Independent bookshop in Schull, West Cork

Theses stories from the Museum of Birds and Beasts project relate to animals, birds, fishing and folklore and were collected from the islanders of West cork; Bere Island, Oileán Chléire, Dursey Island, Heir Island, Long Island, Sherkin Island and Whiddy Island and from former residents of the now uninhabited Middle Calf Island and Horse Island. Memories from the East and West Skeam Islands are also included in this collection.

The stories are told in the islanders’ own voices and grew out of individual conversations over the course of two years. They record a way of life shaped by necessity and the enduring relationship between people, animals, the land and the sea.

In This Boy's Heart, beloved Irish broadcaster John Creedon invites readers on an intimate journey through the people, places, and moments that shaped him. With warmth, humor, and a keen sense of nostalgia, Creedon recounts tales of his Cork upbringing, weaving together stories of family, friendships, and the Irish landscapes that left an indelible mark on his life. Celebrating the simplicity and beauty of Irish culture, this memoir is a tribute to Creedon’s roots and a universal story of belonging and self-discovery.

Perfect for fans of memoirs, Irish culture, and those drawn to reflective, heartwarming storytelling, This Boy's Heart is an inspiring read that reminds us of the power of home and heritage.

From the author of the award-winning bestseller An Irish Atlantic Rainforest comes The Magic of An Irish Rainforest: A Visual Journey.

In 2023, environmentalist and rewilder Eoghan Daltun travelled the length and breadth of Ireland photographing areas of temperate rainforest, in a bid to illustrate their beauty and immense ecological value, and to document, in almost all cases, their state of decline.

The resulting collection of stunning images, combined with deeply illuminating nature writing, charts that exploration, beginning with the author's own thriving wild rainforest on the Beara Peninsula, West Cork, and taking us through the four provinces of Ireland - places such as Killarney National Park, Kerry; The Gearagh, Cork, The Burren, Clare; Old Head Wood, County Mayo; Glenveagh National Park, Donegal; Correl Glen and CladaghGlen, County Fermanagh; and Wicklow's beauty spot of Glendalough.

From close-range to wide-lens, luscious forest imagery and landscapes are captured, unimaginably rich in native flora and fauna, offering us a deep insight into rare and priceless ecosystem fragments that we still have but are losing.

This new volume in the award-winning Atlas Series presents fresh perspectives on, and a nuanced understanding of, the history of the Irish Civil War (1922–3).

The centenary of the Civil War has prompted wide-ranging research into that tumultuous and complex period in Irish history. Featuring contributions from over ninety leading scholars from a range of disciplines, this book provides new insights into the conflict’s regional, national and international dimensions. It includes the first-ever listing of Civil War fatalities and original explorations of issues including propaganda, gender, trauma, culture, labour, land and class.

Produced in partnership with the National Library of Ireland with support from the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, the Atlas of the Irish Civil War: New perspectives is richly illustrated with over 400 photographs, archival documents and a series of newly created original maps. From the research team that produced the widely acclaimed Atlas of the Irish Revolution, this volume represents a major and accessible contribution to the historiography of a conflict that has cast a long shadow over Irish life.

Discover the fascinating world of Ireland’s diverse and astonishing collection of native wildflowers. This new edition reflects the many changes to our botanical knowledge since The Wildflowers of Ireland was first published in 2014. There’s updated information on the distribution of native wildflowers, along with more than 90 additional species, all beautifully photographed by the author.

For ease of identification, the species are divided into colour categories and within each category the species are grouped by, for example, the number of petals in the flower or whether the species carries its flowers in a cluster or a spike.

In easily understood terminology, focus is put on the main identifying features of each plant, by colour, size, shape of flower, leaf, habitat, flowering season, and where in Ireland it might be found.

This is a must for enthusiasts of all ages and levels of experience.

A new edition of the sell-out travelogue of a London Irishwoman who walks the Wild Atlantic Way in the footsteps of eleven pioneering women, beginning with her great-grandmother, a lacemaker on Cape Clear Island, and including Ellen Hutchins, Edna O'Brien, Granuaile, Queen Meabh and Easkey Britton.

