Silver Linings: Travels Around Northern Ireland


Martin Fletcher - 2000
    The province has become synonymous with conflict, terrorism and tortuous efforts to forge peace. But what is life there really like? In this enchanting and highly original book Martin Fletcher presents a portrait of Northern Ireland utterly at odds with its dire international image. He paints a compelling picture of a place caught in a time warp since the 1960s, of a land of mountains, lakes and rivers where customs, traditions and old-world charm survive, of an incredibly resourceful province that has given the world not just bombs and bullets but the Titanic, the tyre and the tractor, a dozen American presidents, two prime ministers of New Zealand and a Hindu god. He meets an intelligent, fun-loving, God-fearing people who may do terrible things to each other but who could not be more welcoming to outsiders. He describes a land of awful beauty, a battleground of good and evil, a province populated by saints and sinners that has yet to be rendered bland by the forces of modernity.

The Raptures


Jan Carson - 2022
    Hannah Adger anticipates eight long weeks' reprieve from school, but when her classmate Ross succumbs to a violent and mysterious illness, it marks the beginning of a summer like no other.As others fall ill, questions about what - or who - is responsible pitch the village into conflict and fearful disarray. Hannah, ever the outsider, is haunted by guilt as she remains healthy while her friends are struck down. Isolated and afraid, she prays for help. What happens next will force her to question everything she believes.Bursting with Carson's trademark wit, profound empathy and soaring imagination, The Raptures explores how tragedy can unite a small community - and tear it apart. At its heart is the extraordinary resilience of one young girl. As the world crumbles around her, she must find the courage to be different in a place where conforming feels like the only option available.

The Rose of the World


Daniil Leonidovich Andreev - 1991
    It is a journey to places where, according to the author, many of us have already been but about which we have forgotten. It is also a journey within, into that psychological space where our ideas and beliefs about God, spirituality, and religion reside. During both journeys, we are likely to encounter wonder and recognition, skepticism and acceptance, rejection and admiration, confusion and long-sought understanding. For some, this journey will be the start of a much larger one; for some it is but one more leg of a journey undertaken earlier; in any case, The Rose of the World is not a final destination." Completed in 1959, hidden from the Soviet secret police for twenty years, The Rose of the World was first made public through excerpts in the magazine Novy Mir in 1989. The Rose of the World is a unique and poetic cosmological treatise, passionately written out of personal spiritual experience. It offers a prophetic call for the spiritual reunification of all people and an open and harmonious relationship among the great world religions. For Daniel Andreev, The Rose of the world is a spiritual flower whose roots are in heaven; each petal is a unique image of the great world religions and cultures, and the whole flower is their joint co-creation with God.Lindisfarne Books is proud to publish the first English translation of this masterpiece of contemporary Russian spiritual literature, a work that belongs to Russian religious thought in the tradition of Vladimir Soloviev, and to the West in the tradition of Dante and Blake--truly a work for the twenty-first century.

Love and Summer


William Trevor - 2009
    So it doesn’t go unnoticed when a dark-haired stranger appears on his bicycle and begins photographing the mourners at Mrs. Connulty’s funeral. Florian Kilderry couldn’t know that the Connultys are said to own half the town: he has only come to Rathmoye to photograph the scorched remains of its burnt-out cinema. A few miles out in the country, Dillahan, a farmer and a decent man, has married again: Ellie is the young convent girl who came to work for him when he was widowed. Ellie leads a quiet, routine life, often alone while Dillahan runs the farm. Florian is planning to leave Ireland and start over. Ellie is settled in her new role as Dillahan’s wife. But Florian’s visit to Rathmoye introduces him to Ellie, and a dangerously reckless attachment begins. In a characteristically masterly way Trevor evokes the passions and frustrations felt by Ellie and Florian, and by the people of a small Irish town during one long summer.

Testimony: The United States, 1885-1915: Recitative


Charles Reznikoff - 1965
    

Controlled Explosions


Claire McGowan - 2015
    In particular one girl, whose family has paramilitary links, is calling her a rat. Even though Paula might not know why her mother went missing five years before, she's sure she's no traitor's daughter.But words are nothing compared to what her policeman father, PJ, is dealing with. The hot summer is simmering with violence and the entire force is focused on finding a bomber leaving devices on the routes of Orange parades.When PJ is injured at the scene of a crime, Paula is shocked to find herself next in the perpetrator's crosshairs. The threats at school don't feel so empty now, but what connection could there be? As the possibility of first love appears, will Paula be able to find out in time to save herself and follow her heart?

Night in Tunisia


Neil Jordan - 1982
    This book, which won raves at its first publication, shows all the hallmarks of the writer who became the award-winning film director so well known today.

The Vertical Plane


Ken Webster - 1989
    

Troubles


J.G. Farrell - 1970
    But his fiancée is strangely altered and her family's fortunes have suffered a spectacular decline. The hotel's hundreds of rooms are disintegrating on a grand scale; its few remaining guests thrive on rumors and games of whist; herds of cats have taken over the Imperial Bar and the upper stories; bamboo shoots threaten the foundations; and piglets frolic in the squash court. Meanwhile, the Major is captivated by the beautiful and bitter Sarah Devlin. As housekeeping disasters force him from room to room, outside the order of the British Empire also totters: there is unrest in the East, and in Ireland itself the mounting violence of "the troubles." Troubles is a hilarious and heartbreaking work by a modern master of the historical novel.

There Were No Windows


Norah Hoult - 1944
    Based on the last years of the writer Violet Hunt, a once-glamorous woman living in Kensington during the Blitz who is now losing her memory, the novel's three 'acts' describe with insight, humour and compassion what happens to 'Claire Temple' in her last months. 'A quite extraordinary book,' was the verdict of Cressida Connolly in the Spectator, 'unflinchingly, blackly funny, brilliantly observed and terrifying.' And because Claire Temple is an unrepentant snob, 'the novel gives a sly account of the end of an entire way of life.'

Gandhi: Naked Ambition


Jad Adams - 2010
    Jad Adams offers a concise account of Gandhi's life: from his birth and upbringing in a small princely state in Gujarat during the high noon of the British Raj, to his assassination at the hands of a Hindu extremist in 1948 only months after the birth of the independent India which he himself had done so much to bring about.

Good Behaviour


Molly Keane - 1981
    I have always known...'Behind the gates of Temple Alice the aristocratic Anglo-Irish St Charles family sinks into a state of decaying grace. To Aroon St Charles, large and unlovely daughter of the house, the fierce forces of sex, money, jealousy and love seem locked out by the ritual patterns of good behaviour. But crumbling codes of conduct cannot hope to save the members of the St Charles family from their own unruly and inadmissible desires.

The House on Vesper Sands


Paraic O'Donnell - 2018
    So begins the swirling, serpentine world of Paraic O’Donnell’s Victorian-inspired mystery, the story of a city cloaked in shadow, but burning with questions: why does the seamstress jump from the window? Why is a cryptic message stitched into her skin? And how is she connected to a rash of missing girls, all of whom seem to have disappeared under similar circumstances?On the case is Inspector Cutter, a detective as sharp and committed to his work as he is wryly hilarious. Gideon Bliss, a Cambridge dropout in love with one of the missing girls, stumbles into a role as Cutter’s sidekick. And clever young journalist Octavia Hillingdon sees the case as a chance to tell a story that matters—despite her employer’s preference that she stick to a women’s society column. As Inspector Cutter peels back the mystery layer by layer, he leads them all, at last, to the secrets that lie hidden at the house on Vesper Sands.By turns smart, surprising, and impossible to put down, The House on Vesper Sands offers a glimpse into the strange undertow of late nineteenth-century London and the secrets we all hold inside us.

The Narrow Land


Christine Dwyer Hickey - 2019
    Michael, a ten-year-old boy, is spending the summer with Richie and his glamorous but troubled mother. Left to their own devices, the boys meet a couple living nearby - the artists Jo and Edward Hopper - and an unlikely friendship is forged.She, volatile, passionate and often irrational, suffers bouts of obsessive sexual jealousy. He, withdrawn and unwell, depressed by his inability to work, becomes besotted by Richie's frail and beautiful Aunt Katherine who has not long to live - an infatuation he shares with young Michael.A novel of loneliness and regret, the legacy of World War II and the ever-changing concept of the American Dream.

The House in Paris


Elizabeth Bowen - 1935
    When eleven-year-old Henrietta arrives at the Fishers’ well-appointed house in Paris, she is prepared to spend her day between trains looked after by an old friend of her grandmother’s. Little does Henrietta know what fascinations the Fisher house itself contains–along with secrets that have the potential to topple a marriage and redeem the life of a peculiar young boy. By the time Henrietta leaves the house that evening, she is in possession of the kind of grave knowledge that is usually reserved only for adults.