLANNERYA thoughtful, illuminating rumination on the life lessons we can take from those who work the land and the millennia of wisdom they draw upon when they go about their day, ‘making a living by turning light and time into money’. As with his previous bestsellers, John Connell skilfully synthesises philosophy, art, literature and spirituality to bolster his thoughts on such topics as stoicism, the food chain and the role of community, leaving the reader convinced of the importance of connecting with their own inner farmer.

  • The Wolves of Eternity

    The Wolves of Eternity

    19.95

    It is 1986 and Syvert Loyning has returned from military service to his mother’s home in southern Norway. One night, he dreams of his late father, and the next morning can’t shake him from his mind. Searching through his father’s belongings for clues and connections, Syvert finds a cache of letters that leads to the Soviet Union, and to a half-sister, Alevtina, he didn’t know he had.

    Several decades later, in present-day Russia, he will meet her – just as a mysterious new star appears in the sky…

    From internationally bestselling author Karl Ove Knausgaard, The Wolves of Eternity is the new book in a visionary series that begins with The Morning Star.

    Expansive, searching and deeply human, it questions the responsibilities we have toward one another and ourselves – and the limits of what we can understand about life itself.

  • The Woman on the Bridge

    The Woman on the Bridge

    17.50

    In a country fighting for freedom, it’s hard to live a normal life. Winnie O’Leary supports the cause, but she doesn’t go looking for trouble. Then rebel Joseph Burke steps into her workplace.

    Winnie is furious with him about a broken window. She’s not interested in romance. But love comes when you least expect it.

    Joseph’s family shelter fugitives and smuggle weapons.

    Joseph would never ask Winnie to join the fight; but his mother and sisters demand commitment. Will Winnie choose Joseph, and put her own loved ones in deadly danger? Or wait for a time of peace that may never come?

    Ireland’s tumultuous independence struggle is the backdrop for an unforgettable story of courage and heartbreak, in which heroes are made of ordinary people. Inspired by the story of Sheila O’Flanagan’s grandmother, The Woman on the Bridge is the unmissable, compulsive new novel from a bestselling author.

  • The Women

    The Women

    17.95

    ‘Women can be heroes, too’. When twenty-year-old nursing student, Frances “Frankie” McGrath, hears these unexpected words, it is a revelation.

    Raised on California’s idyllic Coronado Island and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing, being a good girl. But in 1965 the world is changing, and she suddenly imagines a different path for her life. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she impulsively joins the Army Nurses Corps and follows his path.

    As green and inexperienced as the young men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is overwhelmed by the chaos and destruction of war, as well as the unexpected trauma of coming home to a changed America. Frankie will also discover the true value of female friendship and the heartbreak that love can cause.

  • The World

    The World

    19.95

    From the master storyteller and internationally bestselling author – the story of humanity from prehistory to the present day, told through the one thing all humans have in common: family. We begin with the footsteps of a family walking along a beach 950,000 years ago. From here, Montefiore takes us on an exhilarating epic journey through the families that have shaped our world: the Caesars, Medicis and Incas, Ottomans and Mughals, Bonapartes, Habsburgs and Zulus, Rothschilds, Rockefellers and Krupps, Churchills, Kennedys, Castros, Nehrus, Pahlavis and Kenyattas, Saudis, Kims and Assads.

    A rich cast of complex characters form the beating heart of the story. Some are well-known leaders, from Alexander the Great, Attila, Ivan the Terrible and Genghis Khan to Hitler, Thatcher, Obama, Putin and Zelensky. Some are creative, from Socrates, Michelangelo and Shakespeare to Newton, Mozart, Balzac, Freud, Bowie and Tim Berners-Lee.

    Others are lesser-known: Hongwu, who began life as a beggar and founded the Ming dynasty; Kamehameha, conqueror of Hawaii; Zenobia, Arab empress who defied Rome; King Henry of Haiti; Lady Murasaki, first female novelist; Sayyida al-Hurra, Moroccan pirate-queen. Here are not just conquerors and queens but prophets, charlatans, actors, gangsters, artists, scientists, doctors, tycoons, lovers, wives, husbands and children. This is world history on the most grand and intimate scale – spanning centuries, continents and cultures, and linking grand themes of war, migration, plague, religion, medicine and technology to the people at the centre of the human drama.

    As spellbinding as fiction, The World captures the story of humankind in all its joy, sorrow, romance, ingenuity and cruelty in a ground-breaking, single narrative that will forever shift the boundaries of what history can achieve.

  • The Wren, the Wren

    The Wren, the Wren

    15.95

    Nell – funny, brave and so much loved – is a young woman with adventure on her mind. As she sets out into the world, she finds her family history hard to escape.

    For her mother, Carmel, Nell’s leaving home opens a space in her heart, where the turmoil of a lifetime begins to churn. And across the generations falls the long shadow of Carmel’s famous father, an Irish poet of beautiful words and brutal actions.

    This is a meditation on love: spiritual, romantic, darkly sexual or genetic. A multigenerational novel that traces the inheritance not just of trauma but also of wonder, it is a testament to the glorious resilience of women in the face of promises false and true.

    Above all, it is an exploration of the love between mother and daughter – sometimes fierce, often painful, but always transcendent.

  • The Wych Elm

    The Wych Elm

    14.95

    Wych Elm
    WHAT DO WE HIDE INSIDE OURSELVES?

    One night changes everything for Toby. He’s always led a charmed life – until a brutal attack leaves him damaged and traumatised, unsure even of the person he used to be. He seeks refuge at his family’s ancestral home, the Ivy House, filled with memories of wild-strawberry summers and teenage parties with his cousins.

    But not long after Toby’s arrival, a discovery is made: a skull, tucked neatly inside the old wych elm in the garden.

