They are 300 times more effective than an ordinary patrol... If we are going to have murderers and terrorists roaming the towns, then we have to have somebody who is able to go out and find them.” Contemporary press report Some think it stood for ‘Military Reconnaissance Force’, others ‘Mobile Reconnaissance Force’. Many people thought it didn’t exist at all and was made up, a figment of the press’s imagination. To the members of the group that was just fine. It added to the illusion, and the speculation about the unit’s name and mission only added to the uncertainty amongst their targets — terrorists — members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, the IRA, the provos. For decades there has been argument in the media and amongst politicians about the possible existence and extent of a shoot-to-kill policy in Northern Ireland. MRF Shadow Troop confirms there was such an agenda in the early, chaotic days of British military intervention across the Irish Sea. Amongst the mountain of speculation there is little of any accuracy or authority relating to this period. Simon Cursey was recruited into the Military Reaction Force — the unit’s true name — in 1972. This book is his personal account of his time with the group and in it he reveals the truth about their operations — the briefings, missions, political wrangling, and government-sanctioned law-bending. With documents and photographs to corroborate all his revelations, MRF Shadow Troop is a fascinating, exciting but above all accurate historical text about the pioneers of counter-terrorism.

    She smiles like she is hiding a secret. She holds her head high, like she is wearing an invisible crown. The air Around her is charged with confidence, strength, and courage. Have you heard the whispers? She woke up different today. Yet it feels she has been like this always. Maybe it’s the story that has changed.About the Author‘Fragile but Unbreakable’ is how Reecha describes herself. She believes in miracles, takes life head on, and is passionate about weaving magic with her words. And now that she has found her calling, she desires to spend her entire life reading, travelling, and dwelling in her own little fictional and poetic worlds. An MBA from Loyola Institute of Business Administration, she is based out of New Delhi where she lives with her husband and two kids. She – Screw Silence is her third book.

    ?Shortlisted for the 2021 An Post Irish Book Awards Eason Novel of the Year...A darkly funny, gripping and profoundly moving novel about a life spinning out of control, a life live without the bedrock of familial love, and the corruption of material wealth that tears at the soul. ‘It was my father’s arrest that brought me here, although you could certainly say that I took the scenic route.’Here is rehab, where Ben – the only son of a rich South Dublin banker – is piecing together the shattered remains of his life. Abruptly cut off, at the age of 27, from a life of heedless privilege, Ben flounders through a world of drugs and dead-end jobs, his self-esteem at rock bottom. Even his once-adoring girlfriend, Clio, is at the end of her tether.  Then Ben runs into an old school friend who wants to cut him in on a scam: a shady property deal in the Balkans. The deal will make Ben rich and, at one fell swoop, will deliver him from all his troubles: his addictions, his father’s very public disgrace, and his own self-loathing and regret. Problems solved. But something is amiss. For one thing, the Serbian partners don’t exactly look like fools. (In fact they look like gangsters.) And, for another, Ben is being followed everywhere he goes. Someone is being taken for a ride. But who?

    This new book takes place in Lockdown Three. This time Key can make Government-sanctioned expeditions out onto the streets of London (remember?). And it is there that the inaction takes place. Phone calls to his mother, promenades with his loyal friend, bubble-negotiations, sitting his fat arse down on benches, drinking mocha. Another three months of mind-freezing inertia. This time on the move. Conversations interspersed with poetry.

    The paintings are in brilliant color and each features the Japanese parasol.Matsuo Basho (1644 - 1694) was born Matsuo Kinsaku during the early Edo period in Japan. During his lifetime, Basho was recognized for his work in a poetic form that was a precursor to the haiku. Over the course of time, Basho became recognized as an unparalleled master of the haiku. His work is internationally renowned, and his poems are reproduced at many historical sites in Japan.

