Donegal has a rich heritage of myths and legends which is uniquely captured in this collection of traditional tales from the county. Discover the trails where Balor of the Evil Eye once roamed, the footprint left by St Colmcille when he leapt to avoid a demon and the places where ordinary people once encountered devils, ghosts, and fairies. In a vivid journey through Donegal’s varied landscape, from its spectacular rugged coast line to the majestic mountains of Errigal and Muckish, and on to the rich farmland of the east, local storyteller Joe Brennan takes the reader to places where legend and landscape are inseparably linked.
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The Tide Is Coming
€50.00The Tide is Coming – a book of Coney Island in Sligo Bay by Maura Gilligan –
is a beautiful limited-edition publication containing prose, poetry, interviews, photographs
and artwork.
As the title of this book suggests, the rhythm of the tides has, for centuries, dictated the
rhythm of life on Coney Island. During his lifetime, Islander John McGowan called out the
warning “the tide is coming” countless times, ensuring that visitors would cross the causeway
safely before channels at either side closed the strand passage and made an island of his
shores.
This little island is said to have given its name to Coney Island in New York! Its ancient
name, Inismulclohy, can be found in maps, records and annals.Contents
Insightful poetry and prose reflect the author’s thoughts as she moves across the Island in
space and time.
Author-transcribed interviews with Island elder John McGowan form an integral part of this
book, illuminating eight decades of life in a place inhabited by John’s ancestors since 1789.
There are echoes here of life on other offshore Irish islands, now uninhabited.
Photographer James Fraher’s haunting black and white images, together with Catherine
Fanning’s remarkable paintings, prints and line drawings, add visual depth and magic.Special Features
The book itself is a work of art; a striking hardback cover collage is enhanced by timeless
quarter binding, head and tail bands, marker ribbon and rich-coloured endpapers. Sumptuous
Munken paper provides the perfect backdrop for superb illustrations and exceptional writing.
Folded within the pages of this book is a surprise – an A3 loose-leaf ‘Map of Coney Island in
Sligo Bay’, which can be framed. Created from an old and fragile line-drawn original, the
current version of this map illustrates locations on and around the Island, some of which still
carry their original Irish names.
The Tide is Coming is a wonderful history of an Irish island and a perfect gift. -
Sligo Notebook
€15.00A5 hard back notebook featuring Sligo town. Elastic band closure and matching satin ribbon book marker compliment the design by Simone Walsh’s original painting. The inner covers are printed with an an acorn design and the thought evoking quote: “Mighty Oaks from Little Acorns Grow!
14cm x 21cm. 160 eco friendly lined acid free pages. Recyclable.
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Small Mercies
€17.50The acclaimed New York Times bestselling writer returns with a masterpiece to rival Mystic River – an all-consuming tale of revenge, family love, festering hate, and insidious power, set against one of the most tumultuous episodes in Boston’s history.
In the summer of 1974 a heatwave blankets Boston and Mary Pat Fennessey is trying to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors. Mary Pat has lived her entire life in the housing projects of ‘Southie’, the Irish American enclave that stubbornly adheres to old tradition and stands proudly apart.
One night Mary Pat’s teenage daughter Jules stays out late and doesn’t come home. That same evening, a young Black man is found dead, struck by a subway train under mysterious circumstances. The two events seem unconnected.
But Mary Pat, propelled by a desperate search for her missing daughter, begins turning over stones best left untouched – asking questions that bother Marty Butler, chieftain of the Irish mob, and the men who work for him, men who don’t take kindly to any threat to their business. Set against the hot, tumultuous months when the city’s desegregation of its public schools exploded in violence, Small Mercies is a superb thriller, a brutal depiction of criminality and power, and an unflinching portrait of the dark heart of American racism. It is a mesmerising and wrenching work that only Dennis Lehane could write.
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1950s Dublin, in a lock-up garage in the city, the body of a young woman is discovered, an apparent suicide. But pathologist Dr Quirke and Detective Inspector Strafford soon suspect foul play.
The victims sister, a newspaper reporter from London, returns to Dublin to join the two men in their quest to uncover the truth. But, as they explore her links to a wealthy German family in County Wicklow, and to investigative work she may have been doing in Israel, they are confronted with an ever-deepening mystery.
With relations between the two men increasingly strained, and their investigation taking them back to the final days of the Second World War, can they join the pieces of a hidden puzzle?
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In A Thousand Different Ways
€15.00Finding your way is never a simple journey.
