WINNER of the An Post Irish Novel of the Year 2020\n'You have to truly love people to write like this' Rachel Joyce\n'One of the greatest novels of this century' Sunday Independent\n'Gorgeously wrought' Guardian\n________________\nIn 1973, twenty-year-old Moll Gladney takes a morning bus from her rural home and disappears.\nBewildered and distraught, Paddy and Kit must confront an unbearable prospect: that they will never see their daughter again.\nFive years later, Moll returns. What - and who - she brings with her will change the course of her family's life forever.\nBeautiful and devastating, this exploration of loss, alienation and the redemptive power of love reaffirms Donal Ryan as one of the most talented and empathetic writers at work today.\n________________\n'Outstanding . . . Tender and beautifully written' Independent\n'All the beauty and sorrow of life can be found in these pages' Kathleen MacMahon\n'Exquisite . . . Beautiful' Anne Griffin, author of When All Is Said\n'Ryan gathers together the fragments of broken lives and makes us something new and beautiful from them' Rónán Hession, author of Leonard and Hungry Paul

Strange Flowers: The Number One Bestseller

Literature & Fiction

Ryan, Donal

Contemporary

Black Swan Ireland

The Shoemaker and his Daughter

'O'Clery takes us into the hidden heart of Soviet Russia... An arresting and evocative story.' Keggie Carew, author of Dadland 'A tour de force ... Love, politics, murder, wars, and the fracturing of ties, personal and ethnic. O'Clery is a gifted writer.' Luke Harding, bestselling author of Collusion The Soviet Union, 1962. Gifted shoemaker Stanislav Suvorov is imprisoned for five years. His crime? Selling his car for a profit. On his release, social shame drives him and his family into voluntary exile in Siberia, 5,000 kilometres from home. In a climate that's unfriendly both geographically and politically, it's their chance to start again. 
The Shoemaker and His Daughter is an epic story spanning the Second World War to the fall of the Soviet Union, taking in eighty years of Soviet and Russian history, from Stalin to Putin. Following the footsteps of a remarkable family Conor O'Clery knows well - he is married to the shoemaker's daughter - it's both a compelling insight into life in a secretive world at a siesmic moment in time and a powerful tale of ordinary lives shaped by extraordinary times.

Biographies & Memoirs

O'Clery, Conor

Historical

An achingly beautiful Irish novel about family, faith, and the pain of an irreconcilable heart. "I eke out my days here with care; spend them carefully, one at a time, like pennies in this one little room where all the straggles and strays of my life are gathered up neat as a ball of wool; the eighty-three years of them drawn taut to a single hard knot that weighs me down like a stone." From her bed in a Dublin nursing home, Harriet Campbell reflects on the time, long ago, when the second greatest joy in her life was her newborn son James; only her God had a greater claim to her love. It is the 1920s in the shadowlands south of the border. Harriet and her husband Thomas are respected members of their strict Presbyterian Congregation; indeed, Thomas has just been made an Elder. But this is a changing Ireland, where the sway of the Roman Catholic Church is at its height, and the community is becoming increasingly isolated. Little does Harriet realize that, as James grows up, she will be forced to choose between faith and family. Written in startlingly beautiful prose, Norma MacMaster’s Silence Under a Stone is an intimate, deeply moving human story, where sometimes the price of an unyielding faith is too great to bear.

Silence Under a Stone

MacMaster, Norma

London, 1996. Robin and Ruth meet in the staff room of an East London school. Robin, desperate for a real connection, instantly falls in love. Ruth, recently bereaved and fragile, is tentative. When Robin introduces Ruth to his childhood friend, Joseph, a tortured and talented artist, their attraction is instant. Powerless, Robin watches on as the girl he loves and his best friend begin a passionate and turbulent affair. Dublin 2017. Robin and Ruth are married and have a son, Sid, who is about to emigrate to Berlin. Theirs is a marriage haunted by the ghost of Joseph and as the distance between them grows, Robin makes a choice that could have potentially devastating consequences. The Weight of Love&nbsp;is a beautiful exploration of how we manage life when the notes and beats of our existence, so carefully arranged, begin to slip off the stave. An intimate and moving account of the intricacies of marriage and the myriad ways in which we can love and be loved. &nbsp;

The Weight of Love

Fannin, Hilary

United States

Exhilarating, brave and full of wonder, Elsewhere is the story of a life lived in search of meaning. It will make you want to rush out to explore the world, to savour every moment and to hold close the people you love. 'Utterly engaging.' - Sunday Times From her first life-changing solo trip to Australia as a young graduate, Rosita Boland was enthralled by travel. In the last thirty years she has visited some of the most remote parts of the globe carrying little more than a battered rucksack and a diary. Documenting nine journeys from nine different moments in her life, Elsewhere reveals how exploring the world - and those we meet along the way - can dramatically shape the course of a person's life. From death-defying bus journeys through Pakistan to witnessing the majestic icescapes of Antarctica to putting herself back together in Bali, Rosita experiences moments of profound joy and endures deep personal loss. In a series of jaw-dropping, illuminating and sometimes heart-breaking essays, Elsewhere is a book that celebrates the life well-travelled in all its messy and wondrous glory.

Elsewhere: One Woman, One Rucksack, One LIfetime of Travel

Boland, Rosita

Arts & Literature