Joseph Delaney used to be an English teacher, before becoming the best-selling author of the Spook's series, which has been published in 30 countries and sold over 4.5 million copies worldwide. The first book, The Spook's Apprentice, was adapted into a major motion picture starring Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore.

Joseph Delaney

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Hilary Fannin

'This is heartache for grown ups. The Weight of Love pulls you in and does not let go' ANNE ENRIGHT 
 
'Beautiful and painful, exquisitely written, shot through with nostalgia for our earlier selves' MARIAN KEYES 
 
London, 1996. Robin and Ruth meet in the staff room of an East London school. Robin, desperate for a real connection, instantly falls in love. Ruth, recently bereaved and fragile, is tentative. 
 
 When Robin introduces Ruth to his childhood friend, Joseph, a tortured and talented artist, their attraction is instant. Powerless, Robin watches on as the girl he loves and his best friend begin a passionate and turbulent affair. 
 
 Dublin 2017. Robin and Ruth are married and have a son, Sid, who is about to emigrate to Berlin. Theirs is a marriage haunted by the ghost of Joseph and as the distance between them grows, Robin makes a choice that could have potentially devastating consequences. 
 
 The Weight of Love is a beautiful exploration of how we manage life when the notes and beats of our existence, so carefully arranged, begin to slip off the stave. An intimate and moving account of the intricacies of marriage and the myriad ways in which we can love and be loved. 
 
'Delicate, powerful, hypnotic' DONAL RYAN 
 
'Fannin's novel is already likely to be a serious contender for one of the books of the year' SUNDAY TIMES

The Weight of Love

Ciaran McMenamin

&lsquo;We&rsquo;re in the back of a car belonging to the men our mothers told us to never get in the back of a car of. I close my eyes and wonder how many girls will come to my funeral.&rsquo; 
 
Vincent Patrick Duffy has already checked out. Trapped between Skintown&rsquo;s narrow horizons, he chops ribs and chickens in a takeaway, dreaming of escape, joint after freshly rolled joint. 
 
A mindless act of kindness leads to the unlikeliest of business opportunities. Where the government has failed, might the second summer of love and a little pill with a dove on it be the broom to sweep away the hatred and replace it with love, so much love? 
 
Skintown is Vinny&rsquo;s drink- and drug-fuelled odyssey through fighting, fishing, rioting, romance, reconciliation and acid house. Bristling with a restless energy and drunk on black humour, this superb debut is a wild ride. 
 
---- 
 
'Ciaran McMenamin writes brilliantly ... Horrifying and hilarious, Skintown is a compulsive read.' Liz Nugent 
 
'Lures the reader into the madcap night and then delivers a hairpin twist.' Irish Times 
 
'A supercharged riot of a debut novel, zinging with confidence and intelligence.' Joseph O'Connor

Skintown

Jan Carson

**WINNER of the EU Prize for Literature** 
 
'One of the most exciting and original Northern Irish writers of her generation' SUNDAY TIMES 
 
'Gripping, affecting, surprising. I inhaled it' LISA MCINERNEY 
 
'Captivating, intelligent and courageous' IRISH TIMES 
 
'Spectacular. At once grittily real, wildly magical and insanely alluring - a siren-song of a novel.' DONAL RYAN 
 
'Jan Carson seems to have invented a new Belfast in this gripping, surprising, exhilarating novel.' RODDY DOYLE 
 
'Blew me away with its power, anger and wit.' JOSEPH O'CONNOR 
 
Dr Jonathan Murray fears his new-born daughter is not as harmless as she seems. 
 
Sammy Agnew is wrestling with his dark past, and fears the violence in his blood lurks in his son, too. 
 
The city is in flames and the authorities are losing control. As matters fall into frenzy, and as the lines between fantasy and truth, right and wrong, begin to blur, who will these two fathers choose to protect? 
 
Dark, propulsive and thrillingly original, this tale of fierce familial love and sacrifice fizzes with magic and wonder.

