Our Pick of great books from Small Independent Publishers across Ireland and the UK. And remember, we offer FREE SHIPPING on orders over €30 in ROI. Just choose FREE SHIPPING option at checkout!
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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 -
It's spring 1920 in the small military town of Nandagiri in southeast India. Colonel Aylmer, commander of the Royal Irish Kildare Rangers, is in charge. A distance away, decently hidden from view, lies the native part of Nandagiri with its heaving bazaar, reeking streets, and brothels. Everyone in Nandagiri knows their place and the part they were born to play--with one exception. The local Anglo-Indians, tainted by their mixed blood, belong nowhere. When news of the Black and Tans' atrocities back in Ireland reaches the troops, even their priest cannot cool the men's hot-headed rage. Politics vie with passion as Private Michael Flaherty pays court to Rose, Mrs. Aylmer's Anglo-Indian maid, but mutiny brings heroism and heartbreak in equal measure. Only the arrival of Colonel Aylmer's grandson Richard, some 60 years later, will set off the reckoning, when those who were parted will be reunited, and those who were lost will be found again. ISBN 9781916467187 -
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 -
"I read this collection recently for an Ireland AM piece and was blown away by how good these stories are! Kevin Barry is wonderful at capturing the feel of small town Ireland. Clever, funny and thought-provoking I'm annoyed how long it took me to discover them!" Bob ISBN 9780955015298 -
Dublin, 1904. Nora Joseph Barnacle is a twenty-year-old from Galway working as a maid at Finns Hotel. She enjoys the liveliness of her adopted city and on June 16Bloomsdayher life is changed when she meets Dubliner James Joyce, a fateful encounter that turns into a lifelong love. Despite his hesitation to marry, Nora follows Joyce in pursuit of a life beyond Ireland, and they surround themselves with a buoyant group of friends that grows to include Samuel Beckett, Peggy Guggenheim, and Sylvia Beach. But as their life unfolds, Nora finds herself in conflict between their intense desire for each other and the constant anxiety of living in poverty throughout Europe. She desperately wants literary success for Jim, believing in his singular gift and knowing that he thrives on being the toast of the town, and it eventually provides her with a security long lacking in her life and his work. So even when Jim writes, drinks, and gambles his way to literary acclaim, Nora provides unflinching support and inspiration, but at a cost to her own happiness and that of their children. With gorgeous and emotionally resonant prose, Nora is a heartfelt portrayal of love, ambition, and the quiet power of an ordinary woman who was, in fact, extraordinary. ISBN 9781848408500 -
A companion to the hugely successful podcast of the same name by Donal Fallon, THREE CASTLES BURNING is an enjoyable wander through some of Dublin's less obvious but more interesting streets and roads such as Henrietta Street, Watling Street, Fownes Street and Kildare Road. This combination of social, cultural, industrial and commercial, and political history, through the prism of the places where revolutions great and small were sparked, offers the reader a fresh and unexpected take on Ireland's capital city. ISBN 9781848408722 -
A woman approaching the 'invisible years' of middle age abandons her failing writing career to retrain as a chiropodist in the suburb of Marzahn, once the GDR's largest prefabricated housing estate, on the outskirts of Berlin. From her intimate vantage point at the foot of the clinic chair, she keenly observes her clients and co-workers, delving into their personal histories with all their quirks and vulnerabilities. Each story stands alone as a beautifully crafted vignette, told with humour and poignancy; together they form a nuanced and tender portrait of a community. Part memoir, part collective history, Katja Oskamp's love letter to the inhabitants of Marzahn is a stunning reflection on life's progression and our ability to forge connections in the unlikeliest of places. Translated by Jo Heinrich. LONGLISTED FOR DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD 2023. ISBN 9781908670694 -
