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At a crossroads in her life, Gráinne Lyons set out to travel Ireland’s west coast on foot. She set a simple intention: to walk in the footsteps of eleven pioneering Irish women deeply rooted in this coastal landscape and explore their lives and work along the way. As a Londoner born to Irish parents, she also sought answers in her own identity.As Gráinne heads north from Cape Clear Island where her great-grandmother was a lacemaker, she considers Ellen Hutchins, Maude Delap, Edna O’Brien, Granuaile and Queen Maeve among others from her unique perspective. Their homes – in places that are famously wild and remote – are transformed into sites of hope, purpose, opportunity and inspiration. Walking through this history, her journey reveals unexpected insight into emigrant identity, travelling alone, femininity and the trappings of an ‘ideal’ life.Against the backdrop and power of this great ocean, Wild Atlantic Women will inspire the twenty-first-century reader and walker to keep going, regardless of the path.

Dublin, 6 January: the Feast of the Epiphany, also known in Ireland as Women’s Christmas or Nollaig na mBan. Gretta and Gabriel Conroy attend the annual dinner party hosted by his aunts, the Morkan Sisters. As the house on Usher’s Island fills with laughter, music and dancing, the worries and secrets of the guests interweave and overlap. The festive evening culminates in a shocking confession by Gretta and a life-changing epiphany for Gabriel.The closing story of James Joyce’s Dubliners is widely considered the greatest short story ever written in the English language. His tender portrait of the Dublin of his youth has captivated readers for over a century.With a new introduction by the award-winning and bestselling Irish author Nuala O’Connor, this special edition of The Dead is a gift for the ages.

Mary Lavin is ranked amongst the greatest short-story writers of the twentieth century, and remains a titan of Irish literature. First published in 1967, In the Middle of the Fields explores lives that are multi-layered and secretive, peculiar and intimate, and offers a window into the quiet tragedies and joys of human life. This collection is a profound example of Lavin’s unique control, insight and subtlety. For the first time in decades, and with an introduction by Colm Tóibín, the Modern Irish Classics series brings this hallmark collection to a new generation of readers.

'Since I’ve had my first book published, I’ve earned more from cleaning than from writing. The home economics don’t add up.' Between 2015 and 2021 Caitríona Lally published her first two novels, Eggshells and Wunderland. To buy her time to write during those years, she returned to the housekeeping department at Trinity College Dublin, a job she enjoyed as a student. This began a negotiation between the practical and creative demands of her life, further complicated when she became pregnant and downright baffling when the pandemic hit.At Trinity, Lally and her colleagues moved through empty, hallowed libraries, bonding over rude conference attendees. At home, she was raising two children who didn’t sleep. And the success of her first book was making her second novel seem even more arduous. Amidst all this, it was cleaning work that brought her satisfaction – immediate and lasting.In her first memoir, Lally writes with honesty and humour about trying to solve the equation of mother + cleaner + writer. Forward and thought-provoking, self-deprecating and soaked in her singularly frank voice, Caitríona Lally puzzles over personal economics, creativity and what 'success' and 'failure' really mean in this writer’s life.

Mike Timms has always been a wanderer – into the bundu ('back of beyond') as a child in 1950s Kenya, around Dublin during his college years and along pilgrim paths in Wicklow and southern France as he approached the end of his working life. He has never felt lost or alone, holding a faith in moving forward, one step at a time and finding a peace – and sometimes reverence – in the quiet.So upon retirement, he embarked on his first Camino, setting out on foot just north of Carcassonne in France in the direction of Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain. He walked as a true pilgrim, with the scallop shell hanging around his neck, his pilgrim passport in his pocket and no guarantee of a bed in the albergues along the Way. Falling in and out of step with fellow walkers, he learned to trust them and to see the unexpected – injury, fatigue, detour and the generosity of strangers – as blessings in disguise.With immediate and assured writing, Mike Timms takes us on a mindful journey as he moves through this ancient landscape, attuned to the histories, traditions and beliefs that have gone before him. To Walk the Way is his gently transporting account of taking part in them in his own unique way.