The Fire Starters

Donal Ryan

From the twice Man Booker longlisted author of From a Low and Quiet Sea 
 
'Poetic, powerful and heart-rending' THE TIMES 
 
'An exquisite account of womanhood, friendship, prejudice and tradition that is both intimate in scale and awesome in achievement' IRISH INDEPENDENT 
 
 
Melody Shee is alone and in trouble. Her husband doesn't take her news too well. She can't tell her father yet because he's a good man and this could break him. She's trying to stay in the moment, but the future is looming - larger by the day - while the past won't let her go. What she did to Breedie Flynn all those years ago still haunts her. 
 
It's a good thing that she meets Mary Crothery when she does. Mary is a young Traveller woman, and she knows more about Melody than she lets on. She might just save Melody's life. 
 
_________ 
 
'A joy to read, for all that it breaks your heart' INDEPENDENT 
 
'One of the finest writers working in Ireland today ... worthy of Greek Drama' GUARDIAN 
 
'A stunning piece of work, utterly truthful and emotionally powerful' JOSEPH O'CONNOR 
 
'Work of genius ... I was entranced by it. Buckled by it' SEBASTIAN BARRY

All We Shall Know

Norma MacMaster

Sitting alone in her Dublin nursing home, Harriet Campbell reflects on a life that has become tainted by bitterness and regret. From a strictly Presbyterian community along the Irish border, at sixteen young Harriet is married off to Thomas, a respected church Elder but a cold, sober man twice her age. The birth of her son James, a bright boy destined for great things, brings joy and light to her life. But when he falls in love with a beautiful girl from the wrong faith, their relationship is torn apart. 
 
Written in startlingly beautiful prose, Norma MacMaster’s Silence Under a Stone is an intimate, deeply moving story of love, faith and the pain of an irreconcilable heart.

Silence Under A Stone

Winner of the An Post Irish Novel of the Year 2020 
Longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award 
 
'You have to truly love people to write like this' RACHEL JOYCE 
 
'One of the greatest novels of this century' SUNDAY INDEPENDENT 
 
'Gorgeously wrought' GUARDIAN 
 
 
In 1973, twenty-year-old Moll Gladney takes a morning bus from her rural home and disappears. 
 
Bewildered and distraught, Paddy and Kit must confront an unbearable prospect: that they will never see their daughter again. 
 
Five years later, Moll returns. What - and who - she brings with her will change the course of her family's life forever. 
 
Beautiful and devastating, this exploration of loss, alienation and the redemptive power of love reaffirms Donal Ryan as one of the most talented and empathetic writers at work today. 
 
_________ 
 
'Outstanding ... Tender and beautifully written' INDEPENDENT 
 
'All the beauty and sorrow of life can be found in these pages' KATHLEEN MACMAHON 
 
'Exquisite . . . Beautiful' ANNE GRIFFIN, author of WHEN ALL IS SAID 
 
'Ryan gathers together the fragments of broken lives and makes us something new and beautiful from them' RÓNÁN HESSION, author of LEONARD AND HUNGRY PAUL

Strange Flowers

Alison Jameson

On his way back up from the yard Bird had seen something white and round – a girl who had curled herself into a ball. Lifting her was like retrieving a ball of newspaper from out of the grass or an empty crisp bag that someone had flung over the ditch. She seemed to lack the bones and meat and muscle of real people. She felt as if she was filled with feathers. 
 
On the day Midge Connors comes hurtling into Bird Keegan’s life, she flings open his small, quiet world. He and his two sisters, Olive and Margaret, have lived in the same isolated community all their lives, each one more alone than the others can know. 
 
Taking in damaged, sharp-edged Midge, Bird invites the scorn of his neighbours and siblings. And as they slowly mend each other, family bonds – and the tie of the land – begin to weigh down on their tentative relationship. Can it survive the misunderstandings, contempt and violence of others? 
 
A poignant and powerful study of the emotional lives of three siblings and the girl who breaks through their solitude.

This Family of Things

Shane Connaughton

‘The small room was thick with dark blue uniforms. Bull’s wool the men called the material. Silver buttons. Black boots. Caps. Batons holstered in shiny black leather cylinders. Handcuffs hanging from coat hooks, the keys dangling on thick green ribbon. Dusty files on shelves. Shiny whistles on silver chains. Ink. Nibbed pens. Blotting paper. The big map of the district on the wall and beside it a rainfall chart. The men having broken their “at ease” positions, gathered into the middle of the room. His father seemed lost. Like a man with a herd of cattle he could no longer control.’ 
 
