Showing results by narrator "Gerry-OBrien" in All Categories

IN 2017, TINA SATCHWELL VANISHED FROM HER COUNTY CORK HOME. HER HUSBAND RICHARD CLAIMED THAT SHE HAD TAKEN THEIR SAVINGS AND LEFT OF HER OWN ACCORD. But as questions mounted, suspicion grew. Why did her husband wait four days before reporting her missing? And would Tina have left behind her...

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.

Tom Crean was the farmer’s son from Kerry who sailed on three major expeditions to the unknown Antarctic over a century ago. He served with both Captain Robert Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton, spent longer on the ice than either and outlived them both. But Tom Crean returned to Ireland and never spoke about his exploits, taking his incredible story to the grave - until the publication of An Unsung Hero, which unearthed his story and saw him rightfully placed amongst the annals of the great explorers.

Over a hundred years after she went missing, Isolde, born to the family of a famous Irish king and a powerful immortal, inexplicably reappears. Her mother's kin, the Descendants, are one of the two magical races of Ireland. But no Descendant can understand the reasons for Isolde's disappearance, and worse yet, she is giftless – born with no magical ability, a dangerous thing when the magic-rich Fomorians, ancient enemies of the Descendants, are growing in strength.

Jack Taylor, a disgraced ex-cop in Galway, has slid further down the slope of despair. After a year in London he returns to his home town of Galway with a leather coat and a coke habit. Someone is systematically slaughtering young travellers and dumping their bodies in the city centre. Even in the state he's in, Jack Taylor has an uncanny ability to know where to look, what questions to ask, and with the aid of an English policeman, apparently solves the case.

In June 1922, just seven months after Sinn Féin negotiators signed a compromise treaty with representatives of the British government to create the Irish Free State, Ireland collapsed into civil war. While the body count suggests it was far less devastating than other European civil wars, it had a harrowing impact on the country and cast a long shadow, socially, economically and politically, which included both public rows and recriminations and deep, often private traumas.

‘A tremendously engaging read’ – The Times A unique memoir from British cycling’s most fascinating competitor In the summer of 2020, sportswriter David Walsh invited Pippa York began a series of journeys following the Tour de France. A nostalgic voyage through the world’s most...

Still stinging from his unceremonious ouster from the Garda Siochana, and staring at the world through the smoky bottom of his beer mug, Jack Taylor is stuck in Galway with nothing to look forward to. He is teetering on the brink of his life's sharpest edges, his memories of the past cutting deep into his soul and his prospects for the future non-existent.

Winner of the Irish Book of the Year * A New Yorker Best Book of the Year * Winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction * Shortlisted for the Nero Novel of the Year * A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice From one of the most acclaimed Irish writers today, a new novel about...

Created by an Irish clergyman, Melmoth is one of the most fiendish characters in literature. In a satanic bargain, Melmoth exchanges his soul for immortality. The story of his tortured wanderings through the centuries is pieced together through those who have been implored by Melmoth to take over his pact with the devil. Influenced by the Gothic romances of the late 18th century, Maturin's diabolic tale raised the genre to a new and macabre pitch. Its many admirers include Poe, Balzac, Oscar Wilde and Baudelaire.

The Golden Age of Detection has enjoyed a great resurgence of interest in recent years, with publishers mining back catalogues to bring the best of yesteryear to very receptive new audiences. What is it about a literary movement that took off in the 1920s that still appeals to book lovers in the 2020s? In this authoritative new study, John Curran reveals that it is the ludic qualities of classic crime fiction that continue to intrigue.

The accidental deaths of two students appear random, tragic events, except that in each case a copy of a book by John Millington Synge is found beneath the body. Jack begins to believe that "The Dramatist", a calculating killer, is out there, enticing him to play. As the case twists and turns Jack's refuge, the city of Galway, now demands he sacrifice the only love he's maintained, and while Iraq burns, he seems a step away from the abyss.

An early science-fiction novel by the prolific and notable writer H. G. Wells, War of the Worlds describes an invasion of England by aliens from Mars. It is one of the earliest and best-known depictions of an alien invasion of Earth and was highly influential, spawning several films, radio dramas, comic-book adaptations, and a television series based on the story.

From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea and Ancient Light, a new novel - at once trenchant, witty, and shattering - about the intricacies of artistic creation and theft, and about the ways in which we learn to possess one another and to hold on to ourselves. Equally self-aggrandizing and self-deprecating, our narrator, Oliver Otway Orme, is a painter of some renown and a petty thief who does not steal for profit and has never before been caught.

Tales of the Elders of Ireland (Acallam na Senórach) represents the largest literary text surviving from 12th-century Ireland, the most comprehensive early collection of Fenian stories and poetry. Three parallel worlds interact: the contemporary Christian world of Saint Patrick with his scribes, clerics, occasional angels, and souls rescued from Hell; the earlier pagan world of the ancient, giant Fenians and an array of Irish kings; and the timeless Otherworld, peopled by ever-young shape-shifting fairies.

Introducing George Markham, lately of the 65th Regiment of Foot, now Lieutenant of Marines on His Britannic Majesty’s frigate Hebe. Irishman, papist, reputed coward; he is a man with something to prove. As the winter of 1793 comes to the Mediterranean coast of France, so too does the chill wind of the Revolutionary terror. When the Hebe is sent to help the Bourbon city of Toulon, Markham will have to prove he is a worthy officer of Marines…or die in the attempt.

Dracula is an 1897 Gothic horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker. Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, the novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to move from Transylvania to England so he may find new blood and spread the undead curse, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor Abraham Van Helsing.

Jack Taylor, traumatised, bitter and hurting from his last case, has resolved to give up the finding business. However, he owes the local hard man a debt of honour and it appears easy enough: find “the Angel of the Magdalen” – a woman who helped the unfortunates incarcerated in the infamous laundry. He is also hired by a whizz kid to prove that his father’s death was no accident. Jack treats both cases as relatively simple affairs.

For too long the people of Tír na nÓg have suffered under the dominion of the drunes: strange druids who have poisoned the land with their magic. Sláine has had enough of their tyranny and, through the Earth Goddess, he learns some shocking truths about the priesthood and his own future. Now Sláine must unite the four kings of Tír na nÓg and use their mystical weapons as he and the Sessair tribe prepare for all-out war!

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is the first novel of Irish writer James Joyce. A Künstlerroman in a modernist style, it traces the intellectual and religious philosophical awakening of young Stephen Dedalus, a fictional alter ego of Joyce and an allusion to Daedalus, the consummate craftsman of Greek mythology. Stephen questions and rebels against the Catholic and Irish conventions under which he has grown up, culminating in his self-exile from Ireland to Europe.