While a stunned world watched and distraught family members kept bedside vigils, one "soldier" after another slowly went to his death in an attempt to make Margaret Thatcher's government recognize them as political prisoners rather than common criminals.Drawing extensively on secret IRA documents and letters from the prisoners smuggled out at the time, David Beresford tells the gripping story of these strikers and their devotion to the cause. An intensely human story, Ten Men Dead offers a searing portrait of strife-torn Ireland, of the IRA, and the passions -- on both sides -- that Republicanism arouses.

    This street-level view of Northern Ireland provides the best explanation of the twenty-five-year conflict.

    Heaney peppers this short collection of poems with crafty language and natural objects: "I heard the hatchet's differentiated/Accurate cut, the crack, the sigh/And collapse of what luxuriated/Through the shocked tips and wreckage of it all." The Haw Lantern won England's Whitbread Prize in 1987.

    Robert Blair Mayne is still regarded as one of the greatest soldiers in the history of military special operations. He was the most decorated British soldier of the Second World War, receiving four DSOs, the Croix de Guerre, and the Legion d'honneur, and he pioneered tactics used today by the SAS and other special operations units worldwide. Rogue Warrior of the SAS tells the remarkable life story of "Colonel Paddy," whose exceptional physical strength and uniquely swift reflexes made him a fearsome opponent. But his unorthodox rules of war and his resentment of authority would deny him the ultimate accolade of the Victoria Cross. Drawing on personal letters and family papers, declassified SAS files and records, together with the Official SAS Diary compiled in wartime and eyewitness accounts, this is the true story of the soldier.

    A story of a young couple who abandoned their careers in New York and moved to Ireland tells of their idyllic life in a cottage, surrounded by the beauty and character of the land of their ancestors.

    The Commitments are spreading the gospel of the soul. Ably managed by Jimmy Rabbitte, brilliantly coached by Joey 'The Lips' Fagan, their twin assault on Motown and Barrytown takes them by leaps and bounds from the parish hall to the steps of the studio door. But can The Commitments live up to their name?

    This is her story of life 'on the game' in Dublin.

    Into the Irish town of Carraroe, a magnificent, completely grey stallion appears. The horse brings with him the promise of better times and magical happenings, for he is actually the shape-shifted form of Ruairi MacEibhir, journeyed to such a time of danger in order to win the hand of the woman he loves.

    Master storyteller, William Trevor's tender and moving story is about a mysterious emigrant couple who have come to Ireland during the Second World War, and the sensitive boy who comes under their gentle spell.

    -- Publishers Weekly

    Kate Ryan and her husband, John, have a rollicking pub in the Irish village of Mountfern... lovely twelve-year-old twins... and such wonderful dreams.... It was a summer of innocence... But all that is about to change this fateful summer of 1962 when American millionaire Patrick O'Neill comes to town with his irresistible charm and a pocketful of money... when love and hate vie for a town's quiet heart and old traditions begin to crumble away.... It was a summer of love that would never come again.... A time that has been captured forever in Maeve Binchy's compelling family drama... a novel you will never forget.

    

    Hughes gives an account of the problems which arose when the organization of the Christian church, imported from the urban bureaucracy of the Roman Empire, had to be adapted to the heroic society of early Ireland. How was church government in Ireland brought into line with the secular law, and were the changes made without protest? Dr. Hughes finds the key to these questions in legal texts of the sixth, seventh and eighth centuries, and attempts, through them, to trace the gradual process of modification which culminated in the eighth century, when the church, now fully adjusted to Irish society, reached a so-far unprecedented height of power and influence. In the ninth century the Viking raids and settlements provided new problems: did they really bring about a decline in the spiritual vitality of the church and degeneracy in her institutions, as is often supposed? It is for answers to questions like these that Dr. Hughes searches the contemporary sources for each period that she examines, tracing the history of the church up to the twelfth century. The main emphasis of the book is on the church as an institution, but it also asks what Christianity meant to different people at different times, and illustrates some of Ireland's contacts with England and the continent.

    This volume brings the history up to date and reviews U.S. efforts in the ongoing peace process.

    

    A beautiful new edition of this comprehensive and accessible book on a unique and fascinating place.

    

    PEOPLE AND LITERATURE;'PHOTOS, WRITERS, INDEX,;'

    Set in 1834, this historical novel follows the adventures of two young Irish brothers and their families and friends as they endure the hardships and joys of immigrating to the Texas frontier.