The Bodhran (pronounced bough-rawn), makers of the title are "poverty stricken people who never lost their dignity." Every January, they celebrate their Celtic ancestry with a festival of singing, drinking, and music making with the Bodhran, a drum made from goat skin.

    Back home in Sligo, he's collecting trolleys in a supermarket car park and living in a run-down house with a group of art students. He has lost his child-like innocence and he can't escape what has happened in London. Tormented by old fears and regrets, he loses himself in everyday routine and is kept going by his painfully black sense of humour.Finally, Ollie steels himself to return to England to confront his demons. He re-enters a world of casual labour and protection rackets on the building sites of London; a world peopled by sinister figures such as Silver John and Scots Bob; an intimidating world of uncertain justice where violence will easily erupt.Sudden Times is a powerful and shocking psychological thriller, revealing its truth through a growing awareness of the skewed and unreliable consciousness of its narrator. The result is a masterpiece of sustained tension.

    Returning to Ireland to reclaim a painting that is part of his patrimony, a thirty-eight-year-old man commits a ghastly and motiveless murder, which he confesses in a novel-length narrative.

    CoetzeeAcademy Street is the heart-breaking and evocative story of one woman’s life spanning six decades. Tess’s childhood in 1940’s rural Ireland is defined by the sudden death of her mother. Later, in New York, she encounters the ferocious power and calamity of love, and the effects of catastrophic fate. The novel resonates with the rhythms of memory and home as well as those of America’s greatest city.This is an intimate story about unexpected gifts and unbearable losses, and the perpetual ache for belonging. It is exquisitely written and profoundly moving.

    It also includes a large body of his satiric or humorous occasional verse, much of which is fugitive and little known to the general reader. In addition, the volume provides the text of the surviving prose "Epiphanies, Giacomo Joyce" - the fascinating Trieste notebook that Joyce compiled while finishing "A Portrait of the Artist" and beginning "Ulysses", in which he first explored the world of his autobiographical novel.

    When they are thrown together in a Dublin brothel in a horrific twist of fate, a peculiar and important bond is formed . . .This is a novel about a flourishing but hidden world, thinly concealed beneath a veneer of normality. It’s about the failings of polite society, the cruelty that can exist in apparently homely surroundings, the bluster of youth and the often appalling weakness of adults.Harvesting is heartbreaking and funny, gritty, raw and breathtakingly beautiful, where redemption is found in friendship and unexpected acts of kindness.Harvesting was inspired by Harding’s involvement with a campaign against sex trafficking run by the Children’s Rights Alliance. Although it is a fictionalised account, the text has been read and approved of by representatives for NGOs in both Moldova and Dublin.

    I wanted to capture something of the energy of this explosion, in all its variousness... Following her own acclaimed short-story collection, Multitudes, Lucy Caldwell guest-edits the sixth volume of Faber's long-running series of all new Irish short stories, continuing the work of the late David Marcus and subsequent guest editors, Joseph O'Connor, Kevin Barry and Deirdre Madden.

    The eight short stories of this collection have a dual theme: Ireland - its people, its personality - and woman - woman betrayed, or sacrificed, innocence involuntarily lost, happiness stolen or mislaid..

    The Oxford Book of Irish Short Stories triumphantly demonstrates the development of the short story in Ireland--from the early folk tales of the oral tradition (here translated from the Irish) to the writing of Oliver Goldsmith, Oscar Wilde, and James Joyce. William Trevor, himself a distinguished short story writer, brings a special sensibility and awareness to his role as editor as he presents stories by Maria Edgeworth, Elizabeth Bowen, Liam O'Flaherty and such modern rising stars as Edna O'Brian, Desmond Hogan, and Joyce Cary. This wide-ranging collection of forty-five stories will certainly serve to entertain and enrich our understanding of this unique literary genre.

    Through the events of her twenty-fifth birthday, decades of pain and betrayal build to a devastating, deadly climax.

    I have always known...'Behind the gates of Temple Alice the aristocratic Anglo-Irish St Charles family sinks into a state of decaying grace. To Aroon St Charles, large and unlovely daughter of the house, the fierce forces of sex, money, jealousy and love seem locked out by the ritual patterns of good behaviour. But crumbling codes of conduct cannot hope to save the members of the St Charles family from their own unruly and inadmissible desires.

    Eggers’ irreverent approach included a pioneering design that incorporated chapbooks, drawings, and all manner of cultural confetti previously unseen in the lit-mag format. McSweeney’s became an instant hit, showcasing the work of major new voices as well as literary luminaries such as William T. Vollman and Joyce Carol Oates. Long out of print and available only in the pricey collectors’ market, the first three issues appear in this omnibus, reproduced precisely as they first appeared. Longtime fans can revisit some of the best of the early McSweeney’s, while those new to the journal will see what all the fuss was about. A bracing range of topics include John Hodgman writing on the topic of cavemen, Jon Langford on Lester Bangs, Gary Greenberg on the Unabomber, and much more.

    But his fiancée is strangely altered and her family's fortunes have suffered a spectacular decline. The hotel's hundreds of rooms are disintegrating on a grand scale; its few remaining guests thrive on rumors and games of whist; herds of cats have taken over the Imperial Bar and the upper stories; bamboo shoots threaten the foundations; and piglets frolic in the squash court. Meanwhile, the Major is captivated by the beautiful and bitter Sarah Devlin. As housekeeping disasters force him from room to room, outside the order of the British Empire also totters: there is unrest in the East, and in Ireland itself the mounting violence of "the troubles." Troubles is a hilarious and heartbreaking work by a modern master of the historical novel.

    Brave vixens, prophetic owls and stalwart horses live alongside the human characters as guides, protectors, friends and foes while spirits, giants and fairies blur the lines between this world and the otherworld. Collected by Oein DeBhairduin throughout his childhood, retold in his lyrical style, and beautifully illustrated by Leanne McDonagh.

    With a passionate introduction by Enright, The Granta Book of the Irish Short Story traces this great tradition through decades of social change and shows the pleasure Irish writers continue to take in the short-story form. Deft and often devastating, these short stories dodge the rolling mythologies of Irish life to produce truths that are delightful and real. Includes Roddy Doyle, Elizabeth Bowen, Frank O’Connor, Seán Ó Faoláin, Edna O’Brien, Colm Tóibín, Clarie Keegan and William Trevor.The road to the shore / Michael McLaverty --The pram / Roddy Doyle --An attack of hunger / Maeve Brennan --Summer voices / John Banville --Summer night / Elizabeth Bowen --Music at Annahullion / Eugene McCabe --Naming the names / Anne Devlin --Shame / Keith Ridgway --Memory and desire / Val Mulkerns --The mad Lomasneys / Frank O'Connor --Walking Away / Philip Ó Ceallaigh --Villa Marta / Clare Boylan --Lilacs / Mary Lavin --Meles Vulgaris / Patrick Boyle --The trout / Seán Ó Faoláin --Night in Tunisia / Neil Jordan --Sister Imelda / Edna O'Brien --The key / John McGahern --A priest in the family / Colm Tóibín --The supremacy of grief / Hugo Hamilton --The swing of things / Jennifer C Cornell --Train Tracks / Aidan Mathews --See the tree, how big it's grown / Kevin Barry --Visit / Gerard Donovan --Everything in this country must / Colum McCann --Curfew / Sean O'Reilly --Language, truth and lockjaw / Bernard MacLaverty --Midwife to the fairies / Éilís Ní Dhuibhne --Men and women / Clare Keegan --Mothers were all the same / Joseph O'Connor --The dressmaker's child / William Trevor