At a crossroads in her life, Gráinne Lyons set out to travel Ireland’s west coast on foot. She set a simple intention: to walk in the footsteps of eleven pioneering Irish women deeply rooted in this coastal landscape and explore their lives and work along the way. As a Londoner born to Irish parents, she also sought answers in her own identity.

As Gráinne heads north from Cape Clear Island where her great-grandmother was a lacemaker, she considers Ellen Hutchins, Maude Delap, Edna O’Brien, Granuaile and Queen Maeve among others from her unique perspective. Their homes – in places that are famously wild and remote – are transformed into sites of hope, purpose, opportunity and inspiration. Walking through this history, her journey reveals unexpected insight into emigrant identity, travelling alone, femininity and the trappings of an ‘ideal’ life.

Against the backdrop and power of this great ocean, Wild Atlantic Women will inspire the twenty-first-century reader and walker to keep going, regardless of the path.

'This is a history shaken by intimacy - a brave and rigorously humane book' Seán Hewitt

How far would you go for the missing?

When Clair Wills was in her twenties, she discovered she had a cousin she had never met. Born in a Mother and Baby Home in 1950s Ireland, Mary grew up in an institution not far from the farm where Clair spent happy childhood summers. Yet she was never told of her existence.

How could a whole family - a whole country - abandon unmarried mothers and their children, erasing them from history?

To discover the missing pieces of her family's story, Clair searched across archives and nations, in a journey that would take her from the 1890s to the 1980s, from West Cork to rural Suffolk and Massachusetts, from absent fathers to the grief of a lost child.

There are some experiences that do not want to be remembered. What began as an effort to piece together the facts became an act of decoding the most unreliable of evidence - stories, secrets, silences. The result is a moving, exquisitely told story of the secrets families keep, and the violence carried out in their name.

Seamus Deane was one of the most vital and versatile authors of our time. Small World presents an unmatched survey of Irish writing, and of writing about Irish issues, from 1798 to the present day. Elegant, polemical, and incisive, it addresses the political, aesthetic, and cultural dimensions of several notable literary and historical moments, and monuments, from the island's past and present. The style of Swift; the continuing influence of Edmund Burke's political thought in the USA; the echoing debates about national character; aspects of Joyce's and of Elizabeth Bowen's relation to modernism; memories of Seamus Heaney; analysis of the representation of Northern Ireland in Anna Burns's fiction - these topics constitute only a partial list of the themes addressed by a volume that should be mandatory reading for all those who care about Ireland and its history. The writings included here, from one of Irish literature's most renowned critics, have individually had a piercing impact, but they are now collectively amplified by being gathered together here for the first time between one set of covers. Small World: Ireland, 1798-2018 is an indispensable collection from one of the most important voices in Irish literature and culture.   

‘A dozen pages in I realized that I had been waiting for much of my life to read this extraordinary book’ Annie Proulx

A way of life that once encompassed most of humanity is vanishing in one of the greatest transformations of our time: the eclipse of the rural world by the urban.

In this new history of peasantry, Patrick Joyce tells the story of this lost world and its people. In contrast to the usual insulting stereotypes, we discover a rich and complex culture: traditions, songs, celebrations and revolts, across Europe from the plains of Poland to the farmsteads and villages of Italy and Ireland, through the nineteenth century to the present day. Into this passionate history, written with exquisite care, Joyce weaves remarkable individual stories, including those of his own Irish family, and looks at how peasant life has been remembered - and misremembered - in contemporary culture.

This is a people whose voice is vastly underrepresented in human history. Yet for Joyce, we are all the children of peasants, who must respect the experience of our ancestors. This is particularly pressing when our knowledge of the land is being lost to climate crisis and the rise of industrial agriculture. Enlightening, timely and vital, this book commemorates an extraordinary culture whose impact on our history and our future remains profoundly relevant.

