Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
Have you enjoyed the day of celebrating the Irish heritage and culture? I am going to make your St. Paddy’s day even better by listing the new and upcoming releases from Irish authors that you will want on your radar. With these books, you’ll discover why most people love the writing and creativity that comes from the Emerald Isle:
New Releases
- Three Little Birds by Sam Blake
- Breakdown by Cathy Sweeney
- Where They Lie by Claire Coughlan
- Sisterhood by Cathy Kelly
- The Traitor In The Game by Triona Camplbell
- Whatever Happened to Birdy Troy by Rachael English
- The Hunter by Tana French
- What Happened to Nina? by Dervla McTiernan
Where the Heart Should Be by Sarah Crossan
Ireland, 1846 Nell is working as a scullery maid in the kitchen of the Big House. Once she loved school and books and dreaming. But there’s not much choice of work when the land grows food that rots in the earth. Now she is scrubbing, peeling, washing, sweeping for Sir Philip Wicken, the man who owns her home, her family’s land, their crops, everything.
His dogs are always well fed, even as famine sets in. Upstairs in the Big House, where Nell is forbidden to enter, is Johnny Browning, newly arrived from England: the young nephew who will one day inherit it all. And as hunger and disease run rampant all around them, a spark of life and hope catches light when Nell and Johnny find each other.
This is a love story, and the story of a people being torn apart. This is a powerful and unforgettable novel from the phenomenally talented Sarah Crossan. (Credit: Bloomsbury Publishing)
Wild House by Colin Barrett
With his acclaimed and award-winning collections Young Skins and Homesickness Colin Barrett cemented his reputation as one of contemporary Irish literature’s most daring stylists. Praised by the Oprah Daily as “a doyen of the sentence,” and by the Los Angeles Times as a writer of “unique genius,” Barrett now expands his canvas with a debut novel that contains as much grit, plot, and linguistic energy as any of his celebrated short stories.
As Ballina prepares for its biggest weekend of the year, introspective loner Dev answers his door on Friday night to find Doll English– younger brother of small-time local dealer Cillian English–bruised and in the clutches of Gabe and Sketch Ferdia, County Mayo’s fraternal enforcers and Dev’s cousins. Dev’s quiet homelife is upturned as he is quickly and unwillingly drawn headlong into the Ferdias’ frenetic revenge plot against Cillian. Meanwhile, Doll’s girlfriend, seventeen-year-old Nicky, reeling from a fractious Friday and plagued by ghosts and tragedy of her own, sets out on a feverish mission to save Doll, even as she questions her future in Ballina. (Credit: Grove Press)
Upcoming Books
In Her Place by Edel Coffey
Expected Publication Date: March 21
Who is the other woman? That’s for you to decide.
Ann devoted years to her mother’s care – and now she’s gone, Ann feels lost.
Justin is also grieving, but his wife is still alive. Deborah is in a coma and she doesn’t have long left.
When the two meet, they are instantly drawn to one another and, before long, they’ve fallen deeply in love.
Ann quickly moves in with Justin and his little girl, making them the perfect family. But just as Ann settles into her new life, Justin’s is turned upside down. Unexpectedly, his wife has survived. Deborah is coming home.
Neither knows what to do. But one thing is certain: Ann has earned the life Deborah left behind, and she plans to keep it . . .(Credit: Little, Brown Book Group)
Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon
Expected Publication Date: March 26
On the island of Sicily amid the Peloponnesian War, the Syracusans have figured out what to do with the surviving Athenians who had the gall to invade their city: they’ve herded the sorry prisoners of war into a rock quarry and left them to rot. Looking for a way to pass the time, Lampo and Gelon, two unemployed potters with a soft spot for poetry and drink, head down into the quarry to feed the Athenians if, and only if, they can manage a few choice lines from their great playwright Euripides. Before long, the two mates hatch a plan to direct a full-blown production of Medea. After all, you can hate the people but love their art. But as opening night approaches, what started as a lark quickly sets in motion a series of extraordinary events, and our wayward heroes begin to realize that staging a play can be as dangerous as fighting a war, with all sorts of risks to life, limb, and friendship.
Told in a contemporary Irish voice and as riotously funny as it is deeply moving, Glorious Exploits is an unforgettable ode to the power of art in a time of war, brotherhood in a time of enmity, and human will throughout the ages. (Credit: Henry Holt & Company)
The Lighthouse Secret by Carmel Harrington
Expected Publication Date: March 28
Family secrets never stay buried…
1951, Ireland
On the windswept Cork coast, the lighthouse-keepers’ wives wait, watching the sea. Their husbands are coming home. But one secret can never be revealed.
2023, Maine
Decades later, Mollie Kenefick receives an anonymous note: Family secrets never stay buried. The only person she can ask is her grandmother – however, Beth made a vow that she swore never to break.
But someone knows what happened that summer in 1951, and it seems they’re not happy keeping silent . . .(Credit: HarperCollins)
Hagstone by Sinéad Gleeson
Expected Publication Date: April 11
The sea is steady for now. The land readies itself. What can be done with the woman on the cliff?
On a wild and rugged island cut off and isolated to some, artist Nell feels the island is her home. It is the source of inspiration for her art, rooted in landscape, folklore and the feminine. The mysterious Inions, a commune of women who have travelled there from all over the world, consider it a place of refuge and safety, of solace in nature.
All the islanders live alongside the strange murmurings that seem to emanate from within the depths of the island, a sound that is almost supernatural – a Summoning as the Inions call it. One day, a letter arrives at Nell’s door from the reclusive Inions who invite Nell into the commune for a commission to produce a magnificent art piece to celebrate their long history. In its creation, Nell will discover things about the community and about herself that will challenge everything she thought she knew. (Credit: HarperCollins)
My Favourite Mistake by Marian Keyes
Expected Publication Date: April 10
Anna has just lost her taste for the Big Apple…
She has a life to envy. An apartment in New York. A well-meaning (too well-meaning?) partner. And a high-flying job in beauty PR. Who wouldn’t want all that?
Anna, it turns out.
Trading a minor midlife crisis for a major life event, she switches the skyscrapers of Manhattan for the tiny Irish town of Maumtully (population 1,217), helping old friends Brigit and Colm set up a luxury coastal retreat.
Tougher than it sounds. Newflash: the locals hate the idea. So much so, there have been threats – and violence.
Anna, however, worked in the beauty industry. There’s no ugliness she hasn’t seen. No wrinkle she can’t smooth over.
There’s just one fly in the ointment – old flame Joey Armstrong. He’s going to be her wingman. Never mind their chequered history. Never mind what might have been.
Because no matter how far you go, your mistakes will still be waiting for you…(Credit: Penguin Books)
The Boy Next Door by Jenny Ireland
Expected Publication Date: April 11
Now she wasn’t Molly Cassidy, St Anne’s pain-in-the-hole princess. She was nine-year-old Molly who was my best friend in the whole world. Nobody had put her in the recovery position. All these people and they’d just left her like that . . . I held her hand until the ambulance came.
Finbar and Molly live next door to each other. When they were children, they spent hours and hours together. They were best friends. Until they weren’t.
Now 18, Fin and Molly move in very different circles. Molly is popular, pretty, dating the most handsome boy in the whole school. Fin has one friend and he’s pretty sure he hates his dad and his little sister.
At a party one night, though, they’re pulled together in a way neither of them expects and then follows a year that will see them experiencing life-changing challenges, friendships, love and everything in between. (Credit: Penguin Random House Children’s UK)
Seaborne by Nuala O’Connor
Expected Publication Date: April 18
1703, Kinsale, County Cork. Anne Coleman is the illegitimate child of a local lawyer and his maid; disguised as ‘Anthony’ to protect reputations, the mask suits Anne just fine. But, fixated on boats and the sea, she struggles to fit in, and her devoted mother fears for her fiercely independent and impulsive daughter. When their secrets are exposed, the family emigrates to the new colony of Carolina, but this fresh start will bring devastating loss and stifling responsibilities. Lonely and transgressive, Anne finds comfort only with Bedelia, servant and intimate friend. But her craving for the sea-wandering life and a misjudged marriage to young Gabriel Bonny will compel Anne to take to the sea again, this time around the islands of the Caribbean, famous for plunder and piracy. Adventure, passion and freedom await, but so do violence and disappointment. And, as she tries to stay true to herself, her hopes and her few precious friendships, Anne Bonny must also face her own privilege and the sacrifices required for enduring love. Seaborne is the thrilling and sensuous portrait of a young woman out of step with her time and place, but never her heart. (Credit: New Island Books)