Nan Ryan lives by herself at Number 14 Chestnut Road. When it's heard that the builders are coming to work on the deserted house next door, everyone has an opinion.

In a letter to her editor at The New Yorker, the Irish writer Maeve Brennan described the emotional landscape provided by her mother:She gave me an ‘asylum for my affections’ and I learned that my affections so far exceeded her ability to understand me that she came near to drowning.In this new anthology of essays about Maeve Brennan, ten contemporary Irish writers consider the various meanings of the word ‘asylum’: an institution, a site of incarceration, a refuge and a shelter.They explore cityscapes and girlhood, mythology and folklore, loneliness and transience, the emotional impact of history and diaspora, as well as family connections to Brennan. These 'sketches' offer new and broader perspectives on Brennan’s life and the continuing impact of her work in the 21st century.Contributors include: Darran AndersonNiamh CampbellMary CreganRoddy DoyleArnold Thomas FanningSinéad GleesonBelinda McKeonÉilís Ní DhuibhneKate PhelanJessica Traynor

Following a car crash, for several seconds Dublin photographer Sean Blake is clinically dead but finds his progress towards the afterworld blocked by a haunting face he only partially recognises. Restored to a miraculous second chance at life – he feels profoundly changed. He is haunted by not knowing who he truly is because this is not the first time he has been given a second life. At six weeks old he was taken from his birth mother, a young girl forced to give him up for adoption. Now he knows that until he unlocks the truth about his origins, he will be a stranger to his wife, to his children and to himself.Struggling against a wall of official silence and a complex sense of guilt, Sean determines to find his birth mother, embarking on an absorbing journey into archives, memories, dreams and startling confessions.The first modern novel to address the scandal of Irish Magdalene laundries when it was published in 1994, A Second Life continued to haunt Bolger’s imagination. He has never allowed its republication until he felt ready to retell the story in a new and even more compelling way. This reimagined text is therefore neither an old novel nor a new one, but a completely ‘renewed’ novel, that grows towards a spelling-binding, profoundly moving conclusion.

Upon its original publication in 1996, Are You Somebody? quickly became an cultural sensation in Ireland, sparking an ‘emotional episode in public life in Ireland’. O’Faolain’s striking candour and focus on the long‑silenced experiences of Irish women helped the book become an international bestseller.Are You Somebody? is an extraordinary memoir that explores identity, love and the search for meaning in a changing Ireland. Nuala O’Faolain shares her life with unflinching honesty – her struggles, triumphs and the questions that shaped her journey.This is more than a memoir; it’s a conversation about what it means to live fully, to question deeply and to embrace vulnerability.

The New Frontier is a landmark publication of writing from the Irish Border, composed of non-fiction, fiction and poetry – it is a chorus of voices from some of the island’s greatest writers, that conveys in its multiplicity the true meaning of our border. At a time when the division of our shared island has once again become an international concern, the Border now a threshold between Europe and the United Kingdom, The New Frontier seeks to explore the meaning of this partition in the 21st century for those people that inhabit that divide.This collection of writing ultimately poses the question: What does it mean to be Irish, Northern Irish, or British in the modern age, and what does it mean to live on a threshold between a kingdom and a republic?The New Frontier will undoubtedly become a key cultural and literary touchstone. This anthology considers the border, and our historical divisions, through literature, by inviting writers from border areas to respond imaginatively and instinctively. By writing the land, writing the body, writing the lived experiences of this complex and misunderstood part of Ireland, The New Frontier looks to reclaim the border region from decades of misinterpretation and misunderstanding.Featuring writing from:Conor O’Callaghan, Darran Anderson, Garrett Carr, Luke Cassidy, Nidhi Zak, Kerri ní Dochartaigh, Michael Hughes, Séamas O’Reilly, Pat McCabe, Lias Saoudi, Maureen Boyle, Emily Cooper, Dean Fee, Jill Crawford, Annemarie ní Chuirrean, Peter Hollywood, John Kelly, Michelle Gallen, Marcel Krueger, Eoghan Walls, Orla McAlinden, Bronagh McAtasney, Mícheál McCann, Jess McKinney and Maria McManus

What's That as Gaeilge? will help you to express in Irish the most common idioms in everyday English. The Irish equivalents suggested in this phrasebook are colourful and exciting, many with cultural, mythological and philosophical significance and even a few emerging from the Gaelscoileanna ‘newspeak’. They will improve and enrich your spoken Irish skills for an upcoming oral examination or if you simply want to make your written and spoken Irish a tad more colloquial. This book is ideal for anyone interested in the beauty, flavour and rhythm of the living, modern language.

Between 1958 and 1976, the Irish American writer Mary Lavin had sixteen stories published in The New Yorker. J. D. Salinger had introduced her to the magazine and she was soon offered the magazine’s highly coveted first-reading agreement. It was a prolific time for Lavin, helped in no small part by her close working relationship with her chief editor there, Rachel MacKenzie. They wrote nearly four hundred letters to each other, the topics of which ranged from story edits to holiday plans, windfalls and legal troubles, mutual literary friends and their loveof gardening, promotions and health emergencies. Within a year of working together, they were ending their letters with ‘love’, ‘gratefully’ and ‘affectionately.’Gratefully & Affectionately: Mary Lavin & The New Yorker draws extensively from Lavin and MacKenzie’s letters as well as other material related to the revered magazine. It explores the collaborative relationship between this writer and her editor, Lavin’s own writing process, the inner workings and editing procedures of The New Yorker and the process of publishing a story from manuscript to print during its heyday. The book also reveals Lavin’s professional dealings with agents and publishers and her friendships with prominent literary figures of the time including Eudora Welty, Frank O’Connor, William Maxwell and John McGahern.Gráinne Hurley’s first book offers fascinating insight into the lives and careers of two mid-twentieth-centurywomen, working on either side of the Atlantic and inhabiting the small but hallowed world of literary publishing. It reveals how their fortunate union and combined love for the written word produced some of Lavin’s finest work.

Ireland has little left of its original natural habitats. Many species, like the curlew, are under pressure due to intensive practices such as farming, forestry and fisheries and some are threatened with extinction. But given a little help from us, nature has the innate capacity to restore itself. Nature restoration is the positive management of the environment for the benefit of wildlife and people. It looks to the future, by steering natural habitats and wildlife in a better and more sustainable direction. In Future Wild: Nature Restoration in Ireland, Richard Nairn explores numerous active restoration projects around Ireland which show how natural habitats and native species can be restored sustainably for the benefit of everyone. From individual landowners and voluntary organisations to state bodies such as Bord na Móna, he meets the people who are dedicated to nature restoration. By turns shocking, hopeful and finally positive, Future Wild shows that the damage we have done to nature can also be undone by us, and that, with nature restoration, we can create a richer and more diverse environment for generations to come.

After first emerging in the 1920s, ladies Gaelic football was soon sidelined; breathless women chasing after a football was just too unladylike for the powers that be.Despite this resistance, the sport became a popular novelty act at local carnivals. And when the Ladies GaelicFootball Association (LGFA) was founded in Tipperary in July 1974, fifty years of extraordinary growth were set in motion. From writing the rule book to a membership of nearly 200,000, the earliest All-Stars to game-changing partnerships, this definitive history captures that unstoppable journey to becoming a national sport and so much more.Lavishly illustrated and drawing from national, club and personal archives, UNLADYLIKE is for the players, the fans, the kit-washers, the sandwich-makers and the supporters alike, and confirms the best is yet to come.

