Her sister, Helen, is beautiful but damaged, and hides a secret that has affected the whole family, one they cannot escape but one she is trying to move on from. As Helen learns to become a whole person once again, her family struggles with the past, and how they will move forward together. And Jen realises that the one person she needs to help her through is the one person she cannot have - Helen's boyfriend, Ned...

    This extended satiric poem assesses the growing economic, political, and familial constraints of late 18th-century Catholic Ireland under British colonial rule, while subversively playing on the tradition of the aisling (or vision) poem in which a beautiful woman represents Ireland’s threatened sovereignty.At the beginning of The Midnight Court, a dreadful female envoy from the fairies appears in a dream to the unmarried poet. She summons him before the court of Queen Aoibheall in order to answer charges of wasting his manhood while women are dying for want of love. He listens to complaints that vary from the celibacy of the clergy to marriages performed between old and young for purely economic reasons. In all their bawdy tales, the female courtiers praise fertility, as well as sexual fulfillment, and condemn the conventions of the day. At last the Queen pronounces judgment on the poet, who awakens as he is being severely chastised by all of the women of the court.While containing many insights into 18th-century social conditions, The Midnight Court is also an exuberant, even jaunty work of the comic imagination. As the translator Ciaran Carson states in his foreword: “The protagonists of the ‘Court,’ including ‘Merriman’ himself, are ghosts, summoned into being by language; they are figments of the imagination. In the ‘Court’ the language itself is continually interrogated and Merriman is the great illusionist, continually spiriting words into another dimension.”

    Yum! I hope you like it.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    And so her mother outfits Grace in men's clothing and casts her out. When her younger brother Colly follows after her, the two set off on a life-changing odyssey in the looming shadow of the Great Famine.To survive, Grace will become a boy, a bandit, a penitent and finally, a woman. A meditation on love, life and destiny, Grace is an epic coming-of-age novel, and a poetic evocation of the Irish famine as it has never been written.

    One shocking discovery leads to another as the animals prove to be intelligent, charismatic creatures with sinister motives. A husband and wife recently parted by adultery, an enterprising sociopath and a thirty-year-old mentally handicapped man all become pivotal to the animals’ cryptic timetable. Each strangely connected character begins to realize they are caught up in a frightening force spiraling toward a bizarre state of authoritarianism. This frenetic story is a fast and immersive read told through letters, journal entries and news transcripts.

    Well known for writing out the heartache and melancholia, this title explores the softer side of Savage, one not many are privileged to. She pours over the pages with a full love, one returned. You'll find no sadness or unrequited feelings in here. This is the real, heartfelt musings of a woman in love.

    The time before sleep acts as an invitation to reflect on the world's quieter movements—from gardens heavy after a first storm to the moon slipping into darkness in an eclipse—as well as on the subtle but relentless passage of time. Insomnia embodies Linda Pastan's graceful and iconic voice, both lucid and haunting.

    An unnamed protagonist is on holiday with her new, much-married lover, in the company of the monstrously rich.'How long would she last? It would be uppermost in all their minds.'Each day, while the others are out at sea, she is taught to swim. Eventually, she will be expected to perform. The pressure mounts; it is only a matter of time before she snaps.Edna O'Brien crafts a quietly horrifying scene of eroticism and insecurity, and makes one woman's near-fatal discomfort stand for society's larger trap.Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work.

    But when they become engaged, Max’s father insists on a ‘left-handed marriage’, a custom among the German aristocracy in cases where the bride does not have the required pedigree. This means that, although Diana will be Max’s lawful wife, neither she nor their children will have any claim to Max’s eventual title or wealth. Deeply in love, Max and Diana agree to these terms and the newlyweds dazzle from Ascot to the Riviera and host lavish skiing parties at their estate in the Alps. However, as the dark clouds of war gather across Europe, Diana becomes concerned by her loving husband’s unpredictability and what she suspects are sinister secrets beneath his family’s glamorous lifestyle. When war is declared Diana finds herself caught between two sides, as her own Anglo-Irish family are fighting for the British and Max is an officer in the German army. Diana, refusing to leave her beloved husband, becomes a figure of mistrust in Germany and is portrayed as a treasonous woman in the British press. When Max is reported missing presumed dead, Diana is rejected by his family. Widowed, penniless, her reputation in tatters and her own family in Ireland destroyed by the war, Diana sets out to rebuild her life. *** A. O’Connor once more draws us irresistibly into the past and spins an extraordinary tale that holds us spellbound. Here again is that mixture of impeccable research and powerful storytelling that made The House and The Secrets of Armstrong House bestsellers

    Its pages are animated with colorful tales of the fairy folk in all their many guises: the changeling, the banshee, the headless dullahan, the leprechaun, the merrow, and the ever-mischievous pooka. In addition, this volume includes tales of ghosts, witches and fairy doctors, priests and saints, encounters with the devil, titans of Ireland's historical past, as well as popular treasure legends.Contents: The trooping fairies. The cave fairies --Popular notions considering the Sidhe race --Changelings --The solitary fairies. The lepracaun, the cluricaun, and the Far Darrig --The pooka --The banshee and the dullahan --Ghosts --Witches and fairy doctors --T'yeer-na-n-oge --Priests and saints --The devil --Giants --Rocks and stones --Treasure legends --Legends of the western islands --Kings, queens, princesses, earls, and robbers

    

    Packed full of zingers and hilarious illustrations, if this doesn't put a smile on your face, nothing will. What's not to like:The other day someone left a piece of plasticine in my dressing room. I didn't know what to make of it. I'm against hunting. I'm actually a hunt saboteur. I go out the night before and shoot the fox. I saw this bloke chatting up a cheetah. He was trying to pull a fast one. Black holes. I don't know what people see in them. So I fancied a game of darts with my mate. He said, 'Nearest the bull goes first.' He went 'Baah' and I went 'Moo'. He said 'You're closest.' Velcro. What a rip-off. Black Beauty. He's a dark horse. I've got a sponge front door. Hey, don't knock it.

    Among the commoners in the GPO was a young staff captain of the Irish Volunteers named Michael Collins. He was joined a day later by a fourteen-year-old messenger boy, Eoin Kavanagh. Four days later they would all surrender, but they had struck the match that would burn Great Britain out of Ireland for the first time in seven hundred years.The 13th Apostle is the reimagined story of how Michael Collins, along with his young acolyte Eoin, transformed Ireland from a colony into a nation. Collins’s secret weapon was his intelligence system and his assassination squad, nicknamed “The Twelve Apostles.” On November 21, 1920, the squad—with its thirteenth member, young Eoin—assassinated the entire British Secret Service in Dublin. Twelve months and sixteen days later, Collins signed the Treaty at 10 Downing Street, which brought into being what is, today, the Republic of Ireland.An epic novel in the tradition of Thomas Flanagan’s The Year of the French and Leon Uris’s Trinity, The 13th Apostle is a story that will capture the imagination and hearts of freedom-loving readers everywhere.

    A contemporary man, John Thornburn (a meek, non-violent and unpredictable artist) and woman, Derval (his tough, confrontational, strong and warrior-like lover) time travel to ancient Ireland to avenge a Viking attack. Packed with fascinating details of historical time and place in Irish history and delicately balanced on the border between realism and fantasy, the story centers around one of the most famous and beautiful illuminated manuscripts in history, the legendary but entirely real Book of Kells. Celtic history blends with magical fantasy for a strange and immersive tale of adventure.