 The second edition of the Sunday Times Sports Book of the Year is updated with a new chapter describing Nick's eventual completion of the Fastnet Race thirty years after his first, ill-fated attempt. The world-famous Fastnet Race takes yachts from the Isle of Wight to the Fastnet Rock off the southwest coast of Ireland and back. The 1979 race began in perfect conditions, but was soon engulfed by the deadliest storm in the history of modern sailing. By the time it passed, the havoc caused was immeasurable, and fifteen sailors had lost their lives. It had been Nick Ward's childhood ambition to sail in the Fastnet Race, and being asked to join the crew of the 30-foot yacht Grimalkin was a dream come true. But then the storm hit. Grimalkin was capsized again and again. With the skipper lost overboard, after hours of struggle three of the crew decided to abandon the boat for the liferaft. Nick and another crewmember, both unconscious, were left on the beleaguered yacht in the middle of the Irish Sea. Both were presumed dead. Gerry died a few hours later, and Nick was left to face the storm alone. 

Welcome to the spirit, moods and amazing views of the wonderful world of West Cork, truly a place apart. A world of stunning landscapes, craggy cliffs, colourful villages, wild bogland, glorious harbours, fabulous beaches, rocky mountains, West Cork stands apart as one of the most desirable places to live, work, visit. The famous spots are all here: Mizen and Beara, with their extraordinary seascapes; Baltimore and Schull, beloved of sailors from all over the world; Gougane Barra, with its timeless peace - and many, many more. There are secret places too, off the beaten track, and the book takes the reader down many side-paths and byways to hidden corners and unexpected treasures, sharing on the way some of the legends and traditions of this region - and always the most wonderful and heartstopping scenery.

From a writer and photographer team who lovingly share their responses to the region they are lucky enough to call home: Jo Kerrigan, historian and journalist with national and international publications, and Richard Mills, multiple award-winning press and wildlife photographer.

In June 1631 pirates from Algiers and armed troops of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, led by the notorious pirate captain Morat Rais, stormed ashore at the little harbour village of Baltimore in West Cork. They captured almost all the villagers and bore them away to a life of slavery in North Africa. The prisoners were destined for a variety of fates -- some would live out their days chained to the oars as galley slaves, while others would spend long years in the scented seclusion of the harem or within the walls of the Sultan's palace. The old city of Algiers, with its narrow streets, intense heat and lively trade, was a melting pot where the villagers would join slaves and freemen of many nationalities. Only two of them ever saw Ireland again.

The Sack of Baltimore was the most devastating invasion ever mounted by Islamist forces on Ireland or England. Des Ekin's exhaustive research illuminates the political intrigues that ensured the captives were left to their fate, and provides a vivid insight into the kind of life that would have awaited the slaves amid the souks and seraglios of old Algiers.

The Stolen Village is a fascinating tale of international piracy and culture clash nearly 400 years ago and is the first book to cover this relatively unknown and under-researched incident in Irish history.

Shortlisted for the Argosy Irish Nonfiction Book of the Year Award

In the early part of the seventeenth-century, along the southwest coast of Ireland, piracy was a way of life. Following the outlawing of privately-commissioned ships in 1603 by the new king of England, disenfranchised like-minded men of the sea, many who had been former 'privateers', merchant sailors and seamen and who had no recourse but to turn to plunder, joined forces with traditional pirates. With the closing of the ports, they transferred their base of operations from England to Ireland and formed an alliance. Within the context of the Munster Plantation, many of the pirates came to settle, some bringing families. These men and their activities not alone influenced the socio-economic and geo-political landscape of Ireland at that time but challenged European maritime power centres, while also forging links across the North Atlantic that touched the Mediterranean, Northwest Africa and the New World. Tracing the cultural origins of this particular period in maritime plunder from the late-1500s and throughout its heyday in the opening decades of the 1600s, The Alliance of Pirates analyses the nature and extent of this predation and looks at its impact and influence in Ireland and across the Atlantic. Operating during a period of emerging global maritime empires, when nations across Europe were vying for supremacy of the seas, the pirates built their own highly lucrative and highly potent piratical power base. Drawing on extensive primary and secondary historical sources Connie Kelleher explores who these pirates were, their main theatre of operations and the characters that aided and abetted them. Archaeological evidence uniquely supports the investigation and provides a tangible cultural link through time to the pirates, their cohorts and their bases.