An insignificant Irish border village at the tail-end of the 1950s. The Sergeant is nervous. His men are lined up for inspection in the day room of the Garda station. Chief Superintendent ‘The Bully’ Barry is on the warpath and any slip-ups will reflect badly on the Sergeant. But what can he do with the men under his command – all of them forcibly transferred from other more important stations in more important towns? Each garda has his own story, his own problems. How can a man be expected to keep the peace with such a bunch of misfits and ne’er-do-wells? 
 
Observing them with fascination, all but invisible in his own quiet corner, sits the Sergeant’s son. On the cusp of manhood, he is drawn in by these rough and ready men, stuck in this place and time, when all he wants is a chance to leave and start his life anew. Life at home in the station’s married quarters is both comfort and knife-edged, ruled over by his by-the-book father and his gentle, emotional mother. 
 
Taking up where his acclaimed A Border Station left off, Married Quarters is a funny, beautifully observed and deeply personal novel. and marks the return of Shane Connaughton, one of Ireland’s most cherished writers.

Married Quarters

Andrew Hughes

Dublin, 1841. On a cold December morning, a small boy is enticed away from his mother and his throat savagely cut. This could be just one more small, sad death in a city riven by poverty, inequality and political unrest, but this killing causes a public outcry. For it appears the culprit – a feckless student named John Delahunt – is also an informant for the authorities at Dublin Castle. And strangely, this young man seems neither to regret what he did nor fear his punishment. Indeed, as he awaits the hangman in his cell in Kilmainham Gaol, John Delahunt decides to tell his story in this, his final, deeply unsettling statement . . . 
Based on true events that convulsed Victorian Ireland, The Convictions of John Delahunt is the tragic tale of a man who betrays his family, his friends, his society and, ultimately, himself. Set amidst Dublin’s taverns, tenements, courtrooms and alleyways and with its rich, Dickensian cast of characters, this compelling, at times darkly humorous, novel brilliantly evokes a time and a place, and introduces a remarkable new literary voice.

The Convictions of John Delahunt

‘Here is a … writer with immense confidence and vitality. He has an extraordinary feeling for place and landscape.’ – Jennifer Johnston 
‘This is experience finely and skilfully distilled’ – Irish Times 
‘Well-written and engrossing’ – Sunday Independent 
‘These inter-connected stories are faultless in their execution and a delight to read’ – Sunday Press 
‘Written with great sympathy and truth’ – Irish Independent 
‘Beautifully wrought’ – Daily Telegraph 
There is cold comfort to be had when you’re a young boy stuck in the middle of nowhere. The son of the local sergeant in an isolated Garda station on the border between Cavan and Fermanagh, his days are balanced between the brooding, taciturn presence of his father, whom he loves and fears in equal measure, and the reassurance of his quiet, gentle mother. His world is narrowed to bitter country lanes and petty disputes, filled with the characters he encounters – tinkers, publicans, farmers, and the tantalising older sister of his Protestant friend. 
Amidst the drumlins and bogs, the boy’s imagination roams free and unfettered. And at night, lulled by the rhythm of his mother’s fleecy warm breathing, the boy finds solace. But now even that is threatened. Change is coming. It’s time to grow up. 
Written as a collection of linked stories, Shane Connaughton’s debut novel A Border Station was widely praised on its first publication in 1989. It was shortlisted for the GPA Book Award.

A Border Station

Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2018 
Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2018 
 
'An engrossing, unpredictable, beautifully crafted novel' RODDY DOYLE 
 
 
Farouk's country has been torn apart by war. 
 
Lampy's heart has been laid waste by Chloe. 
 
John's past torments him as he nears his end. 
 
The refugee. The dreamer. The penitent. From war-torn Syria to small-town Ireland, three men, scarred by all they have loved and lost, are searching for some version of home. Each is drawn towards a powerful reckoning, one that will bring them together in the most unexpected of ways. 
 