Wired Our Own Way is the first anthology of personal essays written by autistic Irish adults. 2025 figures show that one in twenty Irish schoolchildren are now identified as autistic, and society’s understanding of neurodiversity is evolving rapidly. As awareness grows, many adults are also discovering this aspect of themselves, finding greater clarity and self-compassion in the process.This bestselling anthology explores the profound impact of receiving a diagnosis and highlights the wide range of experiences within the neurodivergent community in Ireland. Through deeply personal and insightful essays, the contributors reveal the many ways this identity shapes their lives – proving there is no single way of being autistic.From meltdowns to mental health, from early diagnoses to late-in-life revelations, and from cultural stereotypes to workplace challenges, this collection offers a rich, multifaceted perspective on life beyond the neurotypical lens. A celebration of individuality, resilience, and self-discovery, it shines a light on voices that deserve to be heard.Contributors include: Jen WallaceLiam CoulsonNuala O’ConnorJane CadmanEric Robert CrowleyJames McCleanRoisin RileyFiacre RyanJustin BakkerNaoise DolanColm BradyFreya von Noorden PierceJennifer PoyntzStefanie PreissnerChandrika Narayanan-MohanEmil Eliot OsińskiStuart NeilsonCaoimhe O’GormanAdam HarrisPriyangee GuhaMike McGrath-BryanAisling WalshCliona Kelliher

Delphine, long cast in the supporting role of politician’s wife and mother to five children, spends her life tending to others. It’s only after her husband’s sudden death that she begins to live on her own terms – sea-swimming, travelling and embracing long-overdue freedom.When she dies unexpectedly on a trip to the Galápagos Islands, her daughter Julia is left to make sense of a life that was both ordinary and extraordinary. In the quiet, clinical language of the post-mortem report, she finds an unlikely path to healing. Piece by piece, she reconstructs her mother – not as the exhausted figure of her childhood, but as a vibrant, complex woman finally free to be herself.Still is a stunning portrait of grief, transformation and the lasting power of love. A deeply moving tribute to a woman who died as she had always longed to live: in the middle of a great adventure.

Ireland, 1988. Storm Cordelia rages through the village of Kilcraven. Still reeling from a devastating love affair and the collapse of a promising career in the Gardaí, Emma Daly is stuck. She’s moved back in with her dad and taken a job as a librarian in Kilcraven, the small West Cork village she thought she left behind.But when Emma witnesses a murder and the local guards arrest the wrong man for the crime, she’s forced to act. To prove a man innocent, she must sift through the village’s past, her own training and her beloved collection of detective stories before either the guards or the murderer can stop her. She’s joined by a stubborn widow, an elderly hypochondriac and a charming ex-boyfriend — but quickly finds herself at the centre of a mystery that threatens to tear the whole village apart.

Originally published in 1918 by the Talbot Press in Dublin, two years after his execution by the British Government for his involvement in the 1916 Easter Rising, Some Poems of Roger Casement has long been a collector’s item. In life and in death, Roger Casement appears to contain many contradictions: decorated British diplomat, Irish Protestant and martyred Irish nationalist. He was a humanitarian, essayist and sometime poet, a public gentleman and a private lover.Over the years, Roger Casement’s ghost has been the subject of endless controversies, co-opted into both the queer liberation movement in Ireland and the Republican movement. Predator or saviour, traitor or hero, maligned martyr or gay icon? The question depends on who you ask, and what aspects of Casement’s life they choose to hold in focus, or to dismiss as a lie. —SEÁN HEWITTIncludes a specially commissioned introduction by Seán Hewitt as well as the original 1918 introduction, written by Casement’s cousin, Gertrude Parry.

Everyone’s favourite Irish teacher is back! Following from the success of previous books in this series, What’s That as Gaeilge?, What’s That as Béarla? and Proverbs in Irish, as well as his magnum opus, Teasáras Gaeilge-Béarla, Garry Bannister returns with another user-friendly guide for those of all ages who want to speak Irish with strangers, friends and family.Easy conversations in IrishPrepare for your Leaving Cert oralConversations in Ulster dialectTell a joke as GaeilgeGrammar made easyFree audio

The Ulysses Guide: Tours Through Joyce’s Dublin is an essential resource for readers of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Following the novel’s eighteen episodes through their original locations, it recreates the Dublin of 1904 against the backdrop of today’s streetscape. First published in 1988 and updated here for 2025 to reflect new Joycean research and changes that have taken place in the continued evolution of Dublin city, The Ulysses Guide is a beloved companion to Joyce’s masterpiece and a classic of Irish literary criticism.