‘The Northside’ is tucked away in the remote and most south-westerly point of Ireland, on the Mizen peninsula. It is a place of wild beauty, with rocky hills to the back, and overlooking the vibrant Dunmanus Bay.

in the past it offered a harsh living, where man has protected himself from the elements blown in from the Atlantic and where one person often relied on another for survival. It gave a camaraderie that can rarely be found today.

This book records a bygone way of life; work, play and the traditions, tales customs and history of the people of the Northside.

Armed with “self-belief and convictions and music”, Fred Callow in 1990 left the UK to put down roots in rural Ireland in search of a simpler, more authentic way of life. In West Cork, he discovered what he calls his “Family”, a group of like-minded people striving to live an alternative lifestyle in a place called Cool Mountain, not far from the town of Dunmanway.

In Blow-In, Fred tells of his involvement for more than thirty years with this group of “strongly individualistic” and “sometimes eccentric” members, many of them refugees from the harsh political realities of Thatcher’s Britain.

Despite initial suspicions stirred up by unscrupulous media commentators and politicians, this “hippy” community managed eventually to establish an excellent lasting relationship with local people and became a major contributor to the artistic and musical culture of West Cork.

The community wasn’t without its own internal problems, Fred explains in this candid account. But in that regard, it was no different to the world outside it. At the end of the day, he says, it was simply a collection of people “looking to feed and house their families. . .gardeners and smallholders and basket makers having a little fun drinking and playing music together along the journey”.

Blow-In is an important contribution to recent West Cork history. It also offers a thought-provoking, critical reflection on the changes that have taken place in rural Ireland over the past three decades.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024 WINNER OF THE WRITERS' PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024 Carmel had been alone all her life. The baby knew this. They looked at each other, and all of time was there. The baby knew how vast her mother's loneliness had been. 'A magnificent novel' SALLY ROONEY Nell is a young woman with adventure on her mind. As she sets out into the world, she finds her family history hard to escape. For her mother, Carmel, Nell's leaving home opens a space in her heart, where the turmoil of a lifetime begins to churn. Over them both falls the long shadow of Carmel's famous father, an Irish poet of beautiful words and brutal actions. From our greatest chronicler of family life, The Wren, The Wren is a story of the love that can unite us, and the individual acts that threaten this vital bond. 'A triumph.treasure it' SUNDAY TIMES 'One of the great living writers on the subject of family' NEW YORK TIMES 'A must-read' MARGARET ATWOOD (on Twitter) 'Might just be Anne Enright's best yet' LOUISE KENNEDY *A SUNDAY TIMES , OBSERVER , GUARDIAN , TLS , HARPER'S BAZAAR , NEW STATESMAN , THE NEW YORKER , TIME AND WASHINGTON POST BOOK OF THE YEAR*   

Against the Tide is a story told with honesty and great emotion; the narrative of a life in which tragedy and good fortune succeeded each other with bewildering speed.                      

After training as a doctor, Noël Browne experienced at first hand the devastating ravages of tuberculosis both personally and professionally. Drawn to politics, he was appointed Minister for Health on his first day in the Dáil at the age of thirty three. His single-minded campaign for reform of the health system, especially the Mother and Child Scheme of 1951, encountered the strenuous opposition of both the Catholic Church and the medical establishment. Abandoned by his party colleagues, he embarked on a stormy political career over the following thirty years. For nearly forty years, Noel Browne's name has been synonymous with political controversy. He was idolised by his supporters; demonised by those who opposed him. Against the Tide was an instant bestseller on its publication in 1986. It has become a classic political memoir - subjective, passionate, controversial and beautifully written.   