Black & Irish: Legends, Trailblazers & Everyday Heroes by Leon Diop and Briana Fitzsimons and illustrated by Jessica Louis
Expected Publication Date: April 23
A landmark publication in Irish history; this is a celebration of Black Irish identity. Published in collaboration with the organisation of the same name, Black & Irish, who were founded in June 2020 coinciding with the Black Lives Matter movement. Actors. Athletes. Activists. Style icons. Scientists. Influencers. Entrepreneurs. Black Irish people are blazing trails in every sphere of modern life. In the first ever book about Black Irish people, we take a look at the inspirational careers, dreams and achievements of legends, trailblazers and everyday heroes, including actor Ruth Negga, soccer player Gavin Bazunu, reality tv star Dami Hope, author Emma Dabiri, record-breaking sprinter Rhasidat Adeleke and musician Phil Lynott. Within these pages, you will find both famous and unsung Black Irish people. Black and Mixed-Race people have lived in Ireland for hundreds of years, but even now the concept of being Black and Irish is still being discovered and discussed. We hope the stories of the legends, trailblazers and everyday heroes in this book will inspire young Black Irish people, and provide insight into the Black Irish experience to people from all walks of life. With stunning colour illustrations by Jessica Louis. (Credit: Little Island Books)
This Is How You Remember It by Catherine Prasifka
Expected Publication Date: May 2
You’re nine when you get your first computer. Your favourite thing is a virtual pet website; you spend hours in the chatroom. You don’t understand why some of your online friends don’t use their real names.
It’s not long before you discover porn. You don’t know what you’re watching, but you do know that you shouldn’t tell anybody. Later, older, your first kiss is captured on camera and shared with everyone in your year. It feels like betrayal, but soon it feels normal. Part of the incessant cycle of posting, sharing and liking.
Now, you can’t remember a time when you didn’t feel hollow inside. Now, you know that something has to change. (Credit: Canongate Books)
Reality Check by Vicki Notaro
Expected Publication Date: May 9
Portia Daniels’ life is sorted. She has a perfect man (Jason, a hot TV producer from Ireland), a perfect apartment (in lower Manhattan), a perfect job (writing for TV). Best of all for her, unlike the rest of her family, she lives in perfect obscurity.
On the other hand, it’s all drama with her mother, Dessie, Kerry-born queen bee of hit reality show, Ladies of Los Angeles, and sisters, Vinnie, a supermodel-turned-Insta-guru and Ariel, a Tik-Tok teen sensation.
When Jason drops a bombshell that leaves her life in tatters, Portia flees to be with her family. Her timing could not be worse though as scandal engulfs Vinnie’s empire and Ariel bratty behaviour gets out of hand. As for Dessie, she is clearly hiding something. It seems like the glamour and gossip on which Dessie built her empire might just be its downfall.
But maybe Portia has been fooling herself about living a ‘real’ life? She might be about to get as big a wake-up call as her mother and sisters.(Credit: Penguin Books UK)
Something’s About To Blow Up by Sam Blake
US Expected Publication Date: May 23
When an explosion rips through the chemistry lab at Dublin’s Raven’s Hill School and six girls are injured, the first thought is that it’s an experiment gone wrong. Then the Gardaí start investigating and declare it a potential bomb attack. But – if so – who was it targeting, and why?
Ella, Becky, Maeve and Mackenzie are rushed to hospital, along with the injured Frankie and Sorcha, who team up with Jess to figure out what actually happened. But what they discover is something more sinister than even they could have imagined …(Credit: Gill)
Someone In The Attic by Andrea Mara
Expected Publication Date: June 6
You thought you were home alone. Think again…
‘A thriller honed to a fine point, sharp and keen and piercing.’ A. J. Finn
‘An absolute page turner!’ Shari Lapena
‘A gripping story, beautifully told.’ Patricia Cornwell
It could happen to you.
Anya is enjoying a relaxing bath when she hears a noise in the roof. Through the open bathroom door, she sees the attic hatch swing open, and a masked figure drops to the floor. Thirty seconds later, Anya is dead.
Even in a wealthy neighbourhood like this.
Across town, Anya’s old school friend, Julia, sees an online video of a masked figure climbing out of an attic. She suddenly realises why the footage is eerily familiar: it was filmed inside her house in a luxury gated community, designed to keep intruders out.
Even with friends like these.
