Read Ireland Book Reviews
Issue 416
New Irish Fiction
The Truth Will Out by Anna McPartlin
Large Format Paperback; 15 Euro / 22 USD / 11 UK; 342 pages
Ever get the feeling you don’t really belong in your family? That’s how 30-year-old interior decorator Harri Ryan has felt since she was a child despite being close to George, her twin brother, and his loving parents. It’s the second time Harri has tried to marry her fiancé James, and the second time she’s had a panic attack, ended up in hospital in her wedding dress and the celebrations have to be called off. Harri has lost the love of her life, but there’s more to it than wedding nerves. George suspects there’s something their parents aren’t telling them. But in one week all will be revealed and their lives will change forever. And Harri’s not the only one suffering a crisis – George and his partner Aidan are struggling, her friend Susan thinks her marriage is dead and friend Melissa wants to kill her hubby. Something’s got to give, but can they all come through this difficult time and find happiness?
Are You Ready? by Amanda Hearty
Large Format Paperback; 14 Euro / 19 USD / 10 UK; 365 pages [Add To Basket]
A heartwarming debut novel that tackles the issues facing young Dubliners. Ready for...love? Ready for...a new job? Ready to...grow up? Ready for...change? Ready for...life? Life has been good for Ali, Molly, Ben and Sarah, things have seemed easy and uncomplicated and they have had the world at their feet. But now as they say goodbye to their twenties and thirty looms they begin to question themselves...Is Ali really ready to get married and become a wife, or is everything moving too fast? Molly has followed her dreams and changed jobs, but has she made a big mistake? Ben is still living at home - surely it's time he moved out? And will Sarah ever find someone to love or will she always be single? Life is full of twists and turns and change is inevitable. Now they must ask themselves...are they ready for it?
I Never Fancied Him Anyway by Claudia Carroll
Paperback; 10 Euro / 14 USD / 7 UK; 478 pages
Cassandra never set out to be a psychic, least of all a famous one, with her very own magazine column, plus a glamorous TV slot thrown in for good measure. Well, let's face it, it's not exactly a career choice you might make, now is it? But, whether she likes it or not, ever since she was a little girl, Cassandra's been able to see things, so vividly and clearly, it can be, well, a bit frightening. In fact, scrap that, it's terrifying. You see, the thing is ...she's never yet been wrong. Not once, ever. So here's the biggie: while she can make life and relationship predictions with 100 per cent accuracy for everyone around her, including her three best friends, Chantal, Jo and Marc, then why oh why does she get her own love life so disastrously wrong? And then there's the way her astonishing gift just seems to go clean out of the window any time there's a guy in the room that she fancies...
Bad Behaviour by Sheila O’Flanagan
Paperback; 9 Euro / 14 USD / 7 UK; 596 pages [Add To Basket]
Women readers everywhere will be entranced by bestselling Sheila O'Flanagan's unputdownable new novel of friendship, love and sweet revenge. Darcey and Nieve were best friends for life. Until Nieve stole the heart of Aidan, the boy Darcey had fallen in love with while Nieve was travelling. Aidan was going to propose the very night Nieve caught his eye, and Darcey had seen the ring. For the next ten years she's haunted by the memory of her humiliation. No career success, no comfort her eccentric but loving family can offer, not even (short-lived) marriage to Neil, can console her. And then the invitation comes: to the wedding of Aidan and Nieve, neither of whom she's seen since they left Ireland for life in the USA. They're coming home to have the wedding of a lifetime at Ireland's most expensive hotel. Will Darcey be there? Will there be fireworks? And can the past be put to rest at last?
The Law of Dreams by Peter Behrens
Paperback; 11 Euro / 15 USD / 7 UK; 390 pages
The Law of Dreams tells the story of a young man's epic passage from innocence to experience during The Great Famine in Ireland of 1847. On his odyssey through Ireland and Britain, and across the Atlantic to “the Boston states,” Fergus is initiated to violence, sexual heat, and the glories and dangers of the industrial revolution. Along the way, he meets an unforgettable generation of boy soldiers, brigands, street toughs and charming, willful girls – all struggling for survival in the aftermath of natural catastrophe magnified by political callousness and brutal neglect. Peter Behrens transports the reader to another time and place for a deeply-moving and resonant experience. The Law of Dreams is gorgeously written in incandescent language that unleashes the sexual and psychological energies of a lost world while plunging the reader directly into a vein of history that haunts the ancestral memory of millions in a new millennium.
A Horse with My Name by Colin Bateman
Paperback; 11 Euro / 15 USD / 8 UK; 344 pages [Add To Basket]
Dan Starkey - international man of inaction - rides again. How far can he fall this time?Ex-journalist Dan Starkey is stuck in a grimy Belfast bedsit. His life is a disaster, and his only solace is the pub round the corner. He needs to get out more (particularly since the sessions at Relate with his wife Patricia have been cancelled and she's hooked up with new man Clive). Fellow ex-journalist Mark Corkery, whose secret persona is The Horse Whisperer, an internet horse-racing gossip, wants him to investigate Geordie McClean, the man behind Irish American Racing. Simple enough for a man with Dan's experience, surely? But Trouble is Dan's middle name. And trouble is what he finds.