OBSERVER BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2015 TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT BOOKS OF THE YEAR and OBSERVER BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014 WINNER OF THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION'S MORRIS D. FORKOSCH PRIZE 2016 'The most complete and plausible exploration of the roots of the 1916 Rebellion... essential reading' Colm Tóibìn Vivid Faces surveys the lives and beliefs of the people who made the Irish Revolution: linked together by youth, radicalism, subversive activities, enthusiasm and love. Determined to reconstruct the world and defining themselves against their parents, they were in several senses a revolutionary generation. The Ireland that eventually emerged bore little relation to the brave new world they had conjured up in student societies, agit-prop theatre groups, vegetarian restaurants, feminist collectives, volunteer militias, Irish-language summer schools, and radical newspaper offices. Roy Foster's book investigates that world, and the extraordinary people who occupied it. Looking back from old age, one of the most magnetic members of the revolutionary generation reflected that 'the phoenix of our youth has fluttered to earth a miserable old hen', but he also wondered 'how many people nowadays get so much fun as we did'. Working from a rich trawl of contemporary diaries, letters and reflections, Vivid Faces re-creates the argumentative, exciting, subversive and original lives of people who made a revolution, as well as the disillusionment in which it ended

A brisk, concise, and readable overview of Irish history from the Protestant Reformation to the dawn of the twenty-first century Five centuries of Irish history are explored in this informative and accessible volume. John Gibney proceeds from the beginning of Ireland's modern period and continues through to virtually the present day, offering an integrated overview of the island nation's cultural, political, and socioeconomic history. This succinct, scholarly study covers important historical events, including the Cromwellian conquest and settlement, the Great Famine, and the struggle for Irish independence. Gibney's book explores major themes such as Ireland's often contentious relationship with Britain, its place within the British Empire, the impact of the Protestant Reformation, the ongoing religious tensions it inspired, and the global reach of the Irish diaspora. This unique, wide-ranging work assimilates the most recent scholarship on a wide range of historical controversies, making it an essential addition to the library of any student of Irish studies.   

'At least in The Handmaid's Tale they value babies, mostly. Not so in the true stories here' Margaret Atwood '[A] furious, necessary book' Sinéad Gleeson Until alarmingly recently, the Catholic Church, acting in concert with the Irish state, operated a network of institutions for the concealment, punishment and exploitation of 'fallen women'. In the Magdalene laundries, girls and women were incarcerated and condemned to servitude. And in the mother-and-baby homes, women who had become pregnant out of wedlock were hidden from view, and in most cases their babies were adopted - sometimes illegally. Mortality rates in these institutions were shockingly high, and the discovery of a mass infant grave at the mother-and-baby home in Tuam made news all over the world. The Irish state has commissioned investigations. But the workings of the institutions and of the culture that underpinned it - a shame-industrial complex - have long been cloaked in secrecy and silence. For countless people, a search for answers continues. Caelainn Hogan - a brilliant young journalist, born in an Ireland that was only just starting to free itself from the worst excesses of Catholic morality - has been talking to the survivors of the institutions, to members of the religious orders that ran them, and to priests and bishops. She has visited the sites of the institutions, and studied Church and state documents that have much to reveal about how they operated. Reporting and writing with great curiosity, tenacity and insight, she has produced a startling and often moving account of how an entire society colluded in this repressive system, and of the damage done to survivors and their families. In the great tradition of Anna Funder's Stasiland and Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea - both winners of the Samuel Johnson Prize - Republic of Shame is an astounding portrait of a deeply bizarre culture of control. 'Achingly powerful ... There will be many people who don't want to read Republic of Shame , for fear it will be too much, too dark, too heavy. Please don't be afraid. Read it. Look it in the eye' Irish Times 'A must read for everyone' Lynn Ruane 'Republic of Shame is a careful, sensitive and extremely well-written book - but it is harrowing. It would break your heart in two' Ailbhe Smyth 'Hogan's captivatingly written stories of people who were consigned to what she calls the "shame-industrial complex" puts faces - many old now, and lined with pain - to the clinical data ... Brilliant' Sunday Times 'Utterly brilliant. Please read it' Marian Keyes 'Riveting, immensely insightful and horrifically recognisable' Emma Dabiri '[A] sensitive, can't-look-away book ... Through moving stories, Hogan shows how the past is still present' NPR   

South-west Donegal, Ireland, June 1856.