    He is considered by Octavio Paz to be instrumental to the genesis of modern Latin American poetry and “one of the best poets” of the Spanish language. Toward the end of his life, he had published for over fifty years and brought in crowds of more than 3,000 to a readings in his native country. Coined the “Sniper of Literature” by Cuban poet Roberto Fernández Retamar, Sabines brought poetry to the streets. His vernacular, authentic poems are accessible: meant not for other poets, or the established or elite, but for himself and for the people.In this translation of his fourth book, Tarumba, we find ourselves stepping into Sabines’ streets, brothels, hospitals, and cantinas; the most bittersweet details are told in a way that reaffirms: “Life bursts from you, like scarlet fever, without warning.” Eloquently co-translated by Philip Levine and the late Ernesto Trejo, this bilingual edition is a classic for Spanish- and English-speaking readers alike. Secretive, wild, and searching, these poems are rife with such intensity you’ll feel “heaven is sucking you up through the roof.” Jaime Sabines was born on March 25, 1926 in Chiapas, Mexico. In 1945, he relocated to Mexico City where he studied Medicine for three years before turning his attention to Philosophy and Literature at the University of Mexico. He wrote eight books of poetry, including Horal (1950), Tarumba (1956), and Maltiempo (1972), for which he received the Xavier Villaurrutia Award. In 1959, Sabines was granted the Chiapas Prize and, in 1983, the National Literature Award. In addition to his literary career, Sabines served as a congressman for Chiapas. Jaime Sabines died in 1999; he remains one of Mexico’s most respected poets.  Philip Levine (translator) was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1928. He is the author of sixteen books of poetry, most recently Breath (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004). His other poetry collections include The Mercy (1999); The Simple Truth (1994), which won the Pulitzer Prize; What Work Is (1991), which won the National Book Award; New Selected Poems (1991); Ashes: Poems New and Old (1979), which received the National Book Critics Circle Award and the first American Book Award for Poetry; 7 Years From Somewhere (1979), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award; and The Names of the Lost (1975), which won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. He has received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize from Poetry, the Frank O'Hara Prize, and two Guggenheim Foundation fellowships. Philip Levine lives in New York City and Fresno, California, and teaches at New York University.

    Leaving home is a way to escape her sorrow and despair following the death of her boyfriend and a testy relationship with her mother, Verity. In Scotland she encounters love and excitement but when a series of unexpected events turn her new found life on its head, she is forced to make a life-changing decision, one that will stay with her for her whole life. The Closet of Savage Mementos is drawn directly from the author's own experiences and explores heartbreak, loss, motherhood and adoption in a gripping narrative and the same expressive, emotive and exciting prose we have come to expect of Nuala Ní Chonchúir. Reviews: 'Her finest novel yet.' - The Sunday Times Ní Chonchúir manages to strike a delicate balance between passion and poetry…The Closet of Savage Mementos is a book that will appeal to, and deserves, a wide audience.’ -- Sunday Business Post 'It is raw, beautiful and compelling, a 'must read'.' - Sunday Independent mpelling and deeply accomplished, The Closet of Savage Mementos is the product of a powerful literary talent. - Cork Evening Echo About the Author: Nuala Ní Chonchúir was born in Dublin in 1970; she lives in East Galway with her husband and three children. Her fourth short story collection Mother America was published by New Island in 2012; The Irish Times said of it: ‘Ní Chonchúir’s precisely made but deliciously sensual stories mark her as a carrier of Edna O’Brien’s flame.’ Her début novel You (New Island, 2010) was called ‘a gem’ by the Irish Examiner and ‘a heart-warmer’ by The Irish Times. A chapbook of flash fiction, Of Dublin and Other Fictions, is just out from Tower Press in the US. Nuala has won many writing awards including RTÉ radio’s Francis MacManus Award, the Cúirt New Writing Prize, the Jane Geske Award (USA), the inaugural Jonathan Swift Award, the Dublin Review of Books flash fiction prize and the Cecil Day Lewis Award. She was shortlisted for the European Prize for Literature and most recently won the Gladstone’s Library Flash Fiction Prize (UK).www.nualanichonchuir.com

    

    This is the record of one of the most interesting personal relationships of modern literature. Between 1913, when Yeats first called Joyces's work to Pound's attention, an 1920 there was a steady flow of letters, in which we see Pound finding publishers for Joyce, collecting money for him, defending him against censorship, even sending spare clothes. More than sixty letters from Pound to Joyce have survived, while those from Joyce to pound will be found in the Viking Press Joyce correspondence volumes.

