Northern Ireland

A City Imagined is a paean to the city of Belfast and its writers. Written in his highly regarded wry and lyrical style, Dawe’s memoir sketches the outlines of his life as he starts to understand the city in which he was born, before embracing some of the local writers whose early work had such an influential part in nudging him in the direction of writing – poets, in the main, whose first books were read with the enthusiasm of a young man beguiled by the language and music of poetry. Building on the critical acclaim of In Another World: Van Morrison & Belfast and Looking Through You ...

IAN WILSON IS BACK Ian Wilson believed he had left the PSNI behind, but destiny had different plans for him. Persuaded to return, he finds himself at the helm of a murder squad burdened with added responsibilities. The enigmatic disappearance of gang boss Sammy Rice still haunts the city, and the integration of new team members adds an extra layer of complexity to his already challenging role. Then, a revelation emerges regarding the hidden burial site of one of the tragic 'disappeared.' The exhumation of the body and the ensuing investigation threaten to unveil one of Ulster's most ...

The Sound of the Shuttle is an eloquent and compelling selection of essays written over four decades by Belfast-born poet Gerald Dawe, exploring the difficult and at times neglected territory of cultural belonging and northern Protestantism. The title, taken from a letter of John Keats during a journey through the north-east in 1818, evokes the lives, now erased from history, of the thousands of workers in the linen industry, tobacco factories and shipyards of Belfast. Sketching in literary, social and political contexts to widen the frame of reference, Dawe offers fascinating insights into...

Ties That Bind? is an engrossing and timely study of the historical, cultural and political relationship between Scotland and Northern Ireland at a seminal moment in the constitutional history of both places. It has seldom been acknowledged, and rarely explored in any real depth, but this important book conclusively demonstrates just how deeply entwined the two countries are. The book explores how Scottish–Ulster ties historically acted as a bridge between Britain and Ireland and should be central to contemporary debates regarding Britishness, sectarianism and devolution. It reveals the ...

"Continued brilliance. The characters will make you laugh and cry and fume while you're reading. Comic Irish writing at its best." Colin Quinn Desperate mother of seven, Fionnuala Flood, thinks her new get-rich-quick scheme will pay the bills, but instead it threatens to tear her family apart. The case of canned vegetables she bought contains not spuds but explosives, and a defunct IRA branch will stop at nothing to get them back. Meanwhile, her two oldest sons are in prison, her husband's hands are fondling more than frozen fish at work, and her lesbian daughter has published a tell-all ...

Despite outliving him by 68 years, Mary Ann McCracken’s legacy is overshadowed by that of her more famous brother, executed United Irishman Henry Joy McCracken. She was, however, an abolitionist, a social reformer and an activist who fought for the rights of women and Belfast’s poor throughout a long life that encompassed the most turbulent years of Irish history. As treasurer, secretary and chair of the Ladies Committee, she helped girls from the Poor House learn crafts that would provide them with livelihoods. Dedicated to championing Belfast’s poor, she was President of the Ladies ...

Now includes the just-released short story A Backstitch in Spacetime! Derry girls, women, wee boys, hard men, they're all here in the these four stand alone short works from the Derry Women Series. Previously released as a short story (Table For Nine At Kebablicious), a novelette (The Way to A Man's Heart or Strange Things on Plates) and a novella (A Very Fionnuala Christmas) and A Backstitch in Spacetime, they are all together in one anthology. Laugh, wince, fume and cry at the antics of the impoverished Flood family with the mother, Fionnuala, who will stoop to the lowest depths to get ...

Can this deeply divided island ever be united? Malachi O’Doherty’s ground-breaking new book explores this salient question and many more. Considering centuries of history alongside contemporary issues, he looks for answers by talking to those who know the island best: those who live there. O’Doherty speaks to politicians, journalists, writers, lawyers, sportspeople and residents of both the North and the Republic, to produce the most comprehensive picture yet of a divided nation and its uncertain future. This book asks the big political questions about the prospects of reconciliation ...

Eines Nachts im Dezember 1972 wird Jean McConville aus ihrem Haus in Belfast entführt. Sie wird nie wieder lebend gesehen. Ausgehend von diesem Moment entfaltet Patrick Radden Keefe eine gewaltige Erzählung über die blutige Vergangenheit des Nordirlandkonflikts.

Growing up in the Shankill area of Belfast and living through the sectarian turmoil of the late 1960s, Billy Hutchinson joined the UVF in the early 1970s. In 1975, at the age of just 19, he was sentenced to life in prison, and it was in the cages of Long Kesh that he first came under the influence of loyalist icon Gusty Spence. Hutchinson spent much of the 1980s as overall Commanding Officer of UVF/Red Hand Commando prisoners, and upon his release in 1990, he became involved with the recently established Progressive Unionist Party. As an authentic link between the UVF and the PUP, he was at...

It's danger on the high seas for the Barnetts, but will it come from the authorities, Mother Nature or family Flood? In Wisconsin six years ago, Ursula Barnett accidentally committed a shocking crime. The statute of limitations is inching closer, and the police are circling in. Panicked, Ursula books herself and her American family passage on a budget centennial Titanic cruise, hoping to ride out the investigation and embark a woman redeemed. But lurking amongst the leaky walls of the Queen of Crabs is a danger worse than disgruntled, poorly-paid staff, bad food and terrifying onshore ...

Colin Bateman grew up in the pleasant seaside town of Bangor in Northern Ireland. Ten miles away, the IRA, the UDA and the UVF were blowing Belfast apart, but he was more concerned with making his first million through the GBA – the Gerbil Breeding Association (sadly short-lived when his gerbils turned out to be cannibals). Inspired by All the President’s Men and The Odessa File to become a crusading journalist, Bateman joined the local paper when he was a seventeen-year-old punk rocker, where instead of bringing down Presidents and finding Nazis, he found himself being hunted down by ...

With travel tips and culture in our guidebooks written by a local, it is never too late to visit Northern Ireland. Greater Than a Tourist - Northern Ireland by author Naomi Reid offers the inside scoop on Northern Ireland for tourists by a local. Most travel books tell you how to travel like a tourist. Although there is nothing wrong with that, as part of the Greater Than a Tourist series, this book will give you candid travel tips from someone who has lived at your next travel destination.

Daughter of Laharna provides a glimpse of family life in Laharna Hotel, Larne, which was Patricia’s home for 24 years, and also details its history from 1833 to becoming the largest tour hotel in Ireland. Her father, George A. Beattie, was the resident manager of Laharna Hotel, Larne, from 1935, and in the Second World War, as part of essential services, looked after troop-feeding at Larne Harbour and later the American Officers' Club in the former Midland Hotel, Belfast.

A terminal illness wasn't quick enough. It was one drink too many for 72-year-old Evelyn Guilfoyle, found poisoned the morning after a raucous party. But the woman would have been dead in a few months anyway. Why the hurry...? Family, friends and neighbors had crammed into the tiny back garden pub that night. Too many suspects, one clever killer. Could this be a case DI Liam McLaughlin and his ragtag team from the Major Investigation Team will never solve? The second in the NUMBER ONE bestselling Derry Murder Mysteries, Death in Small Measures is another gripping, gritty mystery thriller ...

In UDR: Declassified, Micheál Smith reveals what the British establishment, the British government and its armed forces knew and had to say about the controversial regiment in recently declassified files. From its formation in 1970 as a locally raised militia, the Ulster Defence Regiment developed into the largest regiment in the British army. For unionists, service in the UDR was a noble act and often a family tradition; for nationalists, an encounter with the UDR was frequently hostile, often brutal, and sometimes fatal. To the British army, they were ‘a dangerous species of ally’, a...

IT'S NEVER THE CRIME, IT'S THE COVER UP In a small church just outside Belfast, a priest is brutally stabbed and set on fire, sending shockwaves through the community. DCI Ian Wilson and his colleagues from the Belfast Murder Squad suspect a sectarian motive behind this gruesome murder. As Wilson delves into the investigation, he finds himself ensnared in a web of lies and deceit. The Catholic Church and his own superiors seem determined to obstruct his progress at every turn. But Wilson's troubles don't end there. An internal inquiry jeopardizes his career as a PSNI officer, adding to his ...

Three ways to die, one baffling case. DI Liam McLaughlin and DS Nancy D'Arcy are seasoned pros, but even their skills are stretched when a battered body turns up in an alley. Declan Hoagett was a harmless indigent who spent his days hanging out on the street corner. He rarely asked for handouts but did occasionally burst into song. Nobody would kill him for that, would they? More bewildering, why does he seem to have been killed three different ways? Are they looking for three perps? It's up to McLaughlin, D'Arcy and those from Derry's Major Investigation Team to solve their most heartless ...

Belfast Charitable Society was established in 1752 with the purpose of raising funds to build a poorhouse and hospital for the poor of Belfast; twenty years later, the foundation stone of the Poorhouse was laid. From here the Society would go on to assume increasing responsibility for a range of matters relating to health, welfare and public order, and its members would play a key part in the civic life of Belfast. It continues to provide vital social services to this day and its Poorhouse, now Clifton House, is still one of the finest buildings in the city. During the century following the...

"Best Served Frozen is a chick flick with the meddlesome mothers-in-law played not by Goldie Hawn and Diane Keaton but more like...if the Kray Brothers were women."--Colin Quinn Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but hardened mother of seven Fionnuala Flood plans on serving hers up frozen. Or so she thinks. The bells are ringing out in Derry, Northern Ireland, as the dirt-poor Floods and the rich and entitled Riddells prepare for the pairing in matrimony of their families and a bridging of the gap between the two sniping communities. But some are not best pleased, and it might be more ...