Ireland Memoir

Northern Ireland, 1975. Violence has erupted on the streets of Belfast. After years as a guerilla army, the IRA is clashing with Loyalist gangs and heavily armed British soldiers. But the Troubles have spilled beyond the island: An ocean away, in the heart of Philadelphia’s Irish enclave, a teenage girl finds a letter in her mailbox. Inside is a bullet, and the message is clear: The next one is for you or your family. As reporter Ali Watkins reveals, the conflict in Northern Ireland might have gone very differently had it not been for a small ragtag band of gunrunners in the United States.

For decades there has been argument in the media and amongst politicians about the possible existence and extent of a shoot-to-kill policy in Northern Ireland. MRF Shadow Troop confirms there was such an agenda in the early, chaotic days of British military intervention across the Irish Sea. But amongst the mountain of speculation there is little of any accuracy or authority relating to this period.

Writing with an exuberant love of language and detail, Anjelica Huston shares her enchanted childhood in Ireland, her teen years in London, and her coming of age as a model and nascent actress in New York.

'Why am I like this?' is the kind of question you might ask yourself after crying on the phone to your mother from Dollywood because you think you're going to jail for the rest of your life. Or after starting a rumour about the Luas because you were bored that resulted in being personally listed on the Luas Wikipedia page under the heading 'Incidents and criticism'. (You may say to yourself, these are things unlikely to happen to anyone.

From her earliest days as a junior doctor to becoming one of Ireland's leading specialists, she shares extraordinary stories of the children she's treated, the families who've loved them, and the moments when life hung by a thread. It is about how the healing begins with a doctor bearing witness and being present. It is about what it means to offer hope when certainty is gone.

Bartley Gorman was the greatest bareknuckle fighter of modern times. He reigned as King of the Gypsies for 20 years, beating all comers in illegal contests at fairs and racetracks, down mineshafts and in quarries, on campsites and car parks. He fought for honour and pride and became a legend among the travelling community.

A bomb planted by the Irish Republican Army exploded at 2:54 a.m. on October 12, 1984. It was the last day of the Conservative Party Conference at the Grand Hotel in the coastal town of Brighton, England. Rooms were obliterated, dozens of people wounded, five killed. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was in her suite when the explosion occurred; had she been just a few feet in another direction, flying tiles and masonry would have sliced her to ribbons. As it was, she survived—and history changed.

The Irish-American story, with all its twists and triumphs, is told through the improbable life of one man. A dashing young orator during the Great Famine of the 1840s, in which a million of his Irish countrymen died, Thomas Francis Meagher led a failed uprising against British rule, for which he was banished to a Tasmanian prison colony. He escaped and six months later was heralded in the streets of New York - the revolutionary hero, back from the dead, at the dawn of the great Irish immigration to America.

At age sixteen Sara discovers she is pregnant, coming from a strict Catholic family, she is forced to enter a Magdalene asylum in Dublin. Sara's life changes forever, treated as slave, tortured by the nun's, Sara desperately tries to escape with horrifying results. Will Sara be known forever as the lost Magdalene girl?Set in the 1950's, this story is based on true events, were thousands of young women in Ireland, were confined to the Magdalene asylums, as a punishment for having children outside of wedlock. This story is part of the Amazon Magdalene series books, and is a prequel to the ...

"I learned about conflict from my parents." So begins Christina McKenna's haunting memoir of her lonely early life. Recounting scenes from her childhood in Ulster, she paints a memorable and poignant picture of violence and oppression with her uncaring father and protective mother, whose retaliation to her husband's penny-pinching came in the form of a secret yellow dress. Her formative years and her foray into the world, which begin with the daily trudge to and from school, are peopled by a troupe of bizarre and unforgettable characters dancing in and out of her life, filling her with awe ...

Catherine Corless could not have known where her interest in local history would lead her as she began researching the Tuam Mother and Baby Home in Galway in 2010. Uncovering no less than 796 missing burial records of children born there, the stark truth of their place of rest became clear: a disused sewage tank on the old home site, where two boys had once stumbled upon bones.

Peg Holland became pregnant as a teenager in a conservative village in 1950s Ireland. She knew her life would never be the same again. She was sent away in shame only to find courage and wisdom deep within her soul. After her baby, Mary, is born, Peg and Mary are heckled and ridiculed by townspeople for nine months until Peg decides she must give Mary up for adoption so she can have a better life. This decision haunts Peg the rest of her life. Having nothing left to keep her in Ireland, Peg leaves home to work in America. Mick O'Hagan is swept away by Peg and wants to marry her. She refuses...

Let This Be Our Secret is a remarkable true crime story set on Ireland's north coast where the bodies of a couple were found in a car filled with carbon monoxide fumes - the apparent victims of a suicide pact....

After nearly three years living in Ireland, changes in Ireland's immigration policy forced Jane (and many other Americans) to return to the USA, not wealthy enough to be welcome as anything other than a tourist in "The Land of 100,000 Welcomes." Overcome by loss even before leaving the place she called home, she begins the difficult journey away from Ireland. Even back in America, Ireland's pull is strong. Filled with homesickness and haunted by memories of the life she loved in County Kerry, she struggles to detach and be an American in America again. Spend time with Jane in her last days ...

A shocking true story of murder, extreme politics and the deep scars left by the Troubles in Ireland of the 1970s and the human consequences. A taut tale of murder, extreme politics, institutionalised violence and the deep scars left by such turmoil. In this powerful, scrupulously reported book, Patrick Radden Keefe offers not just a forensic account of a brutal crime but a vivid portrait of the world in which it happened. The tragedy of an entire country is captured in the spellbinding narrative of a handful of characters, presented in lyrical and unforgettable detail.

The search for justice for this one man's death—his body found in broad daylight, with tape over his eyes, an undisguised hit—would deliver more than the truth. It exposed his status as an informant and led to protests, campaigns, far-reaching changes to British law, a historic ruling from a senior judicial body, a ground-breaking police investigation, and bitter condemnation from a US Congressional commission.

Ireland's patron saint has long been shrouded in legend: he drove the snakes out of Ireland; he triumphed over Druids and their super-natural powers; he used a shamrock to explain the Christian mystery of the Trinity. But his true story is more fascinating than the myths.

Full Tilt is the inspiring true story of Dervla Murphy's 1963 journey from Ireland to India on an Armstrong Cadet bicycle, and the trials, landscapes, and cultures she encountered along the way. The route takes her through the valleys and snowy mountain passes of Europe and India to the scorching deserts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the metal of her bicycle, Rozinante (named after Don Quixote's steed), becomes too hot to touch.

In 1978, the bloody conflict in Northern Ireland, known as The Troubles, had reached a boiling point. Hundreds of members of the Irish Republican Army, determined to drive the hated British out of the province—killing soldiers and police, detonating bombs, while arming themselves with firearms and explosives—had been arrested and incarcerated in the notorious British prison known as the Maze.

The child of an Irish man and an Irish American woman who split up before he was born, Michael Brendan Dougherty grew up with an acute sense of absence. He was raised in New Jersey by his hardworking single mother, who gave him a passion for Ireland, the land of her roots and the home of Michael's father. She put him to bed using little phrases in the Irish language, sang traditional songs, and filled their home with a romantic vision of a homeland over the horizon.