Set in Ireland and Birmingham, this is the latest from emerging star of the genre Anne Bennett. Carmel Duffy is the eldest child of a brutal and abusive marriage, and she can’t wait to leave home. She’s equally determined to have no husband or children of her own – what she wants more than anything is to be a nurse. As soon as she turns eighteen, she heads for Birmingham and begins her training.With her beautiful auburn curls, she draws plenty of attention and her resolve to concentrate on her career is tested when Dr Paul Connolly comes onto her ward and into her life. Gradually he wins her heart, and they agree to marry, both certain that they want no children. They have valuable jobs to do – all the more so when World War Two looms. But those years will change everything: their relationship, their priorities, their very characters. Carmel will find that the future is very different to the one she thought she wanted for so long…

    This book traces the development of his life and work.

    Aubyn's wonderful, wry, and profound Patrick Melrose Cycle, follows five-year-old Patrick through a single day, as the Melrose family awaits the arrival of guests. Bright and imaginative, young Patrick struggles daily to contend with the searing cruelty of his father and the resignation of his embattled mother. But on this day he must endure an unprecedented horror—one that splits his world in two. In Never Mind, St. Aubyn renders this vivid tragedy with profound grace and precision, and introduces us to the unforgettable, complex figure of Patrick Melrose.

    

    

    As he dies, his kingdom also dies. His armies suffer defeat, the young emigrate, the seasons change overnight, and his kingdom’s borders shrink to the outline of his throne. At last, as the curtain falls, the king himself dissolves into a gray mist.

    This adaptation offers readers the exquisite wordplay, beguiling comedy and fierce intelligence found in all of Kushner's work.The Illusion follows a contrite father, Pridamant, seeking news of his prodigal son from the sorcerer Alcandre. The magician conjures three episodes from the young man's life. Inexplicably, each scene finds the boy in a slightly different world: names change, allegiances shift and fairy-tale simplicity evolves into elegant tragedy. Pridamant watches, enthralled by the boy's struggles, but only as the strange tale reaches its conclusion does the father confront the ultimate-and unexpected-truth about his son. An enchanting argument for the power of theatrical imagination over reality, "The Illusion" weaves obsession and caprice, romance and murder, fact and fiction, into an enticing exploration of the greatest illusion of all-love.

    . .'When first-year student Zoë Barry walks into Professor David Connolly's office and tentatively says these words, he is left reeling. But it is the lives of his family - particularly his wife Caroline - which are turned upside down by the arrival of this stranger.A daughter, a sister, a friend . . . an enemy?Though no one knows quite who Zoë is, she is soon entangled in their lives. Yet her stories don't ring true and Caroline is determined to learn if the girl is the unlucky innocent she claims to be or someone with a far darker agenda.A deadly cuckoo in the nest . . .Because by letting Zoë in, David and Caroline aren't just leaving themselves vulnerable. They're risking the most precious thing in the world - the lives of their children . . .

    A young countess saves her tenants from starvation, but only by selling her soul to the Devil. The sleepy parish of Nyadnanave sees a vision of a cockerel that dares the inhabitants to break the shackles of Church and State. All these plays were met with moral outrage and rioting in their native Ireland.Yeats's 'The Countess Cathleen' (1892), J. M. Synge's 'The Playboy of the Western World' (1907) and O'Casey's 'Cock-a-doodle Dandy' (1949) emerged from a period of traumatic change for Ireland. While the plays bear witness to the immmense social upheavals of the turn of the twentieth century, they also represent a new age of Irish drama that rose from the turmoil, and their lessons ring true to this day.

    

    Wells, Conan Doyle, Washington Irving and many more. Hailing from different countries such as America, Ireland, the United Kingdom and India, this book is an entertaining consolidation of diverse stories which cover a broad range of topics and themes. While ‘The Gift of the Magi’ resonates with the sense of love and loss, ‘The Selfish Giant’ and ‘Rip Van Winkle’ relives our childhood. Some stories warm your heart, some make you think and some delight you with their magical language while at the same time they explore universal themes and arouse a gamut of responses. A must-have, this book offers a plethora of classics to read and enjoy for any lover of a good story.

    Part detective, part psychologist, he never failed to nab a wrongdoer. His methods might have been unorthodox - he once summoned a tree as the key witness in a case - but he never failed to get the desired results.

    A student in Dublin and an aspiring writer, at night she performs spoken word with her best friend Bobbi, who used to be her girlfriend. When they are interviewed and then befriended by Melissa, a well-known journalist who is married to Nick, an actor, they enter a world of beautiful houses, raucous dinner parties and holidays in Provence, beginning a complex ménage-à-quatre. Normal People: Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in the west of Ireland, but the similarities end there. In school, Connell is popular and well-liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation - awkward but electrifying - something life-changing begins.Normal People is a story of mutual fascination, friendship and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find they can't.

    Huge subsidies were provided by the British government. The first car rolled off the line during the appalling hunger strikes of 1981. The prime mover and central character of this intelligent, witty and moving novel was John DeLorean, brilliant engineer, charismatic entrepreneur and world-class conman. He comes to energetic, seductive life through the eyes of his fixer in Belfast, a traumatised Vietnam veteran, and of a woman who takes a job in the factory against the wishes of her husband. Each of them has secrets and desires they dare not share with anyone they know.A great American hustler brought to vivid life in the most unlikely setting imaginable.

    Among the commoners in the GPO was a young staff captain of the Irish Volunteers named Michael Collins. He was joined a day later by a fourteen-year-old messenger boy, Eoin Kavanagh. Four days later they would all surrender, but they had struck the match that would burn Great Britain out of Ireland for the first time in seven hundred years.The 13th Apostle is the reimagined story of how Michael Collins, along with his young acolyte Eoin, transformed Ireland from a colony into a nation. Collins’s secret weapon was his intelligence system and his assassination squad, nicknamed “The Twelve Apostles.” On November 21, 1920, the squad—with its thirteenth member, young Eoin—assassinated the entire British Secret Service in Dublin. Twelve months and sixteen days later, Collins signed the Treaty at 10 Downing Street, which brought into being what is, today, the Republic of Ireland.An epic novel in the tradition of Thomas Flanagan’s The Year of the French and Leon Uris’s Trinity, The 13th Apostle is a story that will capture the imagination and hearts of freedom-loving readers everywhere.