Read Ireland Book News - Issue 32
<-- [Back To Main Menu] 1. A Taste of Freedom by Liz Ryan (paperback; 9.99 IRP / 15.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
Mary Jameson is the one who suggests spending a month in France picking grapes: her first and only adventure before marrying Cathal Sullivan back in Dublin. The only person who will come with her is Keeley Butler, the hairdressing apprentice from Pearse Gardens, who hardly knows where she's going or why.
But in Aix, both girls find their true home. For Mary the lure is the glorious, exotic French food: in the colourful markets, at the first-class restaurant where the chef becomes her enthusiastic mentor. For Keeley, staying on in France is more a way to avoid returning to her hopeless family Ð until she starts to speak French, and meets irresistible Vincent. And discovers that in France, they think she's an intelligent girl with charm, not just another no-hope scrubber from the wrong end of town.
Then Mary finds herself in a terrifying situation. Suddenly, marriage to Cathal Sullivan seems to be the only option. Keeley is left on her own in a strange country, while Mary finds her new life altogether different from what she hoped it would be. Many years -Ðand tragedies Ð will pass before Mary and Keeley get their second chance for freedom.
2. Enchanted Journeys: Fifty Years of Irish Writing for Children edited by Robert Dunbar (hardback; 8.99 IRP / 13.50 USD) [Add To Basket]
Chosen from Irish children's literature of the past fifty years, this book is an anthology of seventeen excerpts. The reader travels with the stories' young heroes and heroines and encounter many adventures of danger, intrigue and mystery. The reader is brought to a wonderful variety of places and meets an amazing ragne of characters. Above all, the reader savours the enchantment which great writers bring to their stories; we are thrilled by the magic they produce with words. The anthology is so arranged as to take the reader from very recent writing to stories which first appeared in the 1940s and 1950s. It is itself a journey through time, one which brings us into contact with the imaginations which have given us some of our best children's fiction.
Authors include: Marita Conlon-McKenna, Frank Murphy, Maeve Friel, Tom McCaughren, Elizabeth O'hara, Sam McBratney, Siobhan Parkinson, Matthew Sweeney, Martin Waddell, John Quinn, Eugene McCabe, Janet McNeill, Meta Mayne Reid, Walter Macken, Patricia Lynch, Eilis Dillon and Conor O'Brien.
3. The Buildings of Ireland by Sean Rothery (paperback; 12.00 IRP/ 18.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
The history of building in Ireland spans more than 5000 years. The evidence of these years of building persists throughout the intricate and richly textured landscape of the island. In the course of an hour's drive or, in some areas, a walk, strange stone monuments from neolithic times, remnants of Early Christian settlements and the romantic ruins of Irish towns and countryside are often punctuated by a stone castle or the pointed spires of various churches. On headlands and lonely offshore islands we find the white towers of old lighthouses, stone fortifications, signal-stations of Napoleonic times, or even silent deserted villages. The long history of the island is legible in the architecture of the past.
Illustrated by over 200 pages of delicately detailed ink drawings by the author, this is a book for the explorer and traveller, encompassing the larger towns and hidden laneways alike. The author begins his story of Irish building with the stone cells of Early Christian times and concludes with the architecture of the 20th century. Styles are described and illustrated to help the interested observer identify building types, while futher examples are listed and located to tempt the curious.
This book is no mere rehearsal of dates and historical facts, but is is itself a cultural monumnet, an enduring stimulus to the awareness of environment and the fascinating legacy of a built heritage.
4. History of Gaelic Games by Jane Prior (hardback; 7.99 IRP / 12.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
The Gaelic games of hurling, Gaelic football, camogie and handball have a long history, but their modern development begins with the foundation of the Gaelic Athletic Association in 1884. Today, sponsorship and television have brought these sports to millions in Ireland and beyond. This informaiton-packed little book introduces the games, their history and place in Irish life. Its anecdotes and illustrations bring the unique atmosphere of Gaelic sports to life Ð a perfect gift for anyone who plays, follows or watches the games.