With DRIVE YOUR PLOW OVER THE BONES OF THE DEAD, Man Booker International Prize-winner Olga Tokarczuk returns with a subversive, entertaining noir novel. In a remote Polish village, Janina Duszejko, an eccentric woman in her sixties, recounts the events surrounding the disappearance of her two dogs. She is reclusive, preferring the company of animals to people; she's unconventional, believing in the stars; and she is fond of the poetry of William Blake, from whose work the title of the book is taken. When members of a local hunting club are found murdered, Duszejko becomes involved in the investigation. By no means a conventional crime story, this existential thriller by `one of Europe's major humanist writers' (GUARDIAN) offers thought-provoking ideas on our perceptions of madness, injustice against marginalized people, animal rights, the hypocrisy of traditional religion, belief in predestination - and caused a genuine political uproar in Tokarczuk's native Poland. Translated by by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. ISBN 9781913097257 -
Seizing upon the energy of the #MeToo movement, feminist activist Mona Eltahawy advocates a muscular, out-loud approach to teaching women and girls to harness their power through what she calls the seven necessary sins that women and girls are not supposed to commit: to be angry, ambitious, profane, violent, attention-seeking, lustful, and powerful. All the necessary sins that women and girls require to erupt. Eltahawy knows that the patriarchy is alive and well, and she is fed the hell up: Sexually assaulted during hajj at the age of fifteen. Groped on the dance floor of a night club in Montreal at fifty. Countless other injustices in the years between. Illuminating her call to action are stories of activists and ordinary women around the world from South Africa to China, Nigeria to India, Bosnia to Egypt who are tapping into their inner fury and crossing the lines of race, class, faith, and gender that make it so hard for marginalized women to be heard. Rather than teaching women and girls to survive the poisonous system they have found themselves in, Eltahawy arms them to dismantle it. Brilliant, bold, and energetic The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls is a manifesto for all feminists in the fight against patriarchy. ISBN 9781916291447 -
The mountain remained, unclimbed, for the first year that they lived there. Bell and Sigh, a couple in the infancy of their relationship, cut themselves off from friends and family. They turn their backs on a city divided by scores of streets and hundreds of sterile cherry trees, by a foul river and a declining population of house sparrows. Them in and the world out. From the top of the nearby mountain, they are told, you can see seven standing stones, seven schools, and seven steeples. All you have to do is climb. Taking place in a remote house in the south-west of Ireland, this rich and vivid novel spans seven years and speaks to the times we live in, asking how we may withdraw, how better to live in the natural world, and how the choices made or avoided lead us home ISBN 9781916291485 -
Irina obsessively takes explicit photographs of the average-looking men she persuades to model for her, scouted from the streets of Newcastle. Placed on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, she is offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery, promising to revive her career in the art world and offering an escape from her rut of drugs, alcohol, and extreme cinema. The news triggers a self-destructive tailspin, centred around Irina's relationship with her obsessive best-friend, and a shy young man from her local supermarket who has attracted her attention... BOY PARTS is the incendiary debut novel from Eliza Clark, a pitch-black comedy both shocking and hilarious, fearlessly exploring the taboo regions of sexuality and gender roles in the twenty-first century. ISBN 9781910312636 -
The Witch is dead. After a group of children playing near the irrigation canals discover her decomposing corpse, the village of La Matosa is rife with rumours about how and why this murder occurred. As the novel unfolds in a dazzling linguistic torrent, Fernanda Melchor paints a moving portrait of lives governed by poverty and violence, machismo and misogyny, superstition and prejudice. Written with an infernal lyricism that is as affecting as it is enthralling, HURRICANE SEASON, Melchor's first novel to appear in English, is a formidable portrait of Mexico and its demons. Translated by Sophie Hughes. ISBN 9781913097097 -
The Trees is a page-turner that opens with a series of brutal murders in the rural town of Money, Mississippi. When a pair of detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation arrive, they meet expected resistance from the local sheriff, his deputy, the coroner, and a string of racist white townsfolk. The murders present a puzzle, for at each crime scene there is a second dead body - that of a man who resembles Emmett Till, a young black boy lynched in the same town 65 years before. The detectives suspect that these are killings of retribution, but soon discover that eerily similar murders are taking place all over the country. Something truly strange is afoot. As the bodies pile up, the MBI detectives seek answers from a local root doctor who has been documenting every lynching in the country for years, uncovering a history that refuses to be buried. In this bold, provocative book, Everett takes direct aim at racism and police violence, and does so in a fast-paced style that ensures the reader can't look away. The Trees is an enormously powerful novel of lasting importance. SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2022 ISBN 9781914391170 -