  • THE YEAR I MET YOU

    THE YEAR I MET YOU

    4.99

    A thoughtful, captivating and ultimately uplifting novel from this uniquely talented author. Jasmine loves two things: her sister and her work. And when her work is taken away she has no idea who she is.Matt loves two things: his family and the booze. Without them, he hits rock bottom.One New Year’s Eve, two people’s paths collide.

    Both have time on their hands; both are at a crossroads. But as the year unfolds, through moonlit nights and suburban days, an unlikely friendship slowly starts to blossom.Sometimes you have to stop still in order to move on…Original and poignant, The Year I Met You will make you laugh, cry and celebrate life.

  • The Yoga Manifesto

    The Yoga Manifesto

    17.95

    How did an ancient spiritual practice become the preserve of the privileged?

    Nadia Gilani has been practising yoga as a participant and teacher for over twenty-five years. Yoga has saved her life and seen her through many highs and lows; it has been a faith, a discipline, and a friend, and she believes wholeheartedly in its radical potential. However, over her years in the wellness industry, Nadia has noticed not only yoga’s rising popularity, but also how its modern incarnation no longer serves people of colour, working class people, or many other groups who originally pioneered its creation.

    Combining her own memories of how the practice has helped her with an account of its history and transformation in the modern west, Nadia creates a love letter to yoga and a passionate critique of the billion-dollar industry whose cost and inaccessibility has shut out many of those it should be helping. By turns poignant, funny, and shocking, The Yoga Manifesto excavates where the industry has gone wrong, and what can be done to save the practice from its own success.

  • There Are Rivers In The Sky

    There Are Rivers In The Sky

    17.95
    Description

    THE TOP FIVE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

    This is the story of one lost poem, two great rivers, and three remarkable lives – all connected by a single drop of water.

    *****

    In the ruins of Nineveh, that ancient city of Mesopotamia, there lies hidden in the sand fragments of a long-forgotten poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh.

    In Victorian London, an extraordinary child is born at the edge of the dirt-black Thames. When his brilliant memory earns him a spot as an apprentice at a printing press, the world opens up far beyond the slums and across the seas.

    In 2014 Turkey, Narin, a Yazidi girl living by the River Tigris, waits to be baptised. The ceremony is cruelly interrupted, and soon she and her grandmother must journey across war-torn lands in the hope of reaching the sacred valley of their people.

    In 2018 London, broken-hearted Zaleekhah, a hydrologist, moves to a houseboat on the Thames to escape the wreckage of her marriage – until an unexpected connection to her homeland changes everything.

  • There's a Ghost in this House

    There’s a Ghost in this House

    24.95

    Description
    A captivating new picture book with interactive transparent pages, from world-renowned artist Oliver Jeffers. Hello, come in. Maybe you can help me? A young girl lives in a haunted house, but has never seen a ghost.

    Are they white with holes for eyes? Are they hard to see? She’d love to know! Step inside and turn the transparent pages to help her on an entertaining ghost hunt, from behind the sofa, right up to the attic. With lots of friendly ghost surprises and incredible mixed media illustrations, this unique and funny book will entertain young readers over and over again!

  • Thin Places

    Thin Places

    16.50
    Description
    A breathtaking mix of memoir, nature writing and history: this is Kerri ni Dochartaigh’s story of a wild Ireland, an invisible border, an old conflict and the healing power of the natural world’A special, beautiful, many-faceted book’ Amy Liptrot’A remarkable piece of writing . . .

    Luminous’ Robert Macfarlane’Eloquent . . .

    moving’ Sinead GleesonKerri ni Dochartaigh was born in Derry, on the border of the North and South of Ireland, at the very height of the Troubles. She was brought up on a council estate on the wrong side of town. But for her family, and many others, there was no right side.

    One parent was Catholic, the other was Protestant. In the space of one year they were forced out of two homes and when she was eleven a homemade petrol bomb was thrown through her bedroom window. Terror was in the very fabric of the city, and for families like Kerri’s, the ones who fell between the cracks of identity, it seemed there was no escape.

    In Thin Places, a mixture of memoir, history and nature writing, Kerri explores how nature kept her sane and helped her heal, how violence and poverty are never more than a stone’s throw from beauty and hope, and how we are, once again, allowing our borders to become hard, and terror to creep back in. Kerri asks us to reclaim our landscape through language and study, and remember that the land we fight over is much more than lines on a map. It will always be ours but, at the same time, it never really was.

  • THIRTY-NINE STEPS

    THIRTY-NINE STEPS

    5.00

    Richard Hannay finds a corpse in his flat, and becomes involved in a plot by spies to precipitate war and subvert British naval power. The resourceful victim of a manhunt, he is pursued by both the police and the ruthless conspirators. The Thirty-Nine Steps is a seminal ‘chase’ thriller, rapid and vivid.

    It has been widely influential and frequently dramatised: the film directed by Alfred Hitchcock became a screen classic. This engaging novel also provides insights into the inter-action of patriotism, fear and prejudice.

  • Thirty-Two Words For Field

    Thirty-Two Words For Field

    19.95

    The Irish language has thirty-two words for field. Among them are: Geamhar – a field of corn-grass; Tuar – a field for cattle at night; Reidhlean – a field for games or dancing; Cathairin – a field with a fairy-dwelling in it. The richness of a language closely tied to the natural landscape offered our ancestors a more magical way of seeing the world. Before we cast old words aside, let us consider the sublime beauty and profound oddness of the ancient tongue that has been spoken on this island for almost 3,000 years. In Thirty-Two Words for Field, Manchan Magan meditates on these words – and the nuances of a way of life that is disappearing with them.