Alice sees the worst in people. She also sees the best. She sees a thousand different emotions and knows exactly what everyone around her is feeling. Every. Single. Day. But it’s the dark thoughts.The sadness. The rage. These are the things she can’t get out of her head. The things that overwhelm her. Where will the journey to find herself begin?
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Close to Home
€16.95Luminous and devastating, a portrait of modern masculinity as shaped by class, by trauma, and by silence, but also by the courage to love and to surviveSean’s brother Anthony is a hard man. When they were kids their ma did her best to keep him out of trouble but you can’t say anything to Anto. Sean was supposed to be different.
He was supposed to leave and never come back. But Sean does come back. Arriving home after university, he finds Anthony’s drinking is worse than ever.
Meanwhile the jobs in Belfast have vanished, Sean’s degree isn’t worth the paper it’s written on and no one will give him the time of day. One night he loses control and assaults a stranger at a party, and everything is tipped into chaos. Close to Home witnesses the aftermath of that night, as Sean attempts to make sense of who he has become, and to reckon with the relationships that have shaped him, for better and worse.
Drawing from his own experiences, Michael Magee examines the forces which keep young working class men in harm’s way, in a debut novel which shines with intelligence and humanity on every page. Close to Home is an extraordinary work of fiction about deciding what kind of a man you want to be and finding your place in the scarred city you call home.
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One For My Enemy
€16.50From Olivie Blake, the bestselling author of The Atlas Six, One For My Enemy is a captivating fantasy story of ambition, sacrifice and the enduring power of family legacies. This hardback edition includes illustrated endpapers from artist Lasq.Draws plus brand-new interior illustrations from Little Chmura. In New York City, two rival witch families fight for the upper hand.
The Antonova sisters are beautiful, cunning and ruthless, and their mother – known only as Baba Yaga – is the elusive supplier of premium intoxicants. Their adversaries, the influential Fedorov brothers, serve their crime boss father. Named Koschei the Deathless, his enterprise dominates the shadows of magical Manhattan.
For twelve years, the families have maintained a fraught stalemate. Then everything is thrown into disarray. Bad blood carries them to the brink of disaster, even as fate draws together a brother and sister from either side.
Yet the siblings still struggle for power, and internal conflicts could destroy each family from within. That is, if the enmity between empires doesn’t destroy both sides first.
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The Last Days Of Joy
€16.95Meet 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?
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Forever Home
€12.50Carol is a divorced teacher living in a small town in Ireland, her only son now grown.
A second chance at love brings her unexpected connection and belonging. The new relationship sparks local speculation: what does a woman like her see in a man like that? What happened to his wife who abandoned them all those years ago? But the gossip only serves to bring the couple closer. When Declan becomes ill, things start to fall apart.
His children are untrusting and cruel, and Carol is forced to leave their beloved home with its worn oak floors and elegant features and move back in with her parents. Carol’s mother is determined to get to the bottom of things, she won’t see her daughter suffer in this way. It seems there are secrets in Declan’s past, strange rumours that were never confronted and suddenly the house they shared takes on a more sinister significance.
In his tense and darkly comic new novel Norton casts a light on the relationship between mothers and daughters, and truth and self-preservation with unnerving effect.
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Juno Loves Legs
€15.95She’s loved him since their first encounter at school in Dublin, where she fought the playground bullies for him.
He feels brave with her, she feels safe with him, and together they feel invincible, even if the world has other ideas. The two find their way from the backstreets and city’s pubs to its underground parties and squats, where, on the verge of adulthood, they find a breathing space to begin their real lives. Only Legs’s might be taking him somewhere Juno can’t follow.
Set during the political and social unrest of the 1980s, as families struggled to survive and their children struggled to be free, this beautiful, vivid novel of childhood friendship is about being young, being hurt, being seen and, most of all, being loved. ‘A heartbreaker, and absolutely unforgettable’ DONAL RYAN, bestselling author of The Queen of Dirt Island’This will break your heart in the very best way and leave you laughing in spite of yourself. A backstreet epic.
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My Fourth Time, We Drowned
€13.50The Western world has turned its back on refugees, fuelling one of the most devastating human rights disasters in history.
In August 2018, Sally Hayden received a Facebook message. ‘Hi sister Sally, we need your help,’ it read. ‘We are under bad condition in Libya prison. If you have time, I will tell you all the story.’ More messages followed from more refugees. They told stories of enslavement and trafficking, torture and murder, tuberculosis and sexual abuse.
And they revealed something else: that they were all incarcerated as a direct result of European policy. From there began a staggering investigation into the migrant crisis across North Africa. This book follows the shocking experiences of refugees seeking sanctuary, but it also surveys the bigger picture: the negligence of NGOs and corruption within the United Nations.
