What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe All of It
Jeannette Haien · 145 pages
Relates the seemingly simple tale of a parishioner confiding in her priest, but the tangled confession brings secrets to light that provoke a moral quandary for not only the clergyman, but the reader as well. Set in a small town in Ireland, Haien's intimate novel of conversations and dilemmas-perfect for readers of Paul Harding's Tinkers, Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, and Flannery O'Connor's Wise B
Hood
Emma Donoghue · 309 pages
From the New York Times bestