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 couple who survived the Great Hunger have had to watch more than half their family leave the parish. The responsibility to care for one another extends beyond blood or marriage ties for the McGrother family in New York, when a young Irishman goes missing in America. Back in Ireland, at a time when James and Mary least expect it, a family member returns - but not everyone is pleased with the reunion.

    The isolation is all but unbearable until a mysterious tenant moves into the house at the bottom of the hill. James Dunford has come from America but he won’t say why. He spends his days fixing up the old cottage and walking the beach with a stray dog that showed up on his doorstep.As the weeks pass, Tara tries to get to know James, but he resists her at every turn. And it's not until a local villager recognizes him from the news that she realizes his visit might be about more than just a vacation. On the night of a big storm, Tara finally confronts James about why he is there. But how can she expect him to be honest when she, too, is hiding her own dark secret?Set against the backdrop of the Hunger Strikes in Northern Ireland, Sunsets Never Wait is a story about love, loss, and the risks of hanging on to the past. No matter how much the world has let you down, there’s always a possibility for second chances.

    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.

      “An epic saga that sweeps you into the life of a remarkable woman,” Ann Moore’s trilogy of breathtaking historical novels covers Gracelin O’Malley’s life from the 1845 Famine and the Young Ireland movement to the mass emigration to America, culminating in the wild frontier of 1850s California (Romantic Times). Through it all, Gracelin’s indomitable spirit and Moore’s “vivid historical detail” prove most hauntingly memorable (Kirkus Reviews).  Gracelin O’Malley: As the potato famine devastates Ireland, Gracelin openly defies her English husband by feeding the desperate souls who come to their door, and secretly sides with the rebels who call themselves the Young Irelanders—including her beloved brother, Sean—as they fight to free their homeland from the yoke of English rule.   “Lyrical, pitch-perfect prose . . . Historical fiction at its finest.” —Publishers Weekly  Leaving Ireland: Forced to flee Ireland, Gracelin takes her young daughter with her on an arduous transatlantic voyage to New York City. As she tries to make a new life for herself and her daughter, she reunites with her brother and befriends a runaway slave, getting swept up into the volatile abolitionist movement.   “Moore blends romance and adventure. . . . Strong and likable characters and a well-paced story will make readers look forward to Gracelin’s next appearance.” —Booklist  ’Til Morning Light: With her two children, Gracelin travels to post–Gold Rush San Francisco to meet the sea captain who has proposed to her. But when she arrives, he is nowhere to be found. Although destitute in a dangerous city, Gracelin vows to make a secure life for her children and find her brother.   “Readers who have been following the story of Gracelin O’Malley will be thrilled with the concluding volume in Moore’s trilogy.” —Booklist

    DanDan is struggling with the death of his ex, Lucy is drinking way too much and Steph has become closed off. A weekend away is just what they need. They travel out to Rockadoon Lodge, to the wilds in the west of Ireland. But the weekend doesn't go to plan. JJ is more concerned with getting high than spending time with them, while Merc is humiliated and seeks revenge. And when their elderly neighbour Malachy arrives on their doorstep in the dead of night with a gun in his hands, nothing will be the same again for any of them . . .Honest, moving and human, Rockadoon Shore is a novel about friendship and youth, about missed opportunities and lost love, and about the realities of growing up and growing old in modern-day Ireland. Highly energetic and tensely humorous, it heralds a new and exciting voice in contemporary Irish fiction.

    The British government called the famine an act of God. The Irish called it genocide. By any name the famine caused the death of over one million men, women, and children by starvation and disease. Another two million were forced to flee the country. With the famine as a backdrop, this is a story about two families as different as coarse wool and fine silk. Michael Ranahan, the son of a tenant farmer, dreams of breaking his bondage to the land and going to America. The passage money has been saved. He’s made up his mind to go. And then—the blight strikes and Michael must put his dream on hold. The landlord, Lord Somerville, is a compassionate man who struggles to preserve a way of life without compromising his ideals. To add to his troubles, he has to deal with a recalcitrant daughter who chafes at being forced to live in a country of “bog runners.”In The Time Of Famine is a story of survival. It’s a story of duplicity. But most of all, it’s a story of love and sacrifice.

    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.

    It tells the woeful tale of a group of 'fallen' women who have had their babies snatched from them at birth to be given up for adoption, and their wretched lives of drudgery earning their keep in the laundry.

    Costello's spellbinding novel, The Rag Tree, breathes dark, vivid life into Ireland's passionate legends. Crisp and sharp-witted, Costello's tale probes a modern Ireland torn between letting go of time-honored dreams and embracing the promises of a prosperous New Ireland. Even as they struggle against one another, the Irish Special Branch, the British Army, Scotland Yard, and the I.R.A. find themselves forced to ally against a common foe: The Rag Man. Mattie Joe Treacy is the Rag Man. Engrossed in a desperate quest to find his missing father, Mattie Joe is cursed-by the playboy's life of drink and carousing, by his family's staunch adherence to Ireland's old folk ways, and by a family curse hurled at his clan generations ago. The Curse of the O'Neills, invoked by an angry cleric against Mattie Joe's great-grandfather, declares that, "the eldest son will not survive the father." No Treacy son has since outlived his father, and Mattie Joe is next in line to die. Or is he?

    About to turn 30, like many her age, Ellen had left the Church a long time ago, but she had never stopped believing in and talking to God. Now, she suddenly realized she wasn't quite ready for this statement to be true, however much of a contradiction it seemed to present with some of her most strongly held views.Abandoning the Church had been an act of protest, a form of punishment. However, she began to wonder: who had really lost the most? Why should those who did the damage to the Church get to keep it and all its good bits, like going to Mass for the ritual and the community, having a clear guide for living a better life, and the comfort of believing it's not the end when somebody dies?But how could she ally herself to an institution she doesn't entirely agree with? In her first book, Ellen tries to figure out how much she really wants to go back to the Church, and if it is even the right thing to do. A stunningly intelligent and thoughtful debut work of non-fiction.

    story of an abandoned love, who after making her life in Italy, goes back to the UK to re-make her life there teaching Italian

    Emma is a must-read for fans of Patricia Scanlan and Cathy Kelly. 'A writer who understands exactly how women think' Cathy Kelly Tess can't quite believe her luck - she's marrying Marco, the man of her dreams, in an exquisite traditional Italian wedding, surrounded by her adoring family. But when an ex puts in an unexpected appearance in Rome, Tess is instantly taken back to glorious Huntersbrook House and the warmth and joy of the Craig family. Memories she thought she had long-buried and left behind in Ireland suddenly resurface at the worst possible moment. Forced to face both her past and future on the evening of the rehearsal dinner, Tess is thrown into turmoil. Which man - and moment - will win out? From Rome to the Irish seaside town of Caracove Bay... Don't miss Emma's sublime novel The Summer Guest.

    His job bores him and his love is unrequited. Very few people pay attention to Michael, and that suits him fine. Then one day, he finds himself the winner of the largest lottery in the history of Europe – €190,000,000! Under the weight of his new found wealth and fame, Michael’s life spirals out of control until he is forced to make a decision. A decision that will capture the imagination of the entire world…

    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.