Irish Ireland

Emer is just a woman living in New York City who takes the subway, buys ice cream from the bodega on the corner, has writerly aspirations, and lives with her boyfriend, Con. But is this life she lives the only path she’s on?

Family is everything to Siobhán: her five siblings; her dear departed mother for whom the family business, Naomi’s Bistro, is named; and now her fiancé, Macdara Flannery. So precious is her engagement that Siobhán wants to keep it just between the two of them for a little longer. But Macdara is her family, which is why when his cousin Jane frantically calls for his help, Siobhán rushes with him from Kilbane to the rural village where Jane and her mother have recently moved. In a cottage, Ellen Delaney lies on her bed in a fancy red dress, no longer breathing.

A gripping investigation into one of Irish history's greatest mysteries, Great Hatred reveals the true story behind one of the most significant political assassinations to ever have been committed on British soil. On 22 June 1922, Sir Henry Wilson—the former head of the British army and one of those credited with winning the First World War—was shot and killed by two veterans of that war turned IRA members in what was the most significant political murder to have taken place on British soil for more than a century.

In January 1972, a peaceful civil rights march in Northern Ireland ended in bloodshed. Troops from Britain's 1st Battalion Parachute Regiment opened fire on marchers, leaving 13 dead and 15 wounded. Seven of those killed were teenage boys. The day became known as 'Bloody Sunday'. The events occurred in broad daylight and in the full glare of the press. Within hours, the British military informed the world that they had won an 'IRA gun battle'. This became the official narrative for decades until a family-led campaign instigated one of the most complex inquiries in history.

From the Plantation of Ulster in the 17th century to the entry into peace talks in the late 20th century, the Northern Irish people have been engaged in conflict - Catholic against Protestant, Republican against Unionist. Marc Mulholland explores the pivotal moments in Northern Irish history - the rise of republicanism in the 1800s, Home Rule and the civil rights movement, the growth of Sinn Fein and the provisional IRA, and of the opposition, the DUP, led by Dr. Ian Paisley.

The Irish-American story, with all its twists and triumphs, is told through the improbable life of one man. A dashing young orator during the Great Famine of the 1840s, in which a million of his Irish countrymen died, Thomas Francis Meagher led a failed uprising against British rule, for which he was banished to a Tasmanian prison colony. He escaped and six months later was heralded in the streets of New York - the revolutionary hero, back from the dead, at the dawn of the great Irish immigration to America.

Discover the Spirit of Ireland through an Epic Exploration of Irish History and Myths.

When Grace arrives tired, tearful and rain-soaked in Roone Bay, the little Irish village where her grandmother Caitlin grew up, she is overwhelmed with longing for Caitlin's safe, warm arms. The crumbling wreck of Caitlin's once-beautiful childhood cottage—whose key Grace was given on her wedding day as a secret refuge if she ever needed it—is not the fresh start she'd hoped for. But with her young daughter Olivia to look after and a painful past to hide from, Grace has to stay strong.

It's three days before Christmas. Tilly boards a plane on the other side of the world. She's determined to reach Roone, a small island off the west coast of Ireland, in time for Christmas Day. Tilly carries a troubling secret, and Laura, a woman she's never met, might be the only one who can help her. Except that Laura has no idea that Tilly exists. And with five children, a mother-in-law stranded on the island and a husband with whom she's barely on speaking terms, an unexpected Christmas guest is the last thing she needs.

The Turning Tide is a hymn to a sea passage of world-historical importance. Combining social and cultural history, nature-writing, travelogue and politics, Jon Gower charts a sea which has carried both Vikings and saints, invasion forces and furtive gun-runners, writers, musicians and fishermen. The divided but interconnected waters of the Irish Sea—from the narrow North Channel through St George’s Channel to where the Celtic sea opens out into wide Atlantic—have a turbulent history to match the violence of its storms.

Humorous and horrifying, tender and absurd, the stories in Quickly, While They Still Have Horses offer a fresh, irreverent look at life in post-conflict Northern Ireland. From first loves to strained relationships, the thrills and terrors of growing up to the dangers and challenges of parenthood, Carson infuses all her stories with empathy, dark wit, and a surreal edge.

This is the story of George and Alice, two lonely hearts unknowingly orbiting each other's lives. But will their paths converge—and what will happen if they do?

When people think of Irish emigration, they often think of the Great Famine of the 1840s, which caused many to flee Ireland for the United States. But the real history of the Irish diaspora is much longer, more complicated, and more global. In On Every Tide, Sean Connolly tells the epic story of Irish migration, showing how emigrants became a force in world politics and religion.

On the streets of the tough Dublin inner-city neighbourhood where he grew up, Gerry Hutch was perceived as an ordinary decent criminal, a quintessential Robin Hood figure who fought the law—and won. To the rest of the world he was an elusive criminal godfather called the Monk: an enigmatic criminal mastermind and the hunted leader of one side in the deadliest gangland feud in Irish criminal history.

In their long history of suffering, nothing was ever so terrible as what the Irish endured during the Great Potato Famine that struck the country in the 1840s. It produced massive upheaval for several years. While countless numbers of Irish starved, the famine also compelled many to leave. And all the while, the British were exporting enough food from Ireland on a daily basis to prevent the starvation.

In 1846 a baby girl is born to a young Irish fisherman and his wife. It is the second year of the Great Hunger and the young couple choose to remain in Ireland, while family and friends are leaving. Their story takes place in the fishing village of Blackrock, Dundalk, but with the cities of Liverpool and Sunderland playing a critical part in their lives. Is their love for each other and their homeland enough to sustain them, or will they be forced to join the one and a half million who emigrate?

1975: A young Irish-American man joins an elite US Marine unit to get the most intensive military training possible—then joins the Irish Republican Army, during the days of some of the bloodiest fighting ever in the Irish-British conflict. It is a story that will see him running guns with American mobster—and secret IRA fundraiser—Whitey Bulger; running from safe house to safe house in the Irish countryside, one step ahead of British troops; fending off a recruitment offer from the CIA; and being one of the masterminds behind a campaign to take out London's electrical system.

For centuries the Túatha Dé Danann lived in peace on an island where time flowed more slowly and the seasons were gentle - until that peace was shattered by the arrival of invaders. The Gaels, the Children of Milesios, came looking for easy riches and conquest, following the story of an island to the west where their every desire could be granted. They had not anticipated that it would already be home to others, and against the advice of their druids, they began to exterminate the Túatha Dé Danann.

From 1845 to 1852, the Great Hunger, also referred to as the "Potato Famine", was a period of a lot of starvation and illness in Ireland. The period was known in Irish at the time as a "Drochshaol"—loosely translated as "the hard days", or actually "the bad life"—with the most badly affected districts in the west and south of Ireland, where the Irish language was popular. The year 1847, at times called "Black '47", was the absolute worst year of the period. Around one million people died, and over a million left the nation throughout the Great Famine.

Eamonn McCann’s account of what it is like to grow up a Catholic in a Northern Irish ghetto - first published in 1974 - quickly became a classic account of the feelings generated by British rule. The author was at the center of events in Derry which first brought Northern Ireland to world attention. He witnessed the gradual transformation of the civil rights movement from a mild campaign for “British Democracy” to an all-out military assault on the British state. This book describes the people involved in the war and gives an account of the springs of the "Catholic" opposition.