His name is synonymous with passion, heart and determination. But he is also the thinking man's rugby player, a legendary student of the game.As the heartbeat of Munster, British and Irish Lions captain in 2009, and captain of the first Ireland team to retain the Six Nations championship, O'Connell became the most beloved and respected of the golden generation of Irish rugby players - and was widely regarded as one of the very best players in the world. There was nothing inevitable - or even likely - about any of this, and in an autobiography as intense and thoughtful as its author, O'Connell explores the forces and struggles that turned him into the player and leader that he became. The Battle is a book for everyone who wants to understand the roots of achievement and the inner world of an elite sportsman. It will take its place alongside the very finest sports books of recent years.

    Crofton Croker. From 1812 to 1816, he roamed southern Ireland, listening to his countrymen's stories of pixies, leprechauns, and other supernatural creatures. The result is one of the first collections of Irish fairy tales on record — and it's often considered the finest. Told in plain but colorful language with charming illustrations that capture the wonder of these tales, it became an overnight bestseller. An engaging mix of darkness and humor, the thirty-eight stories are filled to the brim with Irish wit and magic. In "The Haunted Cellar," you'll meet one of Ireland's oldest families, with blood as thick as buttermilk and a reputation for hospitality. But what is the secret in Justin Mac Carthy’s wine cellar that forces every butler to quit? In "The Changeling," a new mother finds a just solution when her infant is replaced by a mischievous fairy. "The Legend of Knockfierna" teaches fearless Carroll O'Daly a hard lesson about interfering with the "little people." And that's just a taste of the delights inside. A rich reflection of Celtic culture, Irish Fairy Legends will entertain you and your family for generations.

    In this stunningly unusual prose debut, Doireann Ni Ghriofa sculpts essay and autofiction to explore inner life and the deep connection felt between two writers centuries apart. In the 1700s, an Irish noblewoman, on discovering her husband has been murdered, drinks handfuls of his blood and composes an extraordinary poem. In the present day, a young mother narrowly avoids tragedy. On encountering the poem, she becomes obsessed with its parallels with her own life, and sets out to track down the rest of the story. A devastating and timeless tale about one woman freeing her voice by reaching into the past and finding another's.

    In the late 1960s, in the hollow of an ancient oak tree beyond a derelict cottage in Cork, were found the bones of a three-year-old girl. It was thought that they dated back to the time of the great potato famine of the mid 1800s. The bones were discovered by an American woman, who had inherited the cottage which had lain empty and broken for forty years. Local searches reveal that the house had originally belonged to The Quinns. Eliza Quinn was their baby.This is a story that speaks of generations and of landscapes: abandoned villages, famine graves, old potato ridges sinking back into the earth, traces of a population that fell by two and a half million in less than ten years. It is also about hunger, both physical and emotional. But above all, it is the story of the Quinn family. And it is Carol Birch's tour de force.'Deeply rooted humanity and highly intelligent understanding of the simulataneous complexity and simplicity of individual lives' Alex Clark. TLS

    Here fairies and demons walk hand in hand with mortals and anything anything can happen. These tales are sometimes frightening, usually insightful, and always entertaining. But one does not have to be Irish to appreciate these marvelous stories, for as the great Irish poet, W.B. Yeats wrote, "everyone is a visionary if you scratch him deep enough."John Connors and the fairies --Fitzgerald and Daniel Donoghue --Fairies of Rahonain and Elizabeth Shea --The knights of Kerry --Rahonain castle --The cattle jobber of Awnascawil --The midwife of Listowel --Daniel Crowley and the ghosts --Tom Daly and the nut-eating ghost --Tom Connors and the dead girl --The farmer of Tralee and the fairy cows --The two gamblers and the fairies --The girl and the robber --Maurice Griffin and the fairy doctor --The three sisters and their husbands' three brothers --John Shea and the treasure --St. Martin's eve --James Murray and saint martin --Fairy cows --John Reardon and the sister ghosts --Maggie Doyle and the dead man --Pat Doyle and the ghost --The ghost of Sneem --The dead mother --Tim Sheehy sent back to this world to prove his innocence --Tom Moore and the seal woman --The four-leafed shamrock --John Cokeley and the fairy --Tom Foley's ghost --The blood-drawing ghost --Murderous ghosts

    Surrounded by a group of trusted friends, his reign of terror in the early 1990s claimed the lives of up to 40 Catholics, picked out at random as Adair's hitmen roamed Belfast. Determined to lead from the front, his men even fired a rocket at Sinn Fein's headquarters, writing themselves into loyalist mythology and embarrassing the IRA in its republican heartland. Its desperate attempts to kill Adair culminated in October 1993, when a bomb on the Shankill Road, intended for the loyalist godfather, claimed the lives of nine Protestant civilians.Mad Dog: The Rise and Fall of Johnny Adair and 'C Company' describes in graphic detail Adair's criminal empire and an egomaniac's bloody war against Catholics and anybody else who got in his way. Adair's friends and enemies talk for the first time about the murders he ordered, his sordid personal life, and his attempts - ultimately disastrous - to become Northern Ireland's supreme loyalist figurehead.