5. A History of Northern Ireland, 1920-1996 by Thomas Hennessey (paperback; 12.99 IRP / 19.50 USD) [Add To Basket]
Founded upon the partition of Ireland in 1920, Northern Ireland experienced fifty years of nervous peace under the rule of a devolved government in Belfast. This government was representative only of the majoriry Protestant unionist community while the Catholic minority sought union with the rest of the island. The Protestant fortress held firm until the emergence of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Movement in the late 1960s, following which the province subsided into the civil unrest widely known as 'the Troubles.'
Hennessey's even-handed history attempts to understand the reasons for the long history of communal division, mutual suspicion, Catholic alienation, and Protestant siege mentality. It traces the sequence of events, decade by decade, in the history of the troubled province.
The great value of this book, however, is in providing an overview of events since the outbreak of the Troubles up to and including the present uncertain peace process. It is the first comprehensive history of Northern Ireland for over 15 years and brings a contemporary perspective to historical events, taking account of the scholarship which has developed in Northern Ireland studies over the last twenty years.
6. Waking: An Irish Protestant Upbringing by Hugh Maxton (paperback; 8.90 IRP / 13.50 USD) [Add To Basket]
Brought up in the city of Dublin and in rural County Wicklow, the author records in his forst book of memoirs a largely neglected dimension of southern Irish society Ð that of the non-Anglo-Irish and non-Catholic population, the 'petty people' of hill farms and the Protestant and Jewish inhabitants of suburban terraces. His view of the landscape is unsentimental, his account of the 1950s and early 60s at once grimly faithful and humourously responsive to the period. Nor is Ulster omitted from the picture; Bangor seaside attractions and the more sinister bumps in the night in Monaghan and Fermanagh are also recorded. Confusions of sex and theology, the unfair seedtime of his secondary education, counterpoint evocations of hayfields and sheepwalks. The book, however, revolves around the death of this father in 1961, an event lovingly commemorated in a well-athologised poem of the same title. Concluding with some terse political observations on the latterday scene, it is an autobiography at once elegiac and comic, in the Dublin tradition of Sean O'Casey.
7. Michael Collins and the Brotherhood by Vincent MacDowell (paperback; 9.99 IRP / 15.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
This book is the fascinating story of a secret revolutionary society, The Irish Republican Brotherhood, which succeeded after 65 years in wresting most of Ireland from the British Empire. This is also the story of the main leader in the revolution Ð Michael Collins. The author unfolds startling new revelations on the life and death of Michael Collins. How and why ministers of his own Free State Government were induced to collaborate with British intellignece and facilitate his murder. And the question of why Michael Collins, so suddenly, relented in signing the Treaty. Why did Emmet Dalton resign and leave the country? Any why was there no inquest, no miliatry inquiry into the death of the Commander-in-Chief?
The author puts the events of 1922 clearly before the reader and casts new light on the goings on prior to the signing of The Treaty, against all instructions of the Brotherhood. Common knowledge number Moya Llewellyn Davies and Lady Hazel Lavery as Collins's lovers; less well-known is that he had two children by Moya Llewellyn Davis. This book tells the reader how Collins's son Richard was to be the influence that made Collins make the biggest decision of his life.
Special Offer:
Mirror, Mirror by Patricia Scanlan (hardback; Original Price: 16.99 IRP / Our Price: 12.99 IRP Ð 19.50 USD) [Add To Basket]
A new contemporary romantic novel from the bestselling author: When Chris Wallace looks in the mirror, he sees a deep and complex man. He is, in fact, selfish, shallow and very, very devious. A master of deceit. Successful, charismatic and sexy, women love him.
Suzy Walace, a woman scorned, wreaks havoc and revenge on her husband's mistress, once her best friend, now her sworn enemy. She will never forgive and never forget.
Alexandra Johnston, ambitious, talented and seductive, uses every trick she can to get what she wants - and then finds out that having is not quite the same thing as wanting.
Ellen Munroe, the mother of Chris's child, the woman he has used and abused again and again, finally has a chance of happiness with an honest, decent, steadfast man - until Chris lies his way into her heart once more.
Can she finally see that he is a callous, persuasive manupulator without conscience, who uses lies, deceptions and false promiese to destroy the lives of the women who live him? Will she have the strenght to walk away?
This novel is the story of women who have had enough. A tale of delicious revenge and glorious vindictiveness, as Chris Wallace finally tastes the bitter fruits of his deceits and gets what he deserves.
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