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A true original. In this stunningly unusual prose debut, Doireann Ni Ghriofa sculpts essay and autofiction to explore inner life and the deep connection felt between two writers centuries apart. In the 1700s, an Irish noblewoman, on discovering her husband has been murdered, drinks handfuls of his blood and composes an extraordinary poem. In the present day, a young mother narrowly avoids tragedy. On encountering the poem, she becomes obsessed with its parallels with her own life, and sets out to track down the rest of the story. A devastating and timeless tale about one woman freeing her voice by reaching into the past and finding another's. ISBN 9781916434271 -
On the Beara peninsula in West Cork, a temperate rainforest flourishes. It is the life work of Eoghan Daltun, who had a vision to rewild a 73-acre farm he bought, moving there from Dublin with his family in 2009. An Irish Atlantic Rainforest charts that remarkable journey. Part memoir, part environmental treatise, as a wild forest bursts into life before our eyes, we're also invited to consider the burning issues of our time: climate breakdown, ecological collapse, and why our very survival as a species requires that we urgently, and radically, transform our relationship with nature. This is a story as much about doing nothing as taking action - allowing natural ecosystems to return and thrive without interference, and in doing so heal an ailing planet. Powerfully descriptive, lovingly told, An Irish Atlantic Rainforest presents an enduring picture of the regenerative force of nature, and how one Irishman let it happen. ISBN 9781399705271 -
Through the collection of photographs and essays in this book you will get a rare glimpse into the lives of the women of An Garda Síochána and what they bring to policing. You get an insight into the experiences of the early trailblazers who inspired significant numbers of women to follow in their footsteps. And you will read about those who are instrumental in keeping people safe every day, including the women who work at the top echelons of An Garda Síochána. Their varied stories and journeys are ones of inspiration, devotion and commitment to policing. We hope you will enjoy reading about the positive impact they bring to policing and the communities they serve. ISBN XGARDA -
The book that sparked a national conversation. Exploring everything from eradicated black history to the inextricable link between class and race, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race is the essential handbook for anyone who wants to understand race relations today. ISBN 9781408870587 -
Staff Pick: "This book certainly packs a punch when it comes to a deeply researched topic close to the author’s first-hand experience. Part memoir and part series of essays, Dabiri not only examines the history and politics surrounding black people’s hair, but also gives an insight into what it was like to grow up black and Irish in 1990s Dublin." Sarah U. -
Nora Ephron meets Bram Stoker in Sophie White's vivid and ambitious literary non-fiction collection. White asks uncomfortable questions about the lived reality of womanhood in the 21st century, and the fear that must be internalised in order to find your path through it. ISBN 9781916291461 -
Is it possible to be young, progressive and a Catholic? Ellen Coyne is about to find out ... 'You know, this isn't a Catholic country anymore,' someone proudly declared in a Dublin pub where Ellen Coyne was celebrating the repeal of the Eighth Amendment. About to turn 30, like many her age, Ellen had left the Church a long time ago, but she had never stopped believing in and talking to God. Now, she suddenly realised she wasn't quite ready for this statement to be true, however much of a contradiction it seemed to present with some of her most strongly held views. Abandoning the Church had been an act of protest, a form of punishment. However, she began to wonder: who had really lost the most? Why should those who did the damage to the Church get to keep it and all its good bits, like going to Mass for the ritual and the community, having a clear guide for living a better life, and the comfort of believing it's not the end when somebody dies?But how could she ally herself to an institution she doesn't entirely agree with? In her first book, Ellen tries to figure out how much she really wants to go back to the Church, and if it is even the right thing to do. A stunningly intelligent and thoughtful debut work of non-fiction. ISBN 9780717188949 -
*Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2020* *Winner of non-fiction book of the year at the Irish Book Awards* -'Utterly magnificent. Raw, thought-provoking and galvanising; this is a book every woman should read.'Eimear McBride. I have come to think of all the metal in my body as artificial stars, glistening beneath the skin, a constellation of old and new metal. A map, a tracing of connections and a guide to looking at things from different angles. How do you tell the story of a life in a body, as it goes through sickness, health, motherhood? How do you tell that story when you are not just a woman but a woman in Ireland? In the powerful and daring essays in Constellations Sinead Gleeson does that very thing. All of life is within these pages, from birth to first love, pregnancy to motherhood, terrifying sickness, old age and loss to death itself. Throughout this wide-ranging collection she also turns her restless eye outwards delving into work, art and our very ways of seeing. In the tradition of some of our finest life writers, and yet still in her own spirited, generous voice, Sinead takes us on a journey that is both uniquely personal and yet universal in its resonance. Here is the fierce joy and pain of being alive. 'Breathtaking and sublime.' - Nina Stibbe. 'Absolutely extraordinary and life-enhancing.' - Daisy Buchanan, author of How to be Grown-up. ISBN 9781509892778 -
One night in December 1972, Jean McConville, a mother of ten, was abducted from her home in Belfast and never seen alive again. Her disappearance would haunt her orphaned children, the perpetrators of the brutal crime and a whole society in Northern Ireland for decades. Through the unsolved case of Jean McConville's abduction, Patrick Radden Keefe tells the larger story of the Troubles, investigating Dolours Price, the first woman to join the IRA, who bombed the Old Bailey; Gerry Adams, the politician who helped end the fighting but denied his IRA past; and Brendan Hughes, an IRA commander who broke their code of silence. A gripping story forensically reported, Say Nothing explores the extremes people will go to for an ideal, and the way societies mend - or don't - after long and bloody conflict. ISBN 9780008159269 -
When Layla Saad began an Instagram challenge called #MeAndWhiteSupremacy, she never predicted it would spread as widely as it did. She encouraged people to own up and share their racist behaviors, big and small. She was looking for truth, and she got it. Thousands of people participated in the challenge, and over 90,000 people downloaded the Me and White Supremacy Workbook. The updated and expanded Me and White Supremacy takes the work deeper by adding more historical and cultural contexts, sharing moving stories and anecdotes, and including expanded definitions, examples, and further resources. Awareness leads to action, and action leads to change. The numbers show that readers are ready to do this work - let's give it to them. Me and White Supremacy teaches readers how to dismantle the privilege within themselves so that they can stop (often unconsciously) inflicting damage on people of colour, and in turn, help other white people do better, too. ISBN 9781529405118 -
For once, these men are the objects; I am the subject. Me, me, me. Rosemary Mac Cabe was always a serial monogamist - never happier than when she was in a relationship or, at the very least, on the way to being in one. But in her desperate search for 'the one' - from first love to first lust, through a series of disappointments and the searing sting of heartbreak - she learned that finding love might mean losing herself along the way. This Is Not About You is a life story in a series of love stories. About Henry, with the big nose and the lovely mum, with whom sex was like having a verruca frozen off in the doctor's surgery: 'uncomfortable, but I had entered into this willingly'. About Dan, with the goatee. About Luke, who gave her a split condom. About Francis, who was married... But mostly, it's about Rosemary, figuring out just how much she was willing to sacrifice for her happy ending. ISBN 9781800182431 -
A glimpse into the process of one Ireland's best writers, handiwork is Baume's non-fiction debut, written with the keen eye for nature and beauty as well as the extraordinary versatilitySara Baume's fans have come to expect. PUBLISHED 26TH MARCH 2020. ISBN 9781916434257 -
As Governor of Galicia, SS Brigadesfuhrer Otto Freiherr von Wachter presided over an authority on whose territory hundreds of thousands of Jews and Poles were killed, including the family of the author's grandfather. By the time the war ended in May 1945, he was indicted for 'mass murder'. Hunted by the Soviets, the Americans, the Poles and the British, as well as groups of Jews, Wachter went on the run. He spent three years hiding in the Austrian Alps before making his way to Rome and being taken in by a Vatican bishop. He remained there for three months. While preparing to travel to Argentina on the 'ratline' he died unexpectedly, in July 1949, a few days after having lunch with an 'old comrade' whom he suspected of having been recruited by the Americans. In THE RATLINE Philippe Sands offers a unique account of the daily life of a Nazi fugitive, the love between Wachter and his wife Charlotte, who continued to write regularly to each other while he was on the run, and a fascinating insight into life in Rome and among American and Soviet spies active at the start of the Cold War. Using modern medical expertise, the door is unlocked to a mystery that haunts Wachter's youngest child, who believes his father was a good man - what was Wachter doing while in hiding, and what exactly caused his death? ISBN 9781474608145 -
Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? is Seamas O'Reilly's memoir of growing up as one of eleven children in rural Northern Ireland in the 1990s after the death of their mother when Seamas was five. He delves into his family - his pleasingly eccentric, reticent but deeply loving father; his rambunctious siblings, intent on enforcing a byzantine age-based hierarchy; and the numerous bewildering friends, relations and neighbours who blew in and out to 'help'. Seamas describes how his mother's death changed his childhood relationships with everyone and everything, as knowledge of his tragic experience preceded him. He writes hilariously and tenderly of how his father, Joe, strove to give his children a happy home and a good education - building bookshelves in every room so as to avoid having to lecture them on the importance of academic achievement; videotaping and obsessively cataloguing more than 800 films so as not to have to take out a Blockbuster subscription; having the local nuns cook their Christmas turkey every year. This unusual childhood took place in Northern Ireland at the end of the Troubles, on the Irish border that Brexit has made once more into a hotly contested political frontier. Seamas describes living on that boundary, including the time an IRA bomb blew out their windows when he was three. We then follow Seamas through his teenage years as a nascent political radical and amateur satirist, and his arrival in Dublin as a university student. Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? is the story of a boy growing up; a family bonded by loss, love and mockery; and their triumphs and disasters as they reached for their goal of some kind of normality. ISBN 9780708899236 -
"This book may not be life-changing but it certainly offers a fresh and witty perspective on the many subjects concerned with being a woman. Expect classic, dry, New York humour mixed with Ephron's uncensored and self-deprecating take on life." Carrie ISBN 9780857526939 -
In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency - a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil. Obama takes readers on a compelling journey from his earliest political aspirations to the pivotal Iowa caucus victory that demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to the watershed night of November 4, 2008, when he was elected 44th president of the United States, becoming the first African American to hold the nation's highest office. A Promised Land is extraordinarily intimate and introspective - the story of one man's bet with history, the faith of a community organizer tested on the world stage. Obama is candid about the balancing act of running for office as a Black American, bearing the expectations of a generation buoyed by messages of "hope and change," and meeting the moral challenges of high-stakes decision-making. He is frank about the forces that opposed him at home and abroad, open about how living in the White House affected his wife and daughters, and unafraid to reveal self-doubt and disappointment. Yet he never wavers from his belief that inside the great, ongoing American experiment, progress is always possible. ISBN 9780241491515 -
"This is the book that I have given to all my friends, and some of them still haven't forgiven me for making them cry in public! This collection of essays is incredibly powerful, one that deals with tough and taboo topics in a way that is raw, honest, yet sensitive. A book that everyone needs to read."Rebekah ISBN 9780241986226 -
We all live online now: the line between the internet and IRL has become porous to the point of being meaningless. Roisin Kiberd knows this better than anyone. She has worked for tech startups and as the online voice of a cheese brand; she's witnessed the bloated excesses of tech conferences and explored the strangest communities on the web. She has traced the ripples these hidden worlds have sent through our culture and politics, and experienced the disorienting effects on her own life. In these interlinked essays, she illuminates the subject with fierce clarity, revealing the ways we are more connected than ever before, and the disconnect this breeds. From the lure of the endless scroll, to the glamour of self-optimisation; from the cult of Energy Drinks to the nostalgic world of Vaporwave music; and from silicon town centres to dating tech bros, Kiberd explores the strange worlds, habits and people that have grown with the internet. She asks what we have gained, what we have lost, and what we have given willingly away in exchange for this connected life. ISBN 9781788165785