edition. British publication by Hart-Davis, McGibbon Ltd ('76).-- A companion to The Best of Myles, Further Cuttings culls more scathing selections from "Cruiskeen Lawn", Flann O'Brien's column in the Irish Times written under the pseudonym Myles na Gopaleen.-- This volume covers the years 1947-1957 and finds O'Brien's alter ego clashing with the law on numerous charges, including larceny, using bad language, and marrying without the consent of his parents. It also includes several bizarre obituaries, witty criticisms of George Bernard Shaw, Sean O' Faolain, and other literary figures, the return of the preposterous "Brother", and the first article ever ascribed to Myles (published in 1940).

    A couple drive out to the hills in a last-ditch effort to save their marriage. A horse crashes a house party. Set on an imagined island off the west coast of Ireland, John Patrick McHugh’s debut collection of stories draw a complete community of characters – misdirected, posturing and self-deceiving. But in his fidelity to and compassion for their faults, McHugh embeds us in the moments on which these lives twist and turn, probing unflinchingly what most of us would rather ignore. Pure Gold heralds the arrival of a vibrant new literary voice.

    My heart is broken and my failure is total.A bomb is born, lives and dies in a rural secondary school; Ireland becomes a dumping ground for corpses; one family’s genealogy begins in tragedy in 1574 and ends in something far worse in 2111; a strange tribal matriarchy on the banks of the River Boyne is threatened with extermination.Over the course of these stories, the world breaks down in an endless cycle of hunger, desperation, violence and domination, and we find a humanity left tender, collapsed, and full of a beautiful, primeval innocence.Fagan’s raw blend of verve, humour, imagination and warmth surges through these pages, revealing a world rendered both hopeful and disturbing, human and other, that is at once familiar and extraordinary.

    This book, which won raves at its first publication, shows all the hallmarks of the writer who became the award-winning film director so well known today.

    Here are its people, their lives driven by love, faith, and duty, surviving in a culture that blends tradition with transformation.

    But Donn longs for a wider kingdom. He deserts his bride, roams the world, fights in wars, is footloose - yet finds that he is homesick. Sixteen years later he returns to take up the threads of his old life, to learn to love his afflicted daughter, and to bring progress to the neglected green valley. Light comes, water flows, the land prospers. Then, on a night of innocent festivity, a monstrous crime is perpetrated. His kingdom violated, Donn dedicates himself to a terrible revenge that can only destroy the avenger as well as the hunted

    As Ireland stands on the brink of political crisis, Europe plunges headlong into war. Among the thousands of Irishmen who volunteer to fight for the British Army is Stephen Ryan, a gifted young maths scholar whose working class background has marked him out as a misfit among his wealthy fellow students. Sent to fight in Turkey, he looks forward to the great adventure, unaware of the growing unrest back home in Ireland. His romantic notions of war are soon shattered and he is forced to wonder where his loyalties lie, on his return to a Dublin poised for rebellion in 1916 and a brother fighting for the rebels. Everything has changed utterly, and in a world gone mad his only hope is his growing friendship with the brilliant and enigmatic Lillian Bryce. "The Soldier's Song "is a poignant and deeply moving novel, a tribute to the durability of the human soul.

    The story was written at the request of the publisher, but was held back from inclusion in the published volume. 'Echo's Bones' has remained unpublished to this day, and the present edition will situate the work in terms of its biographical context, its Joycean influences, and as a vital link in the evolution of Beckett's early work.The editor, Mark Nixon, is director of the Beckett International Foundation at the University of Reading.

    Paula recalls her contented childhood, the audacity she learned as a teenager, the exhilaration of her romance with Charlo, and the marriage to him that left her feeling powerless. Capturing both her vulnerability and her strength, Roddy Doyle gives Paula a voice that is real and unforgettable.

    A Catholic schoolboy playing football has a theological debate with a Protestant policeman; a chess game in Spain is a catalyst for grief and redemption; in the haunting title story a Belfast man out walking his dog is kidnapped at gunpoint.As always, MacLaverty's writing is vivid, exact, and pellucid, his characters perfectly observed, the surface of the prose deceptively still. It is only after we enter the world of the stories that we begin to make out the huge shapes that move there: loss, love, disappointment, fierce joy. This is a powerful, honest, and moving book by one of the great storytellers of our age.

    All of his prodigious gifts of language, character, and setting in these eleven exquisite stories transport the reader to an Ireland both timeless and recognizably modern. Shot through with dark humor and the uncanny power of the primal and unchanging Irish landscape, the stories in That Old Country Music represent some of the finest fiction being written today.

    Here are sad-hearted priests, old friends, young lovers, rockers and rebels, husbands and runaway wives, punks and poets. They all are clinging desperately to some kind of faith in a mutable and dangerous world.

    Every summer the family stays in a beautiful house on the coast at Ballyconnigor. It is here, one summer, that Eamon reflects on his life as a judge.

    At first, life is blissfully sweet, but when her first novel turns brings overnight fame, the women's life changes out of all recognition.

    During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church. Already an international bestseller, Small Things Like These is a deeply affecting story of hope, quiet heroism, and empathy from one of our most critically lauded and iconic writers.