'Here is a history of publand, yes, but here is a moment in time as well.'For centuries, the public house has played an important role in the social and cultural history of Dublin. As the headquarters for a major revolution, a mecca of literary invention or a haven from work, ‘the local’ is a cornerstone of community life and a testament to human endeavour in an ever-changing city.Beginning with the taverns and ale houses of the 17th and 18th centuries, Donal Fallon brings the reader on a visual journey through world renowned public houses such as the Brazen Head, The Long Hall, Grogan’s and The Palace, and on to early houses and gay bars, spirit grocers and shebeens. As well as the establishments themselves, the ‘Plain People of Ireland’ appear in chapters about temperance, karaoke and snugs. Along the way, we meet patrons as diverse and famous around the capital as Theobald Wolfe Tone, Nell McCafferty and Con Houlihan. And visitors to Dublin are also here, as the photographer Lee Miller seeks out the city of James Joyce and Elizabeth Taylor searches in vain for the Ladies’ toilet.Drawing from rich archival collections, The Dublin Pub includes many previously unpublished photographs as well as testimonies from the past and present to bring the history of the Dublin pub to vivid life.

The Hare’s Corner celebrates farmers, families, schools and community groups all over Ireland who are restoring habitats, reviving biodiversity and reconnecting people with the land.Uplifting stories and poems interwoven with enchanting illustrations and photographs bear witness to the renewal and well-being that can blossom when we make space for nature in our lives.Named after the traditional farming practice of leaving field corners for wildlife, The Hare’s Corner is inspired by small, thoughtful actions that can spark powerful change. Readers are invited to rediscover the beauty and wonders of their own landscapes, urban and rural.

A beloved Irish institution, RTÉ Radio 1’s Sunday Miscellany has been woven into the lives of listeners for over half a century. Following on from the bestselling 2023 anthology, this collection brings together some of the best broadcasts of the past three years, arranged in calendar months. Featuring a spectrum of writing talent, from household names to striking new voices, it offers solace, joy and entertainment for all seasons.Featuring:Dermot BolgerJan CarsonGerald DaweWendy ErskineMichael HardingMichael D. HigginsPaul HowardLouise KennedyRosaleen McDonaghLiz NugentJoseph O’ConnorOlivia O’LearyDonal Ryanand many more …

Ireland’s criminal history is filled with more than notorious villains and heroic rebels. It is crowded with people who stumbled, schemed or sang their way into the record books: ballad‑makers arrested for sedition, children forced into dangerous trades, women punished for survival, drunk jailers, unlucky fugitives, illicit marriages, and hangmen whose reputations linger longer than those they executed.A Motley Crew brings these stories together in all their strangeness and humanity. From escapes that bordered on the unbelievable to punishments that now seem cruel or absurd, the book explores how ordinary lives collided with extraordinary laws — and how poverty, chance and sheer mischief often dictated a person’s fate. Some tales are bleak, others darkly humorous, and many are a mixture of both, revealing a world where justice could be harsh, chaotic or simply peculiar.Told with wit, insight and a keen eye for character, A Motley Crew offers a panoramic look at Ireland’s criminal past — a tapestry of hardship, resilience and the oddities that make history so compelling.