The Bloomsday Dead by Adrian McKinty
Large Format Paperback; 18 Euro / 24 USD / 12 UK; 290 pages [Add To Basket]
Michael Forsythe might be, as one of his assailants puts it, ‘un-fucking-killable’, but that doesn’t seem to deter people from trying. He’s living in Lima, reasonably well-hidden by the FBI’s Witness Protection Program, but Bridget Callaghan, whose fiancé he murdered twelve years ago, has an enduring wish to see him dead. So when her two goon assassins pass him the phone to speak to her before they kill him, Michael thinks she just wants to relish the moment. In fact, out of desperation, she is giving him a chance to redeem himself. All he has to do is return to Ireland and find her missing daughter. Before midnight. Tenacious and brutal, with the hunted man’s instinct for trouble, Forsythe leaves a trail of mayhem as he tries to end the bloody feud once and for all. The Bloomsday Dead pulsates with break-neck action and wry literary references; McKinty’s distinctly Irish voice packs a ferocious punch.
Take a Look At Me Now by Anita Notaro
Paperback; 10 Euro / 14 USD / 7 UK; 526 pages [Add To Basket]
Most of us can remember a defining moment in our lives. A split second when time stood still and our lives changed forever. For Lily Ormond, that moment came late one night when she answered a knock on the door and discovered that while she'd been smashing garlic and rosemary and watching the soaps, her sister Alison had drowned. Coming to terms with losing her only sibling and best friend was devastating, becoming a mother overnight to Ali's three-year-old son Charlie was mind-boggling, but discovering that her identical twin had been leading a secret life for years was almost Lily's undoing...And so begins a journey linked with four men who'd been part of a life she hadn't even known existed. A journey that forces Lily to come to terms with a father who'd never really cared for her, a child who needs her too much and a sister who wasn't what she seemed.
Gilded Shadows by Mary Rochford
Large Format Paperback; 12 Euro / 18 USD / 9 UK; 240 pages [Add To Basket]
Set in the West of Ireland, Birmingham, Dublin and Nice, five of these stories explore our need to come to terms with the past. Three sisters, Aefe, Fionuala and Sorcha, struggle towards a recollection and resolution of the event which almost destroyed their family. Tom and Breda flee Derry for the safety of England and discover that history casts a long shadow. Bridget, haunted by the past, takes the first plane out of Birmingham and spends a life changing week in Nice. The remaining seven stories which are located in Birmingham are laced with humour and deal with the universal desire to be loved and to belong.
New Island Open Door Series:
Star Gazing by Kate Thompson
Paperback; 6.50 Euro / 9 USD / 4.50 UK; 76 pages [Add To Basket]
Daisy O'Donnell is a florist in the sleepy village of Rosscrana, where nothing ever happens. Daisy loves her glossy magazines and dreams of a more glamorous life. Then she wins a competition to appear as an extra on the soap opera /Ardmore Grove/. Things are looking up!
Angel at My Back by Mary Stanley
Paperback; 6.50 Euro / 9 USD / 4.50 UK; 70 pages [Add To Basket]
Lucy Benedict is eight years old. Her older brother Paul likes to tease her. One day, he ties her to a tree and leaves her there. She faints in the heat of the sun, and then she sees an angel. The angel looks just like her, and she sings beautifully. When Lucy wakes up in the hospital, she knows the angel is real.
Bullet and the Ark by Peter Sheridan
Paperback; 6.50 Euro / 9 USD / 4.50 UK; 74 pages [Add To Basket]
Bullet Ferguson loves animals. Animals understand him. He loves his dog, Champ, most of all, and he talks to him all the time. One day Bullet and his friends decide to build an ark so that they can sail on the River Liffey. They find supplies and get to work. They decide to rescue Jacko, a parrot, and bring him with them on the ark. This leads them into all kinds of trouble...
Lighthouse by Chris Binchy
Paperback; 6.50 Euro / 9 USD / 4.50 UK; 72 pages [Add To Basket]
A young boy waits for his father to come home from England at the weekends. During the week he and his mother are alone in the house. His parents don't get on, and he feels angry and alone. He begins to sniff petrol from a can in the garden shed. It changes his world and makes everything bright and beautiful. But in reality, things are getting worse and worse.
Three’s a Crowd by Sheila O’Flanagan
Paperback; 6.50 Euro / 9 USD / 4.50 UK; 72 pages [Add To Basket]
Jennifer has booked her special day through Weddings in Paradise. It is to be very romantic marriage, taking place on a white sandy beach under a blue sky. Jennifer has her perfect dress and Harry, her perfect man. This would be the best wedding ever. She is the luckiest girl in the world. That is, until her future mother-in-law turns up..
The Second Child by John Boyne
Paperback; 6.50 Euro / 9 USD / 4.50 UK; 72 pages [Add To Basket]
Alison Clarke returns home to her father's house in rural Wexford with her movie star boyfriend, Nick. It is the first time she has been home in years. Her father does not approve of her boyfriend or her pregnancy, and Alison's mother is struggling to keep them from fighting. There is a lot of tension in the house. Will father and daughter ever make up?
Please note: Prices were correct at time of original posting but are subject to subsequent change without notice.
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