_________ 
 
'A thing of such beauty and compassion, a reminder of what the very finest sentences can do to shatter and then reassemble our hearts' KAMILA SHAMSIE 
 
'I struggle to think of a writer who has been so prolific and consistent in quality as Ryan ... Brutally honest, moving and often hilarious' GUARDIAN 
 
'Donal Ryan has not only bounded over a wall into new territory, but built himself a castle there . . . This is a superb novel.' JOHN BOYNE 
 
'Beautiful and affecting' DAVID NICHOLLS 
 
'Donal Ryan writes characters so well that as a reader you think 'I've met that man', or 'I know that woman.' But as a writer you simply wonder 'how does he do it?' From a Low and Quiet Sea is brutal and beautiful, carefully crafted portraits, deep and real, tied together, fashioned by a true artist. I absolutely loved it.' KIT DE WAAL

From a Low and Quiet Sea

From the Number 1 bestselling author of STRANGE FLOWERS

Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2018

THE STUNNING FIRST NOVEL BY THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF HEART BE AT PEACE AND STRANGE FLOWERS 
<ul><li>Winner of the Guardian First Book Award </li><li>Shortlisted for the Dublin IMPAC Literary Award </li><li>Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize</li><li>Winner of Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards</li><li>Winner of the European Prize for Literature </li><li>Voted Irish Book of the Decade in 2016</li></ul> 
“My father still lives back the road past the weir in the cottage I was reared in. I go there every day to see is he dead and every day he lets me down. He hasn’t yet missed a day of letting me down.” 
 
A No.1 bestselling author, Donal Ryan exploded on to the literary scene with this, his stunning debut, set in the aftermath of Ireland’s financial collapse. When dangerous tensions surface in a small Irish town, the characters face a battle between their public persona and inner desires. Told through a chorus of twenty-one unique voices, each struggling to tell their own kind of truth, a single authentic tale unfolds. 
 
Wry, vulnerable, all-too human, THE SPINNING HEART captures the language and spirit of a small town and its people as they try to make sense of their lives against the wider political backdrop. 
 
Discover HEART BE AT PEACE, winner of the THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR FICTION and IRISH BOOK OF THE YEAR, and WHERE ARE THE KINGS, Donal Ryan's stunning new novel about a young boy coming of age. 
 
**** 
 
'Filled with light and shade, love and tragedy ... if it was a song you could sing it' ANNE ENRIGHT 
 
'Donal Ryan is the real deal ... a brilliantly realised, utterly resonant state-of-the-nation landscape' SUNDAY INDEPENDENT 
 
'I can't imagine a more original, more perceptive or more passionate work than this. Outstanding' JOHN BOYNE 
 
'It's furious, it's moving, it's darkly funny, it punches you right in the gut' NEW YORK TIMES 
 
'Funny, moving and beautifully written' EDNA O'BRIEN 
 
'The unambiguous announcement of a genuine and apparently fully-formed new talent' FINANCIAL TIMES

The Spinning Heart

Francine Toon

WINNER of the McIlvanney Prize 2020 
Shortlisted for Bloody Scotland's Scottish Crime Debut of the Year 2020 
 
 
'It's both eerie and thrilling at once, and had me under its spell until the end' Sophie Mackintosh, author of The Water Cure 
 
They are driving home from the search party when they see her. The trees are coarse and tall in the winter light, standing like men. 
 
Lauren and her father Niall live alone in the Highlands, in a small village surrounded by pine forest. When a woman stumbles out onto the road one Halloween night, Niall drives her back to their house in his pickup. In the morning, she's gone. 
 
In a community where daughters rebel, men quietly rage, and drinking is a means of forgetting, mysteries like these are not out of the ordinary. The trapper found hanging with the dead animals for two weeks. Locked doors and stone circles. The disappearance of Lauren's mother a decade ago. 
 
Lauren looks for answers in her tarot cards, hoping she might one day be able to read her father's turbulent mind. Neighbours know more than they let on, but when local teenager Ann-Marie goes missing it's no longer clear who she can trust. 
 
In the shadow of the Highland forest, Francine Toon captures the wildness of rural childhood and the intensity of small-town claustrophobia. In a place that can feel like the edge of the word, she unites the chill of the modern gothic with the pulse of a thriller. It is the perfect novel for our haunted times. 
 
'Hugely atmospheric, exquisitely written and utterly gripping' Lucy Foley, author of The Hunting Party

Pine

The spine-chilling Sunday Times bestseller

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