This book is not just the story of a magazine. It’s the history of a crucial and contentious decade in Irish life. The 1980s were years of political turbulence, economic decline and bitter referendums on abortion and divorce. Magill and its founding editor, Vincent Browne, was at the heart of all these stories.Kevin Rafter uncovers the drama behind Magill from its launch in 1977 to becoming the magazine that the Sunday Times said dragged Irish journalism out of its ‘comfortable, questioning dullness’.Magill was home to great writing and explosive investigations. Many exceptional journalists made an impression on the pages of the magazine including Colm Tóibín, Fintan O’Toole, Brian Trench and John Waters, who each filled the editor’s seat at different times in these rollercoaster years.Drawing on extensive interviews and rich archival material, Fearless! reveals a society in upheaval and one magazine’s ambition to hold those in power to account for Ireland’s future. ‘Magill excited, and there was great loyalty. It was never just a job.’ - Colm Tóibín‘People saw the magazine as having authority.’ - Fintan O’Toole‘Magill was fashionable and it had Vincent Browne.’ - Eamon Dunphy‘Are there words to describe Vincent Browne?’ - Olivia O’Leary‘He was a dictator.’ - John Waters‘It was an investigative magazine that held to account people in power, the Church, people in politics, in business and in the media. We tried to do that. Sometimes we did it well.’ - Vincent Browne

Flat roofs, clean lines, bold ideas. THIS MODERN LOVE travels across Ireland’s early- to mid-twentieth‑century modernist landmarks - buildings that broke from tradition and imagined a different future. From civic centres and factories to churches, housing and schools, these structures tell a story of ambition, progress and new ways of living.Together they form a vivid portrait of an Ireland looking outward, embracing international modernism while forging its own architectural voice. Clear‑eyed, visually driven and unapologetic, THIS MODERN LOVE invites you to rediscover a built heritage that is still shaping Irish life today.

In a series of unexpected moments when past loves and choices re-surface with startling clarity, the imperfect beings who populate these stories find themselves finally grasping the impact of crucial early relationships, as joy, loss and betrayal echo across decades.A man searches for a possible secret half-sister to understand his father. A woman is haunted by a boy’s death fifty years ago. A lighthouse keeper recalls his first relationship. A public figure, slipping into dementia, relives a fateful night that haunts him. A man seeks insights into his mother’s past on a remote Portuguese island. From childhood holidays shadowed by tragedy to chance reunions that rewrite old narratives, Bolger’s complex and deeply humane characters reveal the fragile beauty of human connection.

'A heartfelt celebration of all kinds of queer love' ― Alice Linehan, Gay Community News A ground-breaking Irish lesbian love story, set across the decades from the 1980s AIDS crisis to the 2015 marriage referendum.Ro McCarthy, single in her fifties and working a quiet job, is sustained by her love of books and her deep friendships. Although she still doesn’t approve of marriage – not even for the straights – she is canvassing for yes in the 2015 marriage equality referendum. But, as the ghosts of her activist past join her on the campaign trail and her eagerness to confront a familiar discrimination turns to obsession and fury, Ro must finally face the long-buried trauma and loss of her youth. Thirty years earlier, Ro is a young Cork woman living her best life in Boston, undocumented and working multiple jobs, making life-long friends, and falling in love with Jenny. Soon, however, the young gay men who have become Ro’s new family – from Ireland and elsewhere – begin to die. Shocked and grieving, she finds purpose in AIDS activism and a community that is loving and living against all odds. In the wake of this macabre heyday which Ro just about survives, her charged entanglement with Jenny will bear witness to the resistance and survival of an invisible generation of warriors. Slant is a headbutt to the heart, told from within a protective community, that will reveal and celebrate all the kinds of love needed to sustain a life.

Think you know Dublin? Think again.Legend has it that the word quiz was coined in Dublin in 1780, when a theatre manager wagered he could introduce a meaningless new word into the English language overnight. Nearly 250 years later, there's no better place to celebrate the spirit of curiosity than with this collection devoted entirely to Ireland's capital.From famous pubs to literary giants, sporting heroes and hidden gems, The Dublin Quiz Book explores the people, places and events that have shaped the city. Packed with questions, picture rounds, quirky facts and bite-sized history, it’s a fresh and entertaining way to consume Dublin's vibrant past. Whether you're a proud Dub, a pub quiz enthusiast or simply love a good story, prepare to test your knowledge and discover plenty of surprising facts to share.