The economics of the twenty-first-century slave trade and the EU’s bankrolling of Libyan militias. The trials of people smugglers, the frustrations of aid workers, the loopholes refugees seek out and the role of social media in crowdfunding ransoms. Who was accountable for the abuse? Where were the people finding solutions? Why wasn’t it being widely reported? At its heart, this is a book about people who have made unimaginable choices, risking everything to survive in a system that wants them to be silent and disappear.
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Nothing Special
€15.95A wildly original debut novel about two young women navigating the complex worlds of Andy Warhol’s Factory, and coming of age in 1960s New York.
New York City, 1966. Seventeen-year-old Mae lives in a run-down apartment with her alcoholic mother and her mother’s sometimes-boyfriend, Mikey. She is turned off by the petty girls at her high school, and the sleazy men she typically meets.
When she drops out, she is presented with a job offer that will remake her world entirely: she is hired as a typist for the artist Andy Warhol. Warhol is composing an unconventional novel by recording the conversations and experiences of his many famous and alluring friends. Tasked with transcribing these tapes alongside several other girls, Mae quickly befriends Shelley and the two of them embark on a surreal adventure at the fringes of the countercultural movement.
Going to parties together, exploring their womanhood and sexuality, this should be the most enlivening experience of Mae’s life. But as she grows increasingly obsessed with the tapes and numb to her own reality, Mae must grapple with the thin line between art and voyeurism and determine how she can remain her own person as the tide of the sixties sweeps over her. Nothing Special is a whip-smart coming-of-age story about friendship, independence and the construction of art and identity, bringing to life the experience of young women in this iconic and turbulent moment.
A 2023 HIGHLIGHT FOR: THE TIMES * TELGRAPH * STYLIST * GQ * GUARDIAN * HARPER’S BAZAAR * GOOD HOUSEKEEPING * WATERSTONES * i-D * IRISH TIMES * HUFFINGTON POST UK
‘I truly love Nicole Flattery’s writing’ SALLY ROONEY
‘In enviably elegant prose, she manages to be both arch and deadly serious’ LOUISE KENNEDY
‘A wry, witty and wonderful novel from a brilliantly captivating storyteller’ JOSEPH O’CONNOR
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Strange Sally Diamond
€14.95From the Number 1 bestselling author of Our Little Cruelties and Skin DeepSally Diamond cannot understand why what she did was so strange. She was only doing what her father told her to do, to put him out with the rubbish when he died. Now Sally is the centre of attention, not only from the hungry media and police detectives, but also a sinister voice from a past she cannot remember.
As she begins to discover the horrors of her childhood, Sally steps into the world for the first time, making new friends and big decisions, and learning that people don’t always mean what they say. But who is the man observing Sally from the other side of the world? And why does her neighbour seem to be obsessed with her? Sally’s trust issues are about to be severely challenged . . .
‘I loved every damn second of it’ Lisa Jewell
‘Liz Nugent has outdone herself. Twisted and twisty, dark and gripping, no one is going to forget Sally Diamond in a hurry!’ Graham Norton
‘Terrific’ Ian Rankin
‘So, so good! Sally gets under your skin and worms her way into your heart. I didn’t want it to end’ Jane Fallon
‘I’m lost in admiration for Liz and her writing . . . vivid, pacy, taut but so very moving’ Marian Keyes
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Maame
€9.95Mum calls me Maame. It has many meanings in Twi, but in my case, it means woman.
Meet Maddie. To her mostly-absent mum, she’s Maame, the woman of the family. To her dad, she’s his carer – even if he hardly recognises her.
To her friends, she’s the one who still lives at home, who never puts herself first. It’s time to become the woman she wants to be. The kind who wears a bright yellow suit, says yes to after-work drinks and flirts with a thirty-something banker.
Who doesn’t have to google all her life choices. Who demands a seat at the table. But to put ourselves together, sometimes we have to fall apart…
Unique, unforgettable and unfiltered, Maame is an achingly funny, heartbreaking and life-affirming debut for everyone who has ever needed to find their voice.
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Lessons in Chemistry
€12.50Your ability to change everything – including yourself – starts here.
Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing.
But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute take a very unscientific view of equality. Forced to resign, she reluctantly signs on as the host of a cooking show, Supper at Six. But her revolutionary approach to cooking, fuelled by scientific and rational commentary, grabs the attention of a nation.
Soon, a legion of overlooked housewives find themselves daring to change the status quo. One molecule at a time.