Fiction > Irish Fiction

Shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize. John Egan lives with his mother, father and grandmother in rural Ireland. The Guinness Book of Records is his favourite book and he wants to visit Niagara Falls with his mother. But, more than anything, he is determined to become a world-famous lie detector, almost at any cost. Carry Me Down is written in clean, compelling prose, and is about John's obsessive and dangerous desire to see the truth, even as his family is threatened in countless ways. In this singular tale of disturbed ... read more

In this hugely enjoyable anthology, established bestselling Irish writers have joined forces with up-and-coming new stars to raise money for a very good cause.Poignant, provocative, hilarious and heartwarming in turn, this varied and memorable collection includes never-before-published stories from Patricia Scanlan, Julie Parsons, Deirdre Purcell, Sarah Webb, Cecilia Ahern, Morag Prunty, Marita Conlon-McKenna, Martina Devlin, Gemma O'Connor, Joan O'Neill, Annie Sparrow, Una Brankin, Aine Greaney, Suzanne Higgins, Tina Reilly, Cathe... read more

No Description

From the bestselling Irish novelist, here comes a sweeping tale of consequences that spans from the 1930s to the 1990s. "Last Train from Liguria" takes us on a journey from claustrophobic Dublin and the tense formality of London, to the heat and bustle of the pre-war Italian Riviera. This is a must-read for fans of books by Rose Tremain and Helen Dunmore. In 1933, Bella Stuart leaves her quiet London life to move to Italy to tutor the child of a beautiful Jewish heiress and an elderly Italian aristocrat. Living at the family's summ... read more

Spike Milligan's retellings of classic stories are among his best-loved works. In this commemorative edition, his final five "According to..." books are collected as a lasting reminder of Spike's unique comic genius. Relive "Robin Hood", in which Little John becomes Big Dick and the Merry Men are joined by Groucho Marx. Give yourself the willies with "Frankenstein", whose monster comes to life craving a cigarette. Join Sherlock Holmes for "The Hound of the Baskervilles", with Guinness and Newcastle Brown are taken intravenously and... read more

An enthralling Irish saga from a talented new voice in women's fiction.

The story of a woman struggling to reclaim her dignity after a violent, abusive marriage and a worsening drink problem. Paula Spencer recalls her contented childhood, the audacity she learned as a teenager, the exhilaration of her romance with Charlo, and the marriage to him that left her powerless.

Charlie Weir is a man who tackles other people's demons for a living. He has seen every kind of trauma during his years as a psychiatrist in New York City, and yet hasn't found a way to resolve the conflicts within his own family - his bitter rivalry with his brother Walt, a successful painter, his estrangement from his shiftless father and his stifling relationship with his dying mother. And he has never overcome the terrible blunder, seven years before, that lost him his wife and daughter, leaving him prone to corrosive lonelines... read more

The intention was, of course, to bring her out to Winterwood - to that magical place that only me and her knew - but I wouldn't tell her that until much later on, for I wanted it to be as much of a surprise as possible Kimono! I remember laughing Kimono and Pinkie Pie! The Magic Castle, here we come! Winterwood, a place of dreams and mystery. Once, near Dublin, Redmond was in heaven, married to the sugar-lipped Catherine, and father to lovely daughter Immy. But later, much later, Red did something. And it could all never be like... read more

A passionate and intoxicating masterpiece from one of Britain's finest novelists, this is McGrath's breakthrough novel. From their childhood, Jack Rathbone has enjoyed the adoration of his sister Gin. When both attend art school in London, it is a painful wrench for Gin to watch Jack fall under the spell of Vera Savage, an older, flamboyant artist. Jack and Vera run off to New York within weeks and, from a bruised and bereft distance, sister Gin follows the couple's progress to Port Mungo, a river town in the swamps of the Gulf of ... read more

It is December 1979. Kathleen's son Sean has been convicted of a crime on behalf of the IRA and sent to Long Kesh prison - newly renamed the Maze. John Dunn has just taken up a job as a prison guard after leaving the army. Both will be shocked at what they find. Both will try to do the right thing, and fail. Neither will ever be the same again. Louise Dean's sensational new novel deals with one of the most explosive and morally complex incidents in recent British history. This Human Season is a powerful, confronting, humane, an... read more

No Description

Published in French in 1961, and in English in 1964, 'How It Is" is a novel in three parts, written in short paragraphs, which tell (abruptly, cajolingly, bleakly) of a narrator lying in the dark, in the mud, repeating his life as he hears it uttered - or remembered - by another voice. Told from within, from the dark, the story is tirelessly and intimately explicit about the feelings that pervade his world, but fragmentary and vague about all else therein or beyond. Together with "Molloy", "How It Is" counts for many readers as Bec... read more

"Molloy" is Samuel Beckett's best-known novel, and his first published work to be written in French, ushering in a period of concentrated creativity in the late 1940s which included the companion novels "Malone Dies" and "The Unnamable". The narrative of Molloy, old and ill, remembering and forgetting, scarcely human, begets a parallel tale of the spinsterish Moran, a private detective sent in search of him, whose own deterioration during the quest joins in with the catalogue of Molloy's woes. "Molloy" brings a world into existence... read more

John Devine yearns for escape. Stuck in a small town, he's worried over by his chain-smoking, bible-quoting single mother Lily and the sinister Mrs Nagle. So when Jamey Corboy, a self-styled boy-wonder, arrives in town, John's life suddenly fills with possibilities. But as they dream and scheme is John simply hiding from the reality of his mother's ill health, and the terrible dilemma that awaits him? Brilliantly evoking all the frustrations and pent up energy of a parochial adolescence, "John the Revelator" also gradually becomes ... read more

No Description

"The finest and most truly funny Irish comic novel since At-Swim-Two-Birds" Eileen Battersby, Irish Times

Twilight. In Springmount, County Wexford, Will is watching Kate Kelly get ready for the evening. As darkness gathers, and Kate moves from the milking parlour of her small-holding into her house, so do the ghosts of Will's past. A moth at the glass, he watches them through the window and, as the strains of the St Anne's Reel fill the room, Kate and her brother Philly begin to dance on the newly laid floor of their living room, while old Mrs Kelly watches from beside the fire.Desperate to understand how the terrible tragedy in his pa... read more

Berlin 1942 When Bruno returns home from school one day, he discovers that his belongings are being packed in crates. His father has received a promotion and the family must move from their home to a new house far far away, where there is no one to play with and nothing to do. A tall fence running alongside stretches as far as the eye can see and cuts him off from the strange people he can see in the distance. But Bruno longs to be an explorer and decides that there must be more to this desolate new place than meets the eye. While ... read more

"Boylan's imagination has a brilliant edge of eccentricity, and this saga of three generations of Irish women contains moments of pure, unadulterated magic' - Cosmopolitan