FLIGHTS, a novel about travel in the twenty-first century and human anatomy, is Olga Tokarczuk's most ambitious to date. It interweaves travel narratives and reflections on travel with an in-depth exploration of the human body, broaching life, death, motion, and migration. From the seventeenth century, we have the story of the Dutch anatomist Philip Verheyen, who dissected and drew pictures of his own amputated leg. From the eighteenth century, we have the story of a North African-born slave turned Austrian courtier stuffed and put on display after his death. In the nineteenth century, we follow Chopin's heart as it makes the covert journey from Paris to Warsaw. In the present we have the trials of a wife accompanying her much older husband as he teaches a course on a cruise ship in the Greek islands, and the harrowing story of a young husband whose wife and child mysteriously vanish on a holiday on a Croatian island. With her signature grace and insight, Olga Tokarczuk guides the reader beyond the surface layer of modernity and towards the core of the very nature of humankind. ISBN 9781910695821 -
My mother. At night, my mother creaks. The house creaks along with her. Through our thin shared wall, I can hear the makings of my mother gurgle through her body just like the water in the walls of the house... Teenage Aoileann has never left the island. Her silent, bed-bound mother is a wreckage, the survivor of a private disaster no one will speak about. Aoileann desperately wants a family, and when Sarah and her three young children move to the island, Aoileann finds a focus for her relentless love. A horror story about being bound by the blood knot of family, Ringu meets Ian McEwan's Enduring Love in Sophie White's thrilling horror debut. ISBN 9781915290045 -
Rosaleen McDonagh writes fearlessly about a diverse experience of being Irish. Unsettled explores racism, ableism, abuse, and resistance as well as the bonds of community, family, and friends. As an Irish Traveller writing from a feminist perspective, McDonagh’s essays are rich and complex, raw and honest, and, above all else, uncompromising. About the author Rosaleen McDonagh is a playwright and a member of Aosdána. Her most recent plays commissioned are Walls and Windows for the Abbey Theatre and Contentious Spaces for the Project Arts Centre. Rosaleen holds a BA, two MPhils from Trinity College Dublin and a PhD from Northumbria University. She is a board member of Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre and was appointed a Human Rights Commissioner in June 2020. ISBN 9781916493537 -
Willard, his mother and his girlfriend Nyla have spent their entire lives in waiting in the Line where daily survival is dictated by the ultimate imperative: obey the rules, or you will lose your place. But everything changes the day Willard’s mother dies and he finds an incomprehensible book hidden among her few belongings… In its Beckettian sparseness, Line pushes the boundaries of high concept fiction. Deeply moving, it also touches on many of the pressing issues of our turbulent world: migration and the refugee crisis, big data and the erosion of democracy, climate change, colonialism, economic exploitation, social conformity and religious fanaticism. Line is speculative fiction at its most ambitious, leading the reader on a journey to make sense of a world that is ultimately not so different from our own. ISBN 9781916291423 -
Jayne A. Quan writes with honesty and humour about key moments in their life and transition. With lyric insight and quiet clarity, Quan navigates the intersection of loss, grief, memory and the power of love and healing through the lens of a body in motion. Courageous and poignant, this debut collection of essays deftly explores what it takes to live your own truth and carve a place for yourself in a world that offers no blueprint. "Jayne Quan has built a cathedral of love and grief and acceptance; of bodies and faith, of loss and desire. A book that’s alive with truth and possibility, looking inwardly to our private sorrows while engaging politically with the world. A superb, deeply moving and unforgettable work." — Sinéad Gleeson "Jayne is just a lovely writer, and these searching, beautifully cadenced essays are filled with abiding truths." — Anne Enright ISBN 9781915017017