Why would a stranger target Julia? Unless of course, it’s not a stranger at all. (Credit: Transworld Publishers Ltd)
A Stranger In The Family by Jane Casey
US Expected Publication Date: June 13
Every mother’s worst nightmare . . .
When nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall vanished from her bed one summer night, her disappearance tore her family apart.
Now, sixteen years later, her mother Helena is found dead, her husband by her side. It looks like a straightforward murder-suicide but DS Maeve Kerrigan and DI Josh Derwent soon discover nothing about this case is straightforward.
The Marshalls have been keeping secrets. And someone is prepared to kill to hide the truth. Until Maeve finds out what happened to Rosalie, no one will be safe . . .(Credit: Hemlock Press)
Hey, Zoey by Sarah Crossan
Expected Publication Date: June 25
43-year-old Dolores O’Shea is logical, organized, and prepared to handle whatever comes her way. She keeps up with her job and housework, takes care of her mentally declining mother, and remains close with her old friends and her younger sister who’s moved to New York. Though her marriage with David, an anesthesiologist, isn’t what is used to be, nothing can quite prepare her for Zoey, the $8,000 AI sex doll that David has secretly purchased and stuffed away in the garage. At first, Zoey sparks an uncharacteristically strong violence in Dolores, whose entire life is suddenly cast in doubt.
But then, Dolores and Zoey start to talk…and what surfaces runs deeper than Dolores could have ever expected, with consequences for all of the relationships in her life, especially her relationship to herself. Provocative, brilliant, and tender, Hey, Zoey is an electrifying new novel about the painful truths of modern-day connection and the complicated and unexpected forms that love can take in a lifetime. (Credit: Little Brown and Company)
The Amendments by Niamh Mulvey
Expected Publication Date: September 3 (UK and Ireland: April 17)
Nell and her partner Adrienne are about to have a baby. For Adrienne, it’s the start of a new life. For Nell, it’s the reason the two of them are sitting in a therapist’s office. Because she can’t go into this without dealing with the truth: that she has been a mother before, and now she can hardly bring herself to speak to her own mother, let alone return home to Ireland.
Nell is running out of places to hide from her past.
But to Ireland and the past is where she must go, and that is where The Amendments takes us: to the heat of Nell’s teenage years in the early 2000s, as Ireland was unpicking itself from its faith and embracing the hedonism of the Celtic Tiger. To 1983, when Nell’s mother Dolores was grappling with the tensions of the women’s rights movement. And then to the farms and suburbs and towns that made and unmade the lives at the centre of this story, bound together by the terrible secret that Nell still cannot face. (Credit: Picador UK)
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
Expected Publication Date: September 24
Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.
Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties–successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women–his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.
Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.
For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude–a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking. (Credit: Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
The Drowned by John Banville
Expected Publication Date: October 10
He had seen drowned people. A sight not to be forgotten.
1950s, rural Ireland. A loner comes across a mysteriously empty car in a field. Knowing he shouldn’t approach, but unable to hold back, he soon finds himself embroiled in a troubling missing person’s case, as a husband claims his wife may have thrown herself into the sea.
Called in from Dublin to investigate is Detective Inspector Strafford, who soon turns to his old ally – the flawed but brilliant pathologist Quirke – a man he is linked to in increasingly complicated ways. (Credit: Faber & Faber)
Rani Choudhury Must Die by Adiba Jaigirdar
Expected Publication Date: November 12
Meghna Rahman is tired of constantly being compared to her infuriatingly perfect ex best friend now rival. Everyone, except, at least, her boyfriend Zak, seems to think that Rani Choudhury can do no wrong–even her own parents! It doesn’t help that Rani is always accepted into the Young Scientist Exhibition, while Meghna’s projects never make it. But this year, she finally has a chance at defeating Rani in something.
Rani Choudhury is tired of feeling like she doesn’t have much say in her life–not when it comes to how her mom wants her to look and act or how her parents encourage her to date incredibly charming close family friend Zak. She would much rather focus on her coding, especially once she places high enough at the Young Scientist Exhibition to go on to the European Young Scientist Exhibition.
When Meghna and Rani figure out that Zak has been playing them both, they decide to do something no one would see coming: they team up. They’ll compete in the EYSE as partners, creating an app that exposes cheaters and a project that exposes Zak. But with years of silence and pressure between them, working together will prove difficult. Especially once each girl starts to realize that the feelings they had for the other may have been more than platonic…Hey, no one ever said science was easy! (Credit: Feiwel & Friends)
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