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This is it. The key to happiness is recognising that, yes, this is it. You’re all you have to work with and this moment is the only one you have any control over.
It took a while for Conor Creighton to understand this powerful concept. But once he did, his life changed forever. Conor Creighton came out of the womb chewing his fingernails.
A chaotic childhood saw his default mode set to ‘generally miserable’, so he left home at 17, vowing never to return. The ensuing decades of disorder resulted in chronic anxiety. At rock bottom, he signed up for a ten-day silent meditation retreat.
It was hell. His legs ached. His butt felt like it was on fire.
His mind threw at him a never-ending collage of regrets, wants and realisations. Then, suddenly, for the first time in nearly twenty years, he felt calm as relief and, eventually, joy washed over him. He learned that meditation has just one goal: to recognise that this is it.
There is nothing else. No desire to get anywhere or change or improve anything. When Conor stopped trying to get somewhere or ‘be someone’ and realised that this, and this alone, is it, his anxiety abated, he learned to like himself and he discovered that he might even be happy.
By remembering that ‘this is it’ in uncomfortable times and in comfortable times, your life can become a lot like meditation. In this highly entertaining, refreshingly honest memoir and meditation guide, you’ll discover how. ‘Conor is Ireland’s answer to Sam Harris.
This book will you teach you truly life-altering wisdom that has stood the test of both time and science in the most hilarious, relatable and heart-warmingly welcoming way.’ Daniella Moyles ‘I love Conor’s way of sharing the magic of contemplation and meditation. In a world filled with distraction and noise Conor reminds us to slow down and come back to ourselves. This Is It takes a practical approach to meditation and contemplation in what can feel like an overwhelming world.’ Pat Divilly ‘Other worldly and painfully, beautifully Irish all at one.
Like poetry and philosophy read by your brother’s best friend who has been around the world and come back to serve you everything you’ve forgotten you already know. I adore this book and Conor.’ Angela Scanlon
Over the course of seven difficult years Miriam Mulcahy lost her mother, father and sister, each grief threatening to drown her. But instead of going under she discovered the lessons of the sea, letting the water teach her how to get through anything in life: one breath builds on another, another stroke, another kick and you will get home. THIS IS MY SEA takes our greatest fear, death, and wraps it up in language so fine and beautiful that the reader is carried along and comforted by how completely lost Miriam was and how she found solace in all the things that sustained her: books, music, art, friends, love, swimming, and of course the sea.
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.
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.
From an exciting new voice in Irish fiction, a powerful novel set on an Irish clifftop – a story about duty, despair and the chance encounters upon which fate turns. Micheal Burns lives alone in his family’s bungalow at the end of Kerry Head in Ireland. It is a picturesque place, but the cliffs have a darker side to them: for generations they have been a suicide black spot.
Micheal’s mother saw the saving of these lost souls – these visitors – as her spiritual duty, and now, in the wreckage of his life, Micheal finds himself continuing her work. When his sisters tell him that they want to sell the land, he must choose between his siblings and the visitors, a future or a past.
He doesn’t even have a suit. Instead, he’s brought memories, a shared sense of humour – and a cat looking for a new home. Just as Gail is wondering what’s next, their daughter Debbie discovers her groom has been keeping a secret…As the big day dawns, the exes just can’t agree on what’s best for Debbie.
Gail is seriously worried, while Max seems more concerned with whether to opt for the salmon or prime rib at the reception, if they make it that far. The day after the wedding, Gail and Max prepare to go their separate ways again. But all the questions about the future of the happy couple have stirred up the past for Gail.
A poignant and introspective memoir from Irish journalist and broadcaster Charlie Bird. In 2021, Charlie Bird was diagnosed with motor neurone disease – a man whose voice was so synonymous with his career faced losing it completely. Yet knowing he had just a short time left with family and friends, what emerged was a great sense of resilience and motivation to take advantage of every moment.
Here, Charlie reflects on his life and phenomenal broadcast career through the lens of his diagnosis, as he ponders the big questions and takes stock of the small moments that we so often overlook. Written over the course of 2022 as his health deteriorated, with the help of long-time friend and fellow journalist Ray Burke, this is a candid and unforgettable story about the triumph of the human spirit and, ultimately, what it means to be alive.
