Read Ireland Book News - Issue 18
<-- [Back To Main Menu] 1. Royal Irish Constabulary: A Short History and Genealogical Guide by Jim Herlihy (paperback; 14.95 Irish pounds / 22.50 US Dollars approximately) [Add To Basket]
In the period 1816 to 1922 some 85,000 men served in the RIC and its predecessor force. Information on all these policemen is available, constituting a quarry for their hundreds of thousands of descendants in Ireland, USA and elsewhere.
This book consists of introductory chapters about the history of policing in Ireland (to illustrate the type of men in the Force, their background and lifestyle, etc.) followed by a core chapter on "Tracing Your ancestors in the RIC". This is followed by useful appendices which point the way to the RIC lists as a genealogical source; these appendices include a select list giving names of men who were casualties in 1916-22, men who volunteered for and joined the British Army in WW1, and men who were awarded the Constabulary Medal, the King's Police Medal, as well as those who joined the Garda Siochana after they were disbanded from the RIC.
2. The Novel and the Nation: Studies in the New Irish Fiction by Gerry Smyth (pb; 13.20 IRP / 19.80 USD) [Add To Basket]
Focusing on exciting new Irish writing, this lively book looks at the new novelists and themes emerging in the genre. Featured authors include Roddy Doyle, Glenn Patterson, Emma Donoghue, Kate O'Riordan, Dermot Bolger and Patrick McCabe, and highlights include a previously unpublished interview with Roddy Doyle.
The author looks at the forms and theories that comprise the traditional Irish novel and explores how modern writers challenge established notions of Irish fiction. He considers the relevance of post-colonial theory to Irish literature, and the links between literature and wider cultural and political developments.
3. The Detainees by Sean Hughes (hb; 14.50 IRP / 21.75 USD) [Add To Basket]
This is a powerful, moving, blackly comic psychological thriller that will propel its author into the front rank of contemporary Irish fiction writers.
John Palmer doesn't venture far from the narrow-minded small town near Dublin where he was raised. And it isn't just a morbid fear of flying that's causing the cracks in his psyche to show. Although he's set up a successful antiques business, deposited a healthy stash, and lives in a big house in the country, he's close to breakdown. Like the drug-ridden, crime-infested streets of Dublin, his mind is a punch-bag of anxiety and frustration.
So far, so normal - until John's schooldays tormentor Alan 'Redser' Bulger breezes unbidden back into his life. Returning in a hurry from a sojourn in the United States, he is brimming with loud enthusiasm. And ready, after a pint or ten, to lay waste to John Palmer's past as well as the entire Dublin protection racket mafia.
But only when Red tries to rekindle a childhood relationship with John's wife Michelle does the troubled worm start to turn. Not with violence, because that is never John's way. But with something more dangerous, more torturing - and somehow more exquisitely right.
For the detainees and everyone interned with them, John's revenge will be meticulous, comprehensive and beautifully planned: a programme of destruction that the victim will not foresee - and no one will be able to forget ...
4. Collins Pocket Irish Dictionary (flexicover; 8.80 IRP / 13.50 USD) [Add To Basket]
The most up-to-date and easy-to-use Irish dictionary available. It contains clear layout for maximum ease of use; keyword features; extra help with translating the most essential vocabulary; detailed guide to Irish pronunciation; comprehensive grammar tables; instantly accessible supplements on numbers, time and date and Irish place names; over 50,000 references and 65,000 translations.
5. Yeats Anthology (pb, 3.75 IRP / 5.60 USD) [Add To Basket]
A pocket-sized selection from the poems, plays and prose of Ireland's greatest poet. With an introduction to A. Norman Jeffares. Includes an index of first lines of poems and a chronology of Yeats' life and works.
6. Wilde Anthology (pb; 3.75 IRP / 5.60 USD) [Add To Basket]
A pocket-sized anthology of the wit and wisdom of Oscar Wilde drawn from his plays, stories, poems, essays and letters. Selected and introduced by Merlin Holland, Wilde's grandson. Includes a chronological table of Wilde's life and works.
7. Scalpel by Paul Carson (hb; 10.80 IRP / 16.25 USD) [Add To Basket]
A riveting thriller in which a killer is stalking the corridors of Dublin's Central Maternity Hospital. A young laboratory assistant is found brutally murdered at her bench. The only clue is a blood-stained scalpel. The Gardai investigation, led by Detective Sergeant Kate Hamilton, is blocked by a wall of silence from hospital staff, desperate to protect their reputations. Hamilton suspects the murderer is among them. As she closes in on the killer, she little realises that the hunter has become the hunted. In the same week, the newborn baby of one of Ireland's top industrialists is kidnapped, a baby born at the Central Maternity Hospital only days before. This book is every patient's nightmare come true!
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