    Each chapter takes the title of a traditional tune, and as in a session played by brilliant improvising musicians, each tune leads into another, melodies and variations weaving in and out in a haze of talk and memory. Carson's inspired jumble of recording history, poetry, tall tales, and polemic captures the sound and vigor of a ruthlessly unsentimental music. A leading Irish poet who is also an accomplished flute player, he tells of his Belfast childhood, of learning to play music, of his travels in Ireland and America, of poteen, pub life, and the special pleasure taken in a well-made Fry "the morning after the night before." Loosely interpreted standards, as Carson points out, achieve a special kind of profundity and resonance - a tune can never be played the same way twice - so this is also a book about the poignancy of lost airs, about music as "a way of renegotiating lost time" and recognizing mortality.

    With bestselling books such as Light a Penny Candle, Circle of Friends, Tara Road, Evening Class, and A Week in Winter, which was published four months after her death, no one else told stories like Maeve Binchy. Humane, down-to-earth, and funny, her novels captured imaginations on both sides of the Atlantic in a way that most authors only dream of.More than simply a biography, this extraordinary book visits Maeve Binchy in the land of her birth, which is the environment of her novels, and in the company of the author and her fictional characters sets out to discover the emotional contours which define her as a writer and a person.

    Falk s encyclopedic knowledge of Wolverines football traditions and history make him a vital component of the staff that transforms talented college football players into true Michigan Men. And in his nearly four decades on the job, Falk has become one of the most beloved figures in team history. In If These Walls Could Talk, Falk shares his stories, memories, and friendships established in the locker room, on the sideline, and on the road with one of college football s most storied institutions. From legendary tales of Bo Schembechler s epic gridiron chess matches with Ohio State s Woody Hayes to the memorable day Falk introduced freshman phenom Anthony Carter to two-time All-American Ron Kramer, Falk s recollections connect the past and present to underscore the importance of building the relationships that drive the Wolverines to success. Win or lose, a game only lasts 3-1/2 hours, Falk said. Friends last a lifetime. He s an extra arm to the coaching staff. He s a shoulder to lean on for the players.... All players eventually have to leave the University of Michigan. But no one ever leaves Big Jon. Tom Brady, former Michigan quarterback, from his foreword [Falk] can tell stories going all the way back to Bo. That s a good feeling for a former player. That s what Michigan is all about. When you play football for Michigan, you never really leave. It will always be part of your home. Mike Hart, former Michigan running back Nobody knows more about Michigan tradition than Jon. Paul Jokisch, former Michigan wide receiver

    The first account of the gods of Irish myth to take in the whole sweep of Irish literature in both the nation's languages, the book describes how Ireland's pagan divinities were transformed into literary characters in the medieval Christian era--and how they were recast again during the Celtic Revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A lively narrative of supernatural beings and their fascinating and sometimes bizarre stories, Mark Williams's comprehensive history traces how these gods--known as the Tuatha De Danann--have shifted shape across the centuries, from Iron Age cult to medieval saga to today's young-adult fiction.We meet the heroic Lug; the Morrigan, crow goddess of battle; the fire goddess Brigit, who moonlights as a Christian saint; the mist-cloaked sea god Manannan mac Lir; and the ageless fairies who inspired J.R.R. Tolkien's immortal elves. Medieval clerics speculated that the Irish divinities might be devils, angels, or enchanters. W. B. Yeats invoked them to reimagine the national condition, while his friend George Russell beheld them in visions and understood them to be local versions of Hindu deities. The book also tells how the Scots repackaged Ireland's divine beings as the gods of the Gael on both sides of the sea--and how Irish mythology continues to influence popular culture far beyond Ireland.An unmatched chronicle of the Irish gods, Ireland's Immortals illuminates why these mythical beings have loomed so large in the world's imagination for so long.

    The pages are populated with figures from myth, history, and the present-from Saint Patrick to Oliver Cromwell, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, and Charles Parnell to Sinead O'Connor and Bono. Some beloved, some controversial-each influenced the course of Irish and world history. While McCourt vividly describes Ireland's turbulent history, he also offers a cultural survey with fresh insights to the folklore, literature, art, music, and cuisine of Ireland, producing an irresistible tour through the Emerald Isle.

    Since 1999, when he made his international debut, there has been no greater player in world rugby than Brian O'Driscoll. In 2010 Rugby World magazine named him its world player of the decade - and since then the legend has only grown. Now, at the end of his amazing career - which culminated in fairy-tale fashion with Ireland's victory in the 2014 Six Nations championship - he tells his own story. Honest, gritty and thoughtful, Brian O'Driscoll's Autobiography is not just an essential sports book. It is an essential book about family, friends, hard work, courage and imagination. "An amazing career. There will only ever be one BOD". (Dan Carter). "A thoroughly enjoyable read ...After reading The Test I warmed even more to O'Driscoll as a player and a man. He stood for a new ethos in Irish sport that refused to accept mediocrity or glorious failure". (Fergal Keane, Irish Times). "O'Driscoll's honesty ...takes the reader to a place they simply have not been before". (Vincent Hogan, Irish Independent).

    His career in film started in John Boorman's atmospheric Excalibur and to date has included such highlights as Miller's Crossing (The Coen Brothers), Gothic (Ken Russell), In the Name of the Father (Jim Sheridan) which he also produced, The Usual Suspects (Brian Singer) and most recently Smila's Feeling for Snow and the Man in the Iron Mask. The range of roles is varied but always played with a brooding intensity.

    Dan Breen was to become the best known of them. At first they were condemned on all sides. They became outlaws and My Fight describes graphically what life was like 'on the run, ' with 'an army at one's heels and a thousand pounds on one's head'. A burning belief in their cause sustained them through many a dark and bitter day and slowly support came from the people