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.

    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.

    Through ‘A Rustic Mind’ I aim to provide a thoughtful take on such actions and incidents. Poetic in its expression, these words will strike a chord which is not only deep but relatable on many levels.

    The poems also address gender inequality and our inharmonious relationship with the natural world. A poem on Lilian Bland – the first woman to design, build and fly her own aeroplane – celebrates the audacity and ingenuity of a great Irish heroine. Elsewhere, explorers in Greenland set foot on a fjord system accessible to Europeans for the first time in millennia as a result of global warming. But if life is fragile then its traces are persistent, insistent, and in ‘Articulation’ we are invited to stop and wonder at the reconstructed skeleton of Napoleon’s horse, Marengo, ‘whose very hooves trod mud at Austerlitz’, suspended in time ‘for however long he lasts before he crumbles’.

    Determined to keep what little he has, he returns to his homeland in Ireland and enrolls at Saint Enda's school in Dublin. Saint Enda's headmaster is the renowned scholar and poet, Patrick Pearse--who is soon to gain greater fame as a rebel and patriot. Ned becomes totally involved with the growing revolution...and the sacrifices it will demand.Through Ned's eyes, 1916 examines the Irish fight for freedom--inspired by poets and schoolteachers, fueled by a desperate desire for independence, and played out in the historic streets of Dublin against the backdrop of World War I. It is the story of the brave men and heroic women who, for a few unforgettable days, managed to hold out against the might of the British Empire to realize an impossible dream.

    

    They came, they conquered, and they took whatever they wanted. They were strong men in both body and mindset - their culture and religion promoted men to be "men" and their skill and bravery in battle was rewarded with status, plunder and women!Vikings were passionately devoted to their brothers, bonds formed in the bloody danger of battle. And they enjoyed these bonds of brotherhood with feasting and a lot of mead during the winter!But today, you live in a modern world of smartphones, suits and safety. Pillaging and plundering opportunities are limited, and many of your friends are probably too concerned with their iPhones or Gluten Free Diets to be interested in going on a foreign Viking campaign together.But is there still hope?Could the ancient Viking warrior lifestyle help you to rediscover your masculinity? Could it inspire you to become stronger, to become happier, to become more successful?...In this book, Liam Gooding walks you through his personal journey from the top to the bottom. He lost his multi-million dollar company, his house and his fiance. But worst of all, he lost his masculinity.But that's when he discovered the power and strength hidden within ancient Vikings. The liberating freedom of their mythology, the guiltless pride in building a strong and muscular body, the confident ambition of getting what you want in life (no matter who or what stands in your way).Becoming a Modern Viking allowed Liam to become a man again. To rebuild himself stronger than before, to embrace the body and the mindset that evolution and natural selection had intended, and to remove the chains and limitations of modern western society.... Chapter Highlights:• Build a Viking Body using principles and guidelines such as 'Lift Like A God' and 'Train Like A Warrior'• Follow a spreadsheet-free nutrition diet that allows a man to eat as much as he wants, and still boost testosterone and build muscle, or lose fat, depending on his goals• How to stop worrying about overwhelming situations by thinking like a Viking in the shield wall• How to become more assertive in social and professional situations• How to live in Winter Season or Raiding Season to encourage your body to build muscle or lose fat with just a few small changes to your routineModern Viking is not a fitness and exercise book promising to help you look like an Instagram model. It isn't a book about deep meditation and mindfulness.Modern Viking is a practical, no-nonsense self improvement book for men who want to become better men. Modern Viking is especially effective for bigger men - Liam Gooding stands at 6'5" and weighs 230 lb. He eats 4000 - 5000 kcal every day. And none of the women in his life every complain that he doesn't have "Instagram Abs"! Modern Viking is about looking like a man who can swing an axe, row a boat, build a house, and then carry his woman to bed after the days work!

    This was Ireland of the 1970s and 80s before the arrival of the short-lived economic riches of the Celtic Tiger.Dwyer's vivid and colorful prose describes his hard but happy life as part of a isolated but close-knit community:Early school days spent in a building with no running water or electricityAn encounter with a violent sheep that literally turned his world upside downThe days spent cutting the turf and saving the hay by handAn Irish Christmas where nearly everything on the table was sourced from the farmHis exciting family history that brought his relations to the Klondike Gold Rush in CanadaComplemented by a collection of evocative photographs, each story tells of a way of life that has now largely disappeared.Sprinkled with a selection of fitting works by some of Ireland's best-known poets such as Seamus Heaney and Patrick Kavanagh, this gem of a book is a chronicle of the simple but happy life of an Irish farmer boy.

    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.

