Here, and in the towns beyond, the young live hard and wear the scars. Amongst them, there’s jilted Jimmy, whose best friend Tug is the terror of the town and Jimmy’s sole company in his search for the missing Clancy kid; Bat, a lovesick soul with a face like “a bowl of mashed up spuds” even before Nubbin Tansey’s boot kicked it in; and Arm, a young and desperate criminal whose destiny is shaped when he and his partner, Dympna, fail to carry out a job. In each story, a local voice delineates the grittiness of Irish society; unforgettable characters whose psychological complexities and unspoken yearnings are rendered through silence, humor, and violence.With power and originality akin to Wells Tower’s Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned and Claire Vaye Watkins’ Battleborn these six short stories and one explosive novella occupy the ghostly, melancholic spaces between boyhood and old age. Told in Barrett’s vibrant, distinctive prose, Young Skins is an accomplished and irreverent debut from a brilliant new writer.

    The characters who populate these stories are people afflicted by life and circumstance, hauled from some idyll and confronted with such real world problems as divorce, miscarriage, cancer, desertion, bereavement and the disintegration of love.

    Mother must have been giving out about him being a gom and Daddy was defending him. He heard the fondness in Daddy’s voice. But you’d have fondness for an auld eejit of a crossbred pup that should have been drowned at birth.’While the Celtic Tiger rages, and greed becomes the norm, Johnsey Cunliffe desperately tries to hold on to the familiar, even as he loses those who all his life have protected him from a harsh world. Village bullies and scheming land-grabbers stand in his way, no matter where he turns. Set over the course of one year of Johnsey’s life, The Thing About December breathes with his grief, bewilderment, humour and agonizing self-doubt. This is a heart-twisting tale of a lonely man struggling to make sense of a world moving faster than he is.Donal Ryan’s award-winning debut, The Spinning Heart, garnered unprecedented acclaim, and The Thing About December confirms his status as one of the best writers of his generation.

    The King is dead and a 14-year-old boy wearing Denim aftershave has just been appointed breadboy in the last Ormo Mini-Shop in the world, delivering bread to the residents of the Upper Shankill on Saturday mornings. He s all grown up now, so he is, and nearly shaving.The Bee Gees fill the airwaves, everyone is in love with Princess Leia, and Breadboy s love of peace and pets is soon rivalled by his interest in parallel universes and punk . . . and girls, especially Judy Carlton who sits opposite him in chemistry. Sooner or later, Breadboy is sure they ll become a proper couple like Paul and Linda, and Judy will be his girl.There are rivals at school and dangers on the streets, but Breadboy is hopeful, so he is. He is a good Breadboy. He delivers.As does Tony Macaulay, in this delightful sequel to the critically acclaimed Paperboy.

    From the storm-battered coastline of the north of Ireland to the sleeping villas of Andalusia, McGill’s characters grapple with the consequences of affairs, bereavement, alcoholism, illness and murder.Compassionate and quietly powerful, McGill’s stories capture intimate moments of loss, love, and healing in a troubled age.‘If I could be any other kind of writer, I would want to be Bernie McGill’ Ian Sansom‘A writer to watch out for’ Sunday Tribune

    Once, we were told that Brian, the great Christian king, gave his life in a battle on Good Friday against pagan Viking enemies whose defeat banished them from Ireland forever. More recent interpretations of the Battle of Clontarf have played down the role of the Vikings and portrayed it as merely the final act in a rebellion against Brian, the king of Munster, by his enemies in Leinster and Dublin.This book proposes a far-reaching reassessment of Brian Boru and Clontarf. By examining Brian's family history and tracing his career from its earliest days, it uncovers the origins of Brian's greatness and explains precisely how he changed Irish political life forever.Brian Boru and the Battle of Clontarf offers a new interpretation of the role of the Vikings in Irish affairs and explains how Brian emerged from obscurity to attain the high-kingship of Ireland because of his exploitation of the Viking presence. And it concludes that Clontarf was deemed a triumph, despite Brian's death, because of what he averted--a major new Viking offensive in Ireland--on that fateful day.Reviews:'I cannot recommend enough Sean Duffy's book for its readability and the enormity of backbreaking historical scholarship lightly borne and compellingly presented.'Dr Pat Wallace, Director Emeritus of the National Museum of Ireland'This scholarly, sympathetic book expertly unpicks legend and propaganda to uncover the real figure, offering an important reassessment of his place in Irish history.' Donnchadh O Corrain, Irish Times Weekend Review

    With some of these stories appearing here in book form for the very first time, and others previously unavailable for decades, Short Fiction is a welcome gift for every Flann O'Brien fan worldwide.

    The main argument the book makes is that the Irish gothic should be read in the context of the split in Irish Anglican public opinion that opened in the 1750s, and seen as a fictional instrument of liberal Anglican opinion in a changing political landscape. By providing a fully historicized account of the beginnings of the genre in Ireland, the book also addresses the theoretical controversies that have bedevilled discussion of the Irish gothic in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. The book gives ample space to the critical debate, and rigorously defends a reading of the Irish gothic as an Anglican, Patriot tradition. This reading demonstrates the connections between little-known Irish gothic fictions of the mid-eighteenth century (The Adventures of Miss Sophia Berkley and Longsword), and the Irish gothic tradition more generally, and also the gothic as a genre of global significance.Key Features * Examines gothic texts including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Charles Robert Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer, (Anon), The Adventures of Miss Sophia Berkley and Thomas Leland's Longsword * Provides a rigorous and robust theory of the Irish Gothic* Reads early Irish gothic fully into the political context of mid-eighteenth century Ireland

    This is the memoir of one of Ireland's most radical revolutionaries and key literary figure of the 20th century, dealing with his Civil War experience and his time in jail and on hunger strike.

    

    Here we see the rugged landscape of the countryside juxtaposed with the darkness of urban poverty in the city's underside. We are shown a way of life that no longer exists, but is forever captured in these unsentimental images of the Irish way, its people and their struggles, and their small and hard-wrought joys.