The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays


Oscar Wilde - 1898
    Manners and morality are also victims of Wilde's sharp wit in Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance and An Ideal Husband, in which snobbery and hypocrisy are laid bare. In Salomé and A Florentine Tragedy, Wilde makes powerful use of historical settings to explore the complex relationship between sex and power. The range of these plays displays Wilde's delight in artifice, masks and disguises, and reveals the pretentions of the social world in which he himself played such a dazzling and precarious part.Richard Allen Cave's introduction and notes discuss the themes of the plays and Wilde's innovative methods of staging. This edition includes the excised 'Gribsby' scene from The Importance of Being Earnest.

Promising Young Women


Caroline O'Donoghue - 2018
    I know exactly what Jolly would say: I know because I've written words to mistresses before. Hundreds of them."On the day of her 26th birthday, Jane is recently single, adrift at her job, and intrigued by why Clem - her much older, married boss - is singing to her.Meanwhile her alter-ego, the online agony aunt Jolly Politely, has all the answers. She's provided thousands of strangers with insightful and occasionally cutting insights to contemporary life's most vexing questions.When she and Clem kiss at a party, Jane does not follow the advice she would give to her readers as Jolly: instead she plunges head-first into an affair. One that could jeopardise her friendships, her career and even her life.

Castle Rackrent and Ennui


Maria Edgeworth - 1809
    Thady will defend his masters to the end, but eventually his naivety and blind loyalty cause him to ignore the warning signs as the family's excesses lead them to ruin. This volume also includes Ennui, the entertaining 'confessions' of the Earl of Glenthorn, a bored, spoiled aristocrat. Desperate to be free from 'the demon of ennui', Glenthorn's quest for happiness takes him through violence and revolution, and leads to intriguing twists of fate. Both novels offer a darkly comic and satirical exposé of the Irish class system, and a portrait of a nation in turmoil.

Fishing the Sloe-Black River


Colum McCann - 1994
    There is the worn boxing champion who steals clothes from a New Orleans laundromat, the rumored survivor of Hiroshima who emigrates to the tranquil coast of Western Ireland, the Irishwoman who journeys through America in search of silence and solitude. But what is found in these stories, and discovered by these characters, is the astonishing poetry and peace found in the mundane: a memory, a scent on the wind, the grace in the curve of a street. Fishing the Sloe-Black River is a work of pure augury, of the channeling and re-spoken lives of people exposed to the beauty of the everyday.

JFK in Ireland


Ryan Tubridy - 2010
    Kennedy was the great-grandson of Irish immigrants and the only Irish-Catholic American elected as President of the US. He relished his Irish heritage and in June 1963 made a 4-day trip to his homeland. This book documents his trip and reveals the huge effect his visit had on Ireland.

A Belfast Child


John Chambers - 2020
    From an early age he witnessed violence, hatred and horror as Northern Ireland tore itself apart in civil strife. Kneecapping, brutal murders, and even public tarring-and-feathering were simply a fact of life for the children on the estate. He thought he knew which side he was on, but although raised as a Loyalist, he was hiding a troubling secret: that his disappeared mother - whom he'd always been told was dead - was a Roman Catholic, 'the enemy'.In a memoir of rare power, John explores the dark heart of Northern Irish sectarianism in the 70s and 80s. With searing honesty and native Belfast wit, he describes the light and darkness of his unique childhood, and his teenage journey through mod culture and ultra-Loyalism, before an escape from Belfast to London - where, still haunted by the shadow of his fractured family history - he began a turbulent and hedonistic adulthood.'A BELFAST CHILD' is a tale of divided loyalties, dark secrets and the scars left by hatred and violence on a proud city - but also a story of hope, healing and ultimate redemption for a family caught in the rising tide of the Troubles.©2020 John Chambers (P)2020 Bonnier Publishing

It Only Takes Once


Susan Colleen Browne - 2011
    Juggling the needs of her daddy-hungry son with her first love Ben and her estranged father, she’s fresh out of her klutzy charm to help her sort out the mess she’s created.Lying low at her granny's cottage in the small village of Ballydara, in County Galway, Aislin is faced with decisions about trust, forgiveness, and the true meaning of family. Can a commitment-shy young mother find lasting love?Books by Susan Colleen BrowneThe Village of Ballydara SeriesThe Secret Well, short story ebookA Christmas Visitor, short story ebook and the sequel of The Secret Well It Only Takes Once, A Village of Ballydara Novel, Book 1 (print and ebook)Mother Love, A Village of Ballydara Novel, Book 2 (ebook, coming soon in print)Children’s StoryMorgan Carey and the Curse of the Corpse Bride, a lighthearted Halloween story for middle-grade readers (ebook, coming soon in print!)Memoir Little Farm in the Foothills: A Boomer Couple’s Search for the Slow Life (print and ebook)