    The School for Scandal (1777) is his masterpiece, a brilliantly crafted comedy of contrasts in which brothers Joseph and Charles Surface contend for Maria, with hilariously differing intentions and results. Also a work of acute comic irony, The Rivals satirizes the romantic posturing of Lydia Languish while her disguised suitor Captain Absolute's resourceful contrivances advance an ever inventive and skilfully wrought plot. Included in this edition are the opera play The Duenna and the rarely printed musical play A Trip to Scarborough, adapted from Vanbrugh's The Relapse. Sheridan's last play, The Critic, is an exuberant parody of the modish tragic drama of the day. Lampooning Sir Fretful Plagiary's absurdly bombastic historical drama during its confused stages of production, its satire never fails to delight. The texts of the plays have been newly edited by the General Editor of the Oxford World's Classics English Drama series. A fine introduction and notes on Sheridan's playhouses and critical inheritance make this an invaluable edition for study and performance alike.

    Kilkenny were beaten in that final by Tipperary but Tyrrell’s inner-most thoughts from his diary, both in the lead-up to, and after the game, provide the narrative to a compelling life story. His unique insights paint the picture of a relentless individual and a relentless team – the most successful side in the history of Irish male sport. The intrigue and aura around Kilkenny coach Brian Cody and his players was always heightened because very little ever emerged from the camp, or the dressing room. Now, for the first time, Tyrrell opens a unique window into the elite mindset and attitude which forged such unprecedented success. Tyrrell’s own journey is chronicled with brutal and unwavering honesty. The hurling legend’s constant drive to be a winner with his beloved county have pushed him towards breaking point many times. Tyrrell operates somewhere between obsessed and maniacal. On the pitch, he displayed the ruthless mentality of an assassin but behind it all, he had to conquer crippling self-doubt and fear. It took until his fourth successive All-Ireland final for Tyrrell to believe he had finally arrived as a senior inter-county hurler, going on to become one of the most feared and respected defenders in the game.

    This outlaw turned Texas Ranger was one of the favorite protagonists of master storyteller Louis L’Amour, appearing in a total of nineteen short stories bursting with unforgettable heroics and harrowing action. They’re all here in this eBook bundle, together forming an epic portrait of a man standing at the crossroads between good and evil:   McNelly Knows a Ranger • A Job for a Ranger • Bowdrie Rides a Coyote Trail • A Trail to the West • The Outlaws of Poplar Creek • Bowdrie Follows a Cold Trail • More Brains Than Bullets • The Road to Casa Piedras • Bowdrie Passes Through • Where Buzzards Fly • South of Deadwood • Too Tough to Brand • Case Closed—No Prisoners • The Killer from the Pecos • A Ranger Rides to Town • Rain on the Mountain Fork • Down Sonora Way • Strange Pursuit • Strawhouse Trail   The name is Bowdrie. It was a name that caused the most hardened gunmen to break out in a cold sweat. Chick Bowdrie. He could have ridden the outlaw trail, but the Texas Rangers recruited him because they didn’t want to have to fight against him. Pursuing the most wanted men in the Southwest, he knew all too well the dusty trails, the bitter cattle feuds, the desperate killers, and the quiet, weather-beaten, wind-blasted towns that could explode into action with the wrong word. He had sworn to carry out the law, but there were times when he had to apply justice with his fists and his guns. They called in the Rangers to handle the tough ones, and there was never a Ranger tougher or smarter than Bowdrie.

    Emerging from the hospital, he has lost an arm and a leg, and his face has been disfigured. He becomes a sideshow freak to support himself, traveling around England and even back to Galway, but he eventually returns to London, where he dies, down and out, in one of the city's parks.

    Starting with the first prehistoric inhabitants of the island, the book takes us right up to the present day, covering the Great Famine, Home Rule, the Good Friday Agreement, and beyond. Clear and lucid, Coohill’s writing paints an engaging picture of a people for whom history is a key part of present-day reality. Reviewing differing historical interpretations, Coohill allows the reader to come to their own conclusions. Highly accessible, yet demonstrating a sophisticated level of analysis, this book will continue to provide a valuable resource to tourists, students and all those wishing to acquaint themselves further with the complex identity of the Irish people.

    Yum! I hope you like it.