    And so the announcement that Violet Dene Gordon and her husband, Charles, are on their way back from British Burma to settle in the long-dormant estate sends a ripple of excitement through the sleepy village. For Violet, Dene’s Court stands as a monument to her childhood, but lingering doubts remain about whether she and Charles will be happy there. Adding complexity to the arrangement is the arrival of Violet’s American niece, a college student named Sally who has been sent by her mother in an effort to put an ocean between the impetuous young woman and the object of her affection, an actor. Anxiety, tempers, and long-buried emotions flare as the estate’s new residents search for a sense of belonging and peace between its hallowed and serene walls.

    . . is grounded by a shadow play of macabre references to horrors that ghost around the edges of the narrative, many eerily similar to some of the more infamous real life reports that have emerged in recent years."-- The Irish Times Combining the spirit of Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim with a bawdy evisceration of hypocrisy in old-school Catholic education, The Brothers' Lot is a comic satire that tells the story of the Brothers of Godly Coercion School for Young Boys of Meager Means, a dilapidated Dickensian institution run by an assemblage of eccentric, insane, and often nasty celibate Brothers. The school is in decline and the Brothers hunger for a miracle to move their founder, the Venerable Saorseach O'Rahilly, along the path to Sainthood.When a possible miracle presents itself, the Brothers fervently seize on it with the help of the ethically pliant Diocesan Investigator, himself hungry for a miracle to boost his career. The school simultaneously comes under threat from strange outside forces. The harder the Brothers try to defend the school, the worse things seem to get. It takes an outsider, Finbar Sullivan, a young student newly arrived at the school, to see that the source of the threat may in fact lie inside the school itself. As the miracle unravels, the Brothers' efforts to preserve it unleash a disastrous chain of events.Tackling a serious subject from the oblique viewpoint of satire, The Brothers' Lot explores the culture that allowed abuses within church-run institutions in Ireland to go unchecked for decades.

    Alone and pregnant. Bridget gave birth to a boy, John, who died at the home less than two years later. Her second child was once again delivered into the care of the nuns and was taken from her. She would go on to marry a wonderful man and have a daughter Anna Corrigan, but it was only after Bridget's death that Anna discovered she had two brothers her mother had never spoken about. Anna became compelled to try and uncover any information she could about her baby brothers. What followed was the revelation that the remains of 796 babies were buried on the site of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home. Anna was left to wonder, were her brothers among them? Here, with Alison O'Reilly, she pieces together the mystery.

    Out of the blue she hands him the forgotten diary he had kept as a fifteen-year-old. He is amazed to find the makings of the writer he has become, as well as taken aback at the changes his memory has wrought upon the events of the past. Here is the seed of his story-the vision of the boy meets the memory of the man-which creates a stunning, illusory effect. The strange silhouettes who have haunted his past come back to inhabit these pages: his father, a kind policeman who guides him back to bed when he stumbles down the stairs sleepwalking; his mother, whose stories young Dermot has heard so often that he believes they are his own; or Aunt Masie, whose early disappointment in love has left her both dreamy and cynical. In this billowing and expansive series of recollections, Healy has traced the very shape of human memory.

    A retired couple, Gerry and Stella Gilmore, fly from their home in Scotland to Amsterdam for a long weekend—a holiday to refresh the senses, to do some sightseeing, and generally to take stock of what remains of their lives. Their relationship seems safe, easy, familiar. But over the course of the four days we discover the deep uncertainties that exist between them.Gerry, once an architect, is forgetful and set in his ways. Stella is tired of his lifestyle, worried about their marriage, and angry at his constant undermining of her religious faith. Things are not helped by memories that have begun to resurface of a troubled time in their native Ireland. As their midwinter break comes to an end, we understand how far apart they are—and can only watch as they struggle to save themselves. MacLaverty is a master storyteller, and Midwinter Break is the essential MacLaverty novel: accurate, compassionate observation; effortlessly elegant writing; and a tender, intimate, heartrending story. Yet it is also a profound examination of human love and how we live together, a chamber piece of real resonance and power. Forty years after his first book, MacLaverty has written his masterpiece.

    She feels the painful loss of her father acutely and seeks solace both in the security of her local library and the escape her phone screen provides by blocking out the world around her. As Daphne tries to make sense of what has happened she recalls memories of shared times and stories past, and in facing the darkness she finds a way back from the tangle of fear and confusion, to feel connected once more with her friends and family. The Girl Who Became a Tree sees Joseph Coelho deploy a wide variety of poetic forms with consummate skill in its narration of events. He seamlessly but searingly weaves together the ancient legend of Daphne, who was turned into a tree to avoid the attentions of the god Apollo, and a totally modern tale, mixing real-life and fantasy, in which a latter-day Daphne seeks her own freedom. This is a heart-stoppingly imaginative story told in poems, at times bleak and even tragic, which is layered, rich and ultimately a tour de force of poetic skill and energy.