The remarkable inside story of how two Hollywood A-listers, Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds, stunned the football world by buying a non-league club in North Wales. It was one of the most extraordinary takeovers British football has known. In February 2021, Ryan Reynolds joined with Rob McElhenney to buy Wrexham AFC, a non-league team in North Wales.
Wrexham, a former coal and steel town dealing with its post-industrial legacy, suddenly found itself at the centre of global attention, with broadcast networks around the world descending to discover what was going on. The club became the subject of a smash hit Disney+ docu-series, Welcome to Wrexham. Tinseltown tells the story of this extraordinary, unpredictable and often surreal football takeover and the remarkable events that followed.
Written with the full cooperation of Wrexham AFC, it is the inside story of what happened when Hollywood met a dot on a map. How a town was transformed when its football club, aspiring only to survive on the fifth rung of the British football ladder, was sprinkled with gold dust and found ambition again. With unique access to players, the manager and the club’s executives, the book charts the club’s attempts to climb up the pyramid, providing a vivid sense of what it is like to play for this ‘Hollywood’ team and the pressure and spotlight that comes with it.
At their only press conference since buying the club, nobody laughed when Reynolds and McElhenney said the Premier League could be an aspiration. ‘Couldn’t we theoretically make this happen?’ McElhenney asked. ‘Why not dream big?’ added Reynolds. ‘If you don’t dream big, you will never go there, so why not?’
Tinseltown is the story of how they did just that.
Science is a serious business, right? Wrong. Scientists have been participants in the best reality show of all time, with all the highs, lows, bust-ups, and strange personalities of any show on telly today. From Luke O’Neill – the science teacher you wish you’d had – this hugely accessible history of science reveals the human stories behind the biggest discoveries.
For example, we meet Charles Darwin as he weighs up the pros and cons of marrying his cousin: ‘constant companion’ vs ‘less money for books’. Tough call. To Boldly Go Where No Book Has Gone Before covers everything from space travel and evolution to alchemy and AI.
Written by one of our leading scientists, this is an insider’s account that celebrates the joy of science. It is filled with all the juicy bits that other histories leave out. ‘If science and medicine were a theme park, Luke O’Neill is the best company on the wildest rides . . . serious and fun . . . expansive and detailed .
Three journeys. One road. England, 1348.
A gentlewoman flees an odious arranged marriage, a proctor sets out for a monastery in Avignon and a young ploughman in search of freedom is on his way to volunteer with a company of archers. All come together on the road to Calais. In the other direction comes the Black Death, the plague that will wipe out half of the population of Northern Europe.
To Calais, In Ordinary Time is an exploration of love, death and power, against the backdrop of catastrophe.
Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, this work explores with humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the thirties.
From Hanya Yanagihara, author of the modern classic A Little Life, To Paradise is a bold, brilliant novel spanning three centuries and three different versions of the American experiment, about lovers, family, loss and the elusive promise of utopia. In an alternate version of 1893 America, New York is part of the Free States, where people may live and love whomever they please (or so it seems).
The fragile young scion of a distinguished family resists betrothal to a worthy suitor, drawn to a charming music teacher of no means. In a 1993 Manhattan besieged by the AIDS epidemic, a young Hawaiian man lives with his much older, wealthier partner, hiding his troubled childhood and the fate of his father. And in 2093, in a world riven by plagues and governed by totalitarian rule, a powerful scientist’s damaged granddaughter tries to navigate life without him – and solve the mystery of her husband’s disappearances.
These three sections are joined in an enthralling and ingenious symphony, as recurring notes and themes deepen and enrich one another: A townhouse in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village; illness, and treatments that come at a terrible cost; wealth and squalor; the weak and the strong; race; the definition of family, and of nationhood; the dangerous righteousness of the powerful, and of revolutionaries; the longing to find a place in an earthly paradise, and the gradual realization that it can’t exist. What unites not just the characters, but these Americas, are their reckonings with the qualities that make us human: Fear. Love.
Shame. Need. Loneliness.
To Paradise is a fin-de-siecle novel of marvellous literary effect, but above all it is a work of emotional genius. The great power of this remarkable novel is driven by Yanagihara’s understanding of the aching desire to protect those we love – partners, lovers, children, friends, family and even our fellow citizens – and the pain that ensues when we cannot.