From the time that the blight first came on the potatoes in 1845, armed and masked men dubbed Molly Maguires had been raiding the houses of people deemed to be taking advantage of the rural poor. On some occasions, they represented themselves as 'Molly's Sons', sent by their mother, to carry out justice; on others, a man attired as a woman, introducing 'herself' as Molly Maguire, demanding redress for wrongs inflicted on her children. The raiders might stipulate the maximum price at which provisions were to be sold, warn against the eviction of tenants, or demand that an evicted family be reinstated to their holding. People who refused to meet their demands were often viciously beaten and, in some instances, killed -- offences that the Constabulary classified as 'outrages'. Catholic clergymen regularly denounced the Mollies and in 1853, the district was proclaimed under the Crime and Outrage (Ireland) Act. Yet the 'outrages' continued.

Then, in 1856, Patrick McGlynn, a young schoolmaster, suddenly turned informer on the Mollies, precipitating dozens of arrests. Here, a history of McGlynn's informing, backlit by episodes over the previous two decades, sheds light on that wave of outrage, its origins and outcomes, the meaning and the memory of it. More specifically, it illuminates the end of 'outrage' -- the shifting objectives of those who engaged in it, and also how, after hunger faded and disease abated, tensions emerged in the Molly Maguires, when one element sought to curtail such activity, while another sought, unsuccessfully, to expand it. And in that contention, when the opportunities of post-Famine society were coming into view, one glimpses the end, or at least an ebbing, of outrage -- in the everyday sense of moral indignation -- at the fate of the rural poor. But, at heart, The End of Outrage is about contention among neighbours -- a family that rose from the ashes of a mode of living, those consumed in the conflagration, and those who lost much but not all. Ultimately, the concern is how the poor themselves came to terms with their loss: how their own outrage at what had been done unto them and their forbears lost malignancy, and eventually ended. The author being a native of the small community that is the focus of The End of Outrage makes it an extraordinarily intimate and absorbing history

"A rare gift: an inspiring tale about trees, trauma and the very purpose of life." -Andrew Nikiforuk, author of Empire of the Beetle Diana Beresford-Kroeger-a world-recognized botanist and medical biochemist-has revolutionized our understanding of the natural world with her startling insights into the hidden life of trees. In this riveting memoir, she uncovers the roots of her discoveries in her extraordinary childhood in Ireland. Soon after, her brilliant mind bloomed into an illustrious scientific career that melds the intricacies of the natural world with the truths of traditional Celtic wisdom. To Speak for the Trees uniquely blends the story of Beresford-Kroeger's incredible life and her outstanding achievement as a scientist. It elegantly shows us how forests can not only heal us as people but can also help save the planet.   

The survival of folklore is a rare thing. In a world fixated with the modern and new, many no longer see any relevance in what they consider to be old. But folklore is more than a glimpse into our pasts. It is vibrant and alive, surviving and, indeed, thriving, layer upon layer in our environs, the places we inhabit and the words we use. What is more, each generation adds its own strata.

The stories in this book are from the town of Skibbereen, situated at the heart of West Cork, Ireland. In 1937, at the behest of The National Folklore Commission, who identified the loss of this important and valuable heritage, the children from Skibbereen's schools set to work, committing tales narrated by their parents and grandparents to paper. Here you will find stories and histories from Abbeystrowry, Aghadown, Castlehaven, the Convent of Mercy (Skibbereen), Corravoley, Creagh, Dooneen, Drishanemore, Hare [Heir] Island, Kilcoe, Lisheen, Lissalohorig, Lough Hyne, Ringagrogy and Sherkin Islands, and the town of Skibbereen.

