Belfast Confetti
Ciaran Carson - 1989
His subjects include the permeable boundaries of Belfast neighborhoods, of memory, of public and private fear, and, indeed, of the forms of language and art. Carson finds unexpected uses—constructive and destructive—of the building rubble of Belfast history. Rich in lore of place, these innovative and vividly fresh poems draw deeply on traditions—oral, local, and literary.
Belonging: One Woman's Search for Truth and Justice for the Tuam Babies
Catherine Corless - 2021
The lecturer encouraged the class to 'see history all around you', to 'dig deeper and ask why'.It was from these humble beginnings that Catherine began researching the Tuam Mother and Baby Home in County Galway, which she had passed every day as a child on her way to school. Slowly, she began to uncover a dark secret that had been kept for many years: the bodies of 796 babies had been buried in what she believed to be a sewage tank on the grounds. But who were these children, how did they get there and who had been responsible for looking after them?Determined to ask why, Catherine doggedly set about investigating further. Her quest for justice for the Tuam babies and those who went through that home would span over a decade as, often against fierce resistance, she brought to light a terrible truth that shocked the world, impacted the Vatican, and led to a Commission of Investigation in Ireland.Part memoir, part detective story, Belonging is both Catherine's account, and that of those 796 children for whom she came to care so deeply: one of the tender love of a mother and her child; of pain and trauma; of the unforgettable screams which echoed through the corridors as children were taken from their mothers; and of a mystery which continues to this very day, as so many are still left without answers, still searching to know where, and to whom they belong.
Thirty-Two Words for Field: Lost Words of the Irish Landscape
Manchán Magan - 2020
Dance Lessons
Áine Greaney - 2011
In this chance encounter, she discovers that her immigrant husband of almost fifteen years was not an orphan after all. Instead, his aged mother Jo is alive and residing on the family’s isolated farm in the west of Ireland.Faced with news of her mother-in-law incarnate, the thirty-nine-year-old American prep school teacher decides to travel to Ireland to investigate the truth about her husband Fintan and why he kept his family’s existence a secret for so many years.Between Jo’s hilltop farm and the lakeside village of Gowna, Ellen begins to uncover the mysteries of her Irish husband’s past and the cruelties and isolation of his rural childhood. Ellen also stumbles upon Fintan’s long-ago romance with a local village woman, with whom he had a daughter, Cat. Cat is now fourteen and living with her mother in London. As Ellen reconciles her troubled relationship with Fintan, she discovers a way to heal the wounds of the past.Deeply rooted in the Irish landscape and sensibility, Dance Lessons is a powerful story of loss, regret, and transformation.
A Belfast Child
John Chambers - 2020
From an early age he witnessed violence, hatred and horror as Northern Ireland tore itself apart in civil strife. Kneecapping, brutal murders, and even public tarring-and-feathering were simply a fact of life for the children on the estate. He thought he knew which side he was on, but although raised as a Loyalist, he was hiding a troubling secret: that his disappeared mother - whom he'd always been told was dead - was a Roman Catholic, 'the enemy'.In a memoir of rare power, John explores the dark heart of Northern Irish sectarianism in the 70s and 80s. With searing honesty and native Belfast wit, he describes the light and darkness of his unique childhood, and his teenage journey through mod culture and ultra-Loyalism, before an escape from Belfast to London - where, still haunted by the shadow of his fractured family history - he began a turbulent and hedonistic adulthood.'A BELFAST CHILD' is a tale of divided loyalties, dark secrets and the scars left by hatred and violence on a proud city - but also a story of hope, healing and ultimate redemption for a family caught in the rising tide of the Troubles.©2020 John Chambers (P)2020 Bonnier Publishing
Constellations
Sinéad Gleeson - 2019
A map, a tracing of connections and a guide to looking at things from different angles. How do you tell the story of life that is no one thing? How do you tell the story of a life in a body, as it goes through sickness, health, motherhood? And how do you tell that story when you are not just a woman but a woman in Ireland? In these powerful and daring essays, Sinead Gleeson does that very thing. In doing so she delves into a range of subjects: art, illness, ghosts, grief, and our very ways of seeing. In writing that is in tradition of some of our finest writers such as Olivia Laing, Maggie O'Farrell, and Maggie Nelson, and yet still in her own spirited, warm voice, Gleeson takes us on a journey that is both personal and yet universal in its resonance.
The Summer Visitors
Fiona O'Brien - 2017
He's hoping that three months researching an old cable station in a remote village on the south-west coast of Ireland will help him and his traumatised son finally move on from the accident that killed his wife.Meanwhile local hotel owner's daughter Annie Sullivan has communication problems of her own to deal with. Home on sabbatical from her life in London, she's keeping a secret from her dysfunctional family and trying to save them and the hotel from their latest drama.As summer draws to a close in Ballyanna, both Dan and Annie are forced to confront the pasts they've been escaping. But will they be able to grasp the future that lies ahead?
The Summer Visitors is a heart-warming story about love, second chances and moving on.
Beside Golden Irish Fields
Ava Miles - 2021
Art teacher Angie Newcastle’s life is all monotone.She wasn’t always this dull. She’d been an up-and-coming artist with the world at her feet. But after contracting the Wrong Man Syndrome and spending years doubting herself, she no longer recognizes herself.When she loses her job, she can’t afford to keep ignoring the obvious: her life needs a serious overhaul. And she knows exactly where to start: in Ireland, teaching art classes to her ex-pat cousin’s village community.Angie expected the golden fields beside her ancient Irish cottage to inspire her. She didn’t expect them to be populated by sheep sprayed with uplifting words. And she certainly didn’t expect anyone like their owner, reclusive sheep baron Carrick Fitzgerald, or the matchmaking ghost determined to bring them together.Neither want to find love—especially Angie, who’s on a self-imposed man-fast because she doesn’t want her life to take another nosedive. Only she slowly realizes that Carrick is the most unexpected of Prince Charmings and that he might help her make all her dreams come true.
Creatures Of The Earth: New And Selected Stories
John McGahern - 1996
McGahern's short stories equal his finest novels, reflecting both the richness of the ordinary, and the extraordinary, in the lives of a variety of individuals: the jilted lover waiting with would-be writers in a Dublin pub on a summer evening; the bitter climax between a father and son as a marriage begins; the fortunes and misfortunes of the Kirkwood family; and many more.For this revised edition, completed shortly before his death, John McGahern edited and deleted a number of stories from the Collected Stories that first appeared in 1992. This is the authorised edition of a modern classic.
Molly
Teresa Crane - 1982
Fleeing her fanatical republican family, Molly O’Dowd arrives nearly penniless in London at the end of the nineteenth century. Plunged into the world of East End gambling houses and brothels, Molly invests what little money she has in a typing course, her only way out. This investment will lead her on the path to establishing herself as a woman of power and means.From the rough-and-tumble world of the London docks to the luxurious hotels and restaurants of the fashionable West End, Molly captures the temper of the times – the unrest of the labouring classes, the courage of the suffragette movement, the ravages of the First World War. Molly wins and loses in the tempestuous world of the capital but her energy and determination never flag and tides change when she meets a man who could match her in business… and in love. This rags-to-riches historical romance is perfect for fans of Lily Graham, Natalie Meg Evans and Fiona McIntosh.
My Brother Jason: The Untold Story of Jason Corbett’s Life and Brutal Murder by Tom and Molly Martens
Tracey Corbett-Lynch - 2018
He had been savagely beaten to death with a baseball bat and brick while his children slept nearby. For his sister, Tracey Corbett-Lynch, and the rest of his family in Ireland it was just the beginning of the nightmare that would involve a custody battle for his orphaned children, an online hate campaign by Molly Martens and, ultimately, the gripping trial that would lead to her conviction, alongside her father, for his murder.My Brother Jason is the story of how this seemingly all-American girl from a picture-perfect family targeted the widowed Jason Corbett, becoming nanny to his children in a desperate bid to create the family and security she craved, thus setting in motion a series of events that would lead to Jason’s brutal killing by the woman he had once loved.Here, for the first time, Tracey Corbett-Lynch tells her family’s side of the story in a book that contains shocking revelations about Molly Marten’s history of strange behaviour and the lengths she was willing to go to in order to get custody of Jason’s children.With full access to Jason’s letters, emails, keepsakes and photographs, it is the story of how an ordinary, loving family was torn apart by the brutal murder of their beloved brother.
The Story of Ireland
Emily Lawless - 2004
Of the other four provinces, Connaught acknowledged the rule of the O'Connors, Munster that of the O'Briens, Leinster of the McMurroughs, and Ulster of the O'Neills, who were also in theory over-kings, or, as the native word was, Ard-Reaghs of the entire island.
From a Low and Quiet Sea
Donal Ryan - 2018
The dreamer. The penitent. From war-torn Syria to small-town Ireland, three men, scarred by all they have loved and lost, are searching for some version of home. Each is drawn towards a powerful reckoning, one that will bring them together in the most unexpected of ways.