Translations


Brian Friel - 1981
    The 'scholars' are a cross-section of the local community, from a semi-literate young farmer to and elderly polygot autodidact who reads and quotes Homer in the orginal.In a nearby field camps a recently arrived detachment of the Royal Engineers, engaged on behalf of the Britsh Army and Government in making the first Ordnance Survey. For the purposes ofr cartography, the local Gaelic place names have to be recorded and transliterated - or translated - into English, in examining the effects of this operation on the lives of a small group of people, Irish and English, Brian Friel skillfully reveals the unexperctedly far-reaching personal and cultural effects of an action which is at first sight purely administrative and harmless. While remaining faithful to the personalities and relationshiops of those people at that time he makes a richly suggestive statement about Irish - and English - history.

Dance Lessons


Áine Greaney - 2011
    In this chance encounter, she discovers that her immigrant husband of almost fifteen years was not an orphan after all. Instead, his aged mother Jo is alive and residing on the family’s isolated farm in the west of Ireland.Faced with news of her mother-in-law incarnate, the thirty-nine-year-old American prep school teacher decides to travel to Ireland to investigate the truth about her husband Fintan and why he kept his family’s existence a secret for so many years.Between Jo’s hilltop farm and the lakeside village of Gowna, Ellen begins to uncover the mysteries of her Irish husband’s past and the cruelties and isolation of his rural childhood. Ellen also stumbles upon Fintan’s long-ago romance with a local village woman, with whom he had a daughter, Cat. Cat is now fourteen and living with her mother in London. As Ellen reconciles her troubled relationship with Fintan, she discovers a way to heal the wounds of the past.Deeply rooted in the Irish landscape and sensibility, Dance Lessons is a powerful story of loss, regret, and transformation.

The Devil's Advocate


Iain Morley - 2005
    Written in a humorous and engaging style, this pocket-sized ready-reckoner is easy to read with the text presented in easily absorbable sections. The author steers the reader through the key principles and practical applications of advocacy, step by step in a clear and logical manner.

The International


Glenn Patterson - 1999
    An ordinary Saturday in the Blue Bar of the International Hotel in Belfast. While 18-year-old Danny pulls pints, he contemplates his future and the bar's varied clientele. But ordinary Saturdays like this are almost over. On the next day the hotel will host the inaugural meeting of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, and the slide towards the troubles will begin.

The Playboy of the Western World


J.M. Synge - 1907
    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Beside Golden Irish Fields


Ava Miles - 2021
    Art teacher Angie Newcastle’s life is all monotone.She wasn’t always this dull. She’d been an up-and-coming artist with the world at her feet. But after contracting the Wrong Man Syndrome and spending years doubting herself, she no longer recognizes herself.When she loses her job, she can’t afford to keep ignoring the obvious: her life needs a serious overhaul. And she knows exactly where to start: in Ireland, teaching art classes to her ex-pat cousin’s village community.Angie expected the golden fields beside her ancient Irish cottage to inspire her. She didn’t expect them to be populated by sheep sprayed with uplifting words. And she certainly didn’t expect anyone like their owner, reclusive sheep baron Carrick Fitzgerald, or the matchmaking ghost determined to bring them together.Neither want to find love—especially Angie, who’s on a self-imposed man-fast because she doesn’t want her life to take another nosedive. Only she slowly realizes that Carrick is the most unexpected of Prince Charmings and that he might help her make all her dreams come true.

Gulliver's Travels: Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World.


Jonathan Swift - 1726
    Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read.Gulliver's Travels describes the four voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon. In Lilliput he discovers a world in miniature; towering over the people and their city, he is able to view their society from the viewpoint of a god. However, in Brobdingnag, a land of giants, tiny Gulliver himself comes under observation, exhibited as a curiosity at markets and fairs. In Laputa, a flying island, he encounters a society of speculators and projectors who have lost all grip on everyday reality; while they plan and calculate, their country lies in ruins. Gulliver's final voyage takes him to the land of the Houyhnhnms, gentle horses whom he quickly comes to admire - in contrast to the Yahoos, filthy bestial creatures who bear a disturbing resemblance to humans. This text, based on the first edition of 1726, reproduces all the original illustrations and includes an introduction by Robert Demaria, Jr, which discusses the ways Gulliver's Travels has been interpreted since its first publication. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was born in Dublin. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot/Endgame: A reader's guide to essential criticism


Peter Boxall - 2000
    The guide presents the major debates that surround these works as they develop, from Martin Esslin's early appropriation of the plays as examples of the Theatre of the Absurd, to recent poststructuralist and postcolonial readings by critics such as Steven Connor, Mary Bryden and Declan Kiberd. Throughout, Boxall clarifies and contextualizes critical responses to the plays, and considers the difficult relationship between Beckett and his critics.