The Irish language has thirty-two words for field. Among them are:
Geamhar – a field of corn-grass
Tuar – a field for cattle at night
Réidhleán – a field for games or dancing
Cathairín – a field with a fairy-dwelling in it
The richness of a language closely tied to the natural landscape offered our ancestors a more magical way of seeing the world. Before we cast old words aside, let us consider the sublime beauty and profound oddness of the ancient tongue that has been spoken on this island for almost 3,000 years.
In Thirty-Two Words for Field, Manchán Magan meditates on these words – and the nuances of a way of life that is disappearing with them.

Our ancestors lived in a unique and complex society that was inspired by nature and centred upon esteemed poets, seers, monks, healers and wise women, all of whom were deeply connected to the land around them. This relationship to the cycles of the natural world – from which we are increasingly dissociated – was the animating force in their lives.
With infectious joy and wonder, Manchán Magan roams through Ireland's ancient bogs, rivers, mountains and shorelines, tracing our ancestors' footsteps. He uncovers the myths and lore that have shaped a national identity that is quietly embedded in the land, which has endured ice ages, famine and floods.
A magical and reinvigorating exploration into the wisdom that lies beneath us, Listen to the Land Speak casts the world in a new light.

It is 1985, in an Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant, faces into his busiest season. As he does the rounds, he feels the past rising up to meet him - and encounters the complicit silences of a people controlled by the Church.

WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE AND THE KERRY GROUP IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR AWARD

SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE AND THE IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR AT THE DALKEY LITERARY AWARDS

'No better feeling than reading a book that makes you excited to discover everything its author has ever written...' - Douglas Stuart (Winner of the Booker Prize 2020)
'Foster confirms Claire Keegan's talent. She creates luminous effects with spare material, so every line seems to be a lesson in the perfect deployment of both style and emotion' - Hilary Mantel (Winner of the Booker Prize 2012 and 2009)
'Marvellous-exact and icy and loving all at once.' - Sarah Moss

'A haunting, hopeful masterpiece.' - Sinéad Gleeson
A small girl is sent to live with foster parents on a farm in rural Ireland, without knowing when she will return home. In the strangers' house, she finds a warmth and affection she has not known before and slowly begins to blossom in their care. And then a secret is revealed and suddenly, she realizes how fragile her idyll is.
Winner of the Davy Byrnes Memorial Prize, Foster is now published in a revised and expanded version. Beautiful, sad and eerie, it is a story of astonishing emotional depth, showcasing Claire Keegan's great accomplishment and talent.

Winner of the 2023 Booker Prize

IF THERE WAS EVER A CRUCIAL BOOK FOR OUR CURRENT TIMES, IT'S PAUL LYNCH'S PROPHET SONG... BRILLIANTLY HAUNTING.' OBSERVER

* THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER *

The explosive literary sensation: a mother faces a terrible choice as Ireland slides into totalitarianism

On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her step. Two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police are here to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.

Ireland is falling apart. The country is in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and when her husband disappears, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a society that is quickly unravelling.

How far will she go to save her family? And what – or who – is she willing to leave behind?

Exhilarating, terrifying and propulsive, Prophet Song is a work of breathtaking originality, offering a devastating vision of a country at war and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together.

'A compassionate, propulsive and timely novel that forces the reader to imagine — what if this was me?' FT

An Post Irish Book Award winner, 2022

'The stories are absorbing, the writing charismatic and the ideas thought-provoking' Irish Independent

'Fascinating ... a manifesto for saving our own corner of the planet through letting things be' Irish Times, The Gloss

'Daltun writes with passion and purpose of the way we should live now' RTÉ Guide

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 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.

Seamus Heaney had the idea to form a personal selection from across the entire arc of his poetry, small yet comprehensive enough to serve as an introduction for all comers. He never managed to do this in his lifetime, and no edition exists which has such a broad range, drawing from first collection to last. But now, at last, the project has been returned to, resulting in an intimate gathering of poems chosen and introduced by the Heaney family. Coinciding with the National Library of Ireland launching a major exhibition dedicated to the life and work of Seamus Heaney, 100 Poems is a singular, accessible collection for new and younger readers that has the opportunity to reach far and wide, now and for years to come.