Ireland Memoir

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.

Sophie: The Final Verdict tells a remarkable story that could not until now be revealed. Senan Molony was the first national crime correspondent at the scene. From his growing unease at his helper Ian Bailey's conduct, to the astonishing moment when Bailey was arrested for a murder the suspect himself had been covering, it is an insider's account of those infamous early days of a doomed investigation, and the astonishing years to follow - as Bailey, a violent misogynist and pathological liar, escaped trial in his adopted country despite compelling evidence.

One of Ireland's best current novelists provides a thumbnail sketch of Ireland's greatest writer. A passionate and sensuous portrait, James Joyce is a return to the land of politics, history, saints, and scholars that shaped the creator of the 20th century's groundbreaking novel, Ulysses.

Angela's Ashes is Frank McCourt's sad, funny, bittersweet memoir of growing up in New York in the late '30s and in Ireland in the '40s. It is a story of extreme hardship and suffering, in Brooklyn tenements and Limerick slums; too many children, too little money, his mother Angela barely coping as his father Malachy's drinking bouts constantly brought the family to the brink of disaster. It is a story of courage and survival against apparently overwhelming odds.

From New York Times reporter and Pulitzer finalist Ali Watkins, this true-crime saga is the long-buried story of how a group of Philadelphia gunrunners armed the IRA at the height of the Troubles. A ragtag band of carpenters, family men and fugitives, the Philadelphia Five, as they came to be known, banded together, bolstering the fight for a united Ireland but fuelling the Troubles at an untold cost.

The drumbeat of horses’ hooves and clatter of chariot wheels echo through the rolling green hills of what will be known much later as the Emerald Isle. The driver is a lone woman whose long hair and homespun cloak whip through the wind behind her. Headstrong, confident, and intelligent, she blazes a trail that will change her nation forevermore, yet not in her own name or for her own sake, but for that of the God who sent her. This is a woman who will love the poor, feed the hungry, house the homeless, teach the ignorant, and defy the odds doing it all. This is Brigid of Kildare.

For Nick and Lesley Albert, swapping the hectic intensity of modern Britain for the peace of a tumble-down farmhouse in rural West Ireland was like a dream come true. But three years later, with the economy crashing and the house refurbishments unfinished, their plan for a tranquil life is falling apart. Are they in danger of replicating the very lifestyle they had hoped to escape, or can they get their lives back on track? Only time will tell.

When her six-year-old daughter found her collapsed on the kitchen floor, Rachel had no idea how much her life was about to change. A brain scan revealed a dark shadowy mass, a huge abnormal growth of tissue that, whilst benign, was still growing and would surely kill her. It was too big to operate on. It needed to be "managed", and Rachel had, at best, two years to live. Refusing to accept the bleak prognosis, Rachel was determined to stay alive.

The Fall of the House of Wilde for the first time places Oscar Wilde as a member of one of the most dazzling Anglo-Irish families of Victorian times and in the broader social, political and religious context. A remarkable and perceptive account, this is a major repositioning of our first modern celebrity, a man whose own fall from grace in a trial as public as his father's marked the end of fin de siècle decadence.

Inspired by a true story. In 1825, in a remote Irish valley lying between the mountains and Flesk River of Killarney, three women are brought together by strange and troubling events. Nora Leahy, a widow, has lost her daughter and her husband in the same year and is now burdened with the care of her grandson, Michael. The boy cannot walk or speak, and Nora has kept him hidden from neighbours, who might see in his deformity evidence of supernatural interference.

From the outside looking in, the young life of Mia Döring seemed unremarkable, as she pursued her studies at a prominent Dublin art college. Unbeknownst to those around her, however, Mia's life was anything but ordinary. At age 16, she had been sexually exploited by an older man, which carved a direct path into the Irish sex trade, where she remained for several years until finally leaving it behind over a decade ago, at age 24. In her literary memoir, Mia excavates her difficult history as she sets about integrating her past with her present-day life.

It's Belfast, 1975. The city lies under the dark cloud of the Troubles, and hatred fills the air like smoke. But Tony Macaulay has just turned 12 and he's got a new job. He's going to be a paperboy. And come rain or shine - or bombs and mortar - he will deliver. Paperboy lives in Upper Shankill, Belfast, in the heart of the conflict between Loyalists and Republicans. Bombings are on the evening news, rubble lies where buildings once stood, and rumours spread like wildfire about the IRA and the UDA.

On 26th May 1986, the body of an undercover British agent was found by the side of a muddy lane, with a rope tied around its wrists and tape over each eye. The brutal killing of Frank Hegarty began a decades-long search for justice. In a compulsive blend of investigative journalism and true crime thriller, Henry Hemming exposes the parallel worlds of the IRA and British intelligence through the lives of those inextricably bound up in both.

English born Joe Riley recounts his extraordinary childhood in a small town on the rugged West coast of Ireland, where he was abandoned by his abusive father at the age of four and raised by a loving older couple and their children. Emotionally unsettled for most of Joe Riley’s adulthood, Joe feels inspired to revisit his childhood and write a memoir.

At twenty-four, Betsy Cornwell runs away to Ireland. Leaving behind a painful past and chasing her lifelong dream of becoming a novelist, she finds a fresh start on the misty shores of the Aran Islands. Amid the beauty of the Irish countryside, her life takes on the glow of a fairy tale when she meets a charming horse trainer and elopes to Gretna Green. Five years later, her happy ending has twisted into a nightmare and Betsy finds herself trapped in an abusive marriage, isolated and afraid with a newborn baby.

There has never been a rugby player quite like Paul O'Connell. His name is synonymous with passion, heart and determination. But he is also the thinking man's rugby player, a legendary student of the game. As the heartbeat of Munster, British and Irish Lions captain in 2009 and captain of the first Ireland team to retain the Six Nations championship, O'Connell became the most beloved and respected of the golden generation of Irish rugby players - and was widely regarded as one of the very best players in the world.

When Richard Hayes, a gifted polymath and cryptographer, was drafted by Irish intelligence services to track the movements of a prolific Nazi spy, Hermann Görtz, it set in motion one of the most remarkable episodes in Irish history. What followed was a high-stakes game of cat and mouse that would wind its way through the capital and its suburbs, reverberate through the corridors of power, test the sympathies of those in high society and even expand to jeopardise the Allied war effort.

Jonathan Swift's world-famous books - from Gulliver's Travels to A Modest Proposal - are unparalleled in their piercing critique of modern society. Half-orphaned, a Dubliner by birth, but a man who would always insist he was English, Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was a figure of great contradictions.

Marie Cassidy was Ireland's state pathologist from 2004 until 2018. During that time, she was involved in many high-profile cases, including the Stardust exhumation and the deaths of Siobhan Kearney, Rachel O'Reilly, Robert Holohan and Tom O'Gorman. In Beyond the Tape, she invites us into the world of forensic pathology and shares her remarkable personal journey, from working-class Glasgow to becoming Ireland's head pathologist.

We think we know Winston Churchill: the bulldog grimace, the ever-present cigar, the wit and wisdom that led Great Britain through the Second World War. Yet away from the House of Commons and the Cabinet War Rooms, Churchill was a loving family man who doted on his children, none more so than Randolph, his only boy and Winston's anointed heir to the Churchill legacy.