Wishing you could visit the Emerald Isle, but don't have an international flight in your future? Try some armchair travel in the form of these recent novels set in Ireland. Erin go Bragh!
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Close to home
by Michael Magee Sean was supposed to leave for university and not go back to his hardscrabble life in Belfast with his hard-drinking brother, but he returns and eventually loses control, assaulting a stranger at a party and sending his life into chaos. |
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The deadly weed
by Cora Harrison 1920s. Cork, Ireland. Early one morning the Reverend Mother receives news of a deadly fire at the local cigarette factory, a place where she'd been so proud that some of her pupils had been given a steady job. In a city full of poverty, unemployment and political unrest, these ex pupils of hers had surely been blessed with such prospects. Now, though, she is worried . . . What happened at the cigarette factory and why are there rumours circulating that one of her 'girls' was responsible? Inspector Patrick Cashman is under pressure to quickly find the cause of the fire - and identify a suspect - to placate the visiting Lord Mayor and Commissioner and secure his hopes of promotion. Patrick turns to his friend, the journalist and law student Eileen MacSweeney, for help, along with the ever insightful and calm Reverend Mother. From the fog-ridden streets of the slums to the green pastures and prosperity of nearby Youghal, together they begin to unravel a seedy history of greed, ambition and a desire for power. |
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Death in heels
by Kitty Murphy Fi McKinnery is full of nerves as the gorgeous Mae B...takes to the stage for her debut at drag club Trash, but Mae B is dazzling...that is until local queen Eve lampoons her performance and ruins the show. So when Eve turns up dead later that night, face down in the gutter of a rain-soaked Dublin street, the timing seems awfully suspicious...The police are quick to rule Eve's death an accident, but Fi is convinced it was foul play...But when another friend is targeted in a hit-and-run, she's determined to get this twisted killer caught, no matter what the consequences. |
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Death of a heretic
by Peter Tremayne Ireland. AD 672. The abbey of Muman at Imleach Iubhair is being renovated when its guests' hostel burns to the ground. There is one fatality: Bishop Brodulf of Luxovium, a distinguished visitor and cousin to the King of Franks. Sister Fidelma is asked by Abbot Cuâan to investigate the unfortunate incident and soon finds that the bishop had been stabbed to death before the fire had even started. Thrown into a world of treachery and jealousy, where religious beliefs are vehemently disputed, Fidelma and her companions, Eadulf and Enda, face a barrier of deceit. The abbey, a leading ecclesiastical teaching institution as well as a conhospitae, housing both men and women, is divided into factions. Can Abbot Cuâan trust Prioress Suanach, who is in charge of the sisterhood? Can the professors trust each other as well as their students? Moreover, can suspicion be levelled at the builders working on the abbey under their dominant Master Builder, Sâitae? As more deaths follow, Fidelma must use her wit and ingenuity to unravel the complexities of this intricate mystery. |
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Haven : a novel
by Emma Donoghue Two monks leave seventh-century Ireland in a boat searching for an isolated spot to found a new monastery, but instead drift out to sea and wind up on a bare, steep island inhabited by thousands of birds. |
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Juno loves Legs : a novel
by Karl Geary Juno Loves Legs is the story of two teens labeled as delinquents. Juno and "Legs" grow up on the same housing estate in Dublin, where spirited, intelligent Juno is ostracized for her poverty and Legs is persecuted for his sexuality; they find safety only in each other. Set against the backdrop of Dublin in the 1980s, a place of political, social and religious change, the friends yearn for an unbound life and together they begin to fight to take up the space of who they truly are. Told through the eyes of Juno, we see the pair begin to navigate the political and oftentimes confusing adult world with honesty and intuition. A country emerging from a dark Catholicism into the wider world of possibilities. Who is invited into modernity and gentrification and who is left behind?" |
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Kala : a novel
by Colin Walsh Three friends reunite in their Irish seaside hometown 20 years after their friend Kala disappeared and are forced to confront their own complicity in her fate and the town's secrets as new disappearances are reported and human remains are discovered. |
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The lock-up : a novel
by John Banville In 1950s Dublin, renowned pathologist Dr. Quirke and DI John Strafford investigate the murder of a young history scholar with the help of her journalist sister, and as they close in on the killer, their personal lives put the case, and the lives of everyone involved, in danger. |
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The maid of Ballymacool : a novel
by Jennifer Deibel The only home Brianna Kelly has ever known is Ballymacool Boarding School, but when the son of local gentry arrives at the school to deal with his unruly niece, an unexpected discovery uncovers the truth about her past--and the key to her future. |
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Murder at an Irish bakery
by Carlene O'Connor When a reality baking show results in the death of a contestant who is found facedown in her signature pie, Garda Siobhan O'Sullivan, to catch a killer with a sweet tooth, must sift through the clues to discover if this was a deadly rivalry or if other motives were mixed in. |
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None of this serious
by Catherine Prasifka Dublin student life is ending for Sophie and her friends. They've got everything figured out, and Sophie feels left behind as they all start to go their separate ways. She's overshadowed by her best friend Grace. She's been in love with Finn for as long as she's known him. And she's about to meet Rory, who's suddenly available to her online. At a party, what was already unstable completely falls apart and Sophie finds herself obsessively scrolling social media, waiting for something (anything) to happen. None of This Is Serious is about the uncertainty and absurdity of being alive today. It's about balancing the real world with the online, and the vulnerabilities in yourself, your relationships, your body. At its heart, this is a novel about the friendships strong enough to withstand anything. |
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Off the map
by Trish Doller When fate throws together worldwide adventurer Carla Black, who doesn't do love—or stay in one place too long, and modern-day cartographer Eamon Sullivan, they find a simple drive across Ireland becoming complicated by chemistry-filled detours, unexpected feelings and the possibility of something more. |
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The Rachel incident
by Caroline O'Donoghue Roommates and best friends Rachel and James, trying to maintain a bohemian existence while Ireland is in chaos, find their fates intertwined with a married professor, with whom Rachel falls in love, and his glamorous, well-connected bourgeois wife through a series of secrets and compromises. |
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Seven steeples
by Sara Baume In this beautiful and profound meditation on the nature of love and the resilience of nature, a couple move into a remote house in the Irish countryside with their dogs where they, as the seasons pass, come to understand more about the small world around them. |
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Small things like these
by Claire Keegan In a small Irish town in 1985, coal merchant and family man, Bill Furlong, while delivering an order to the local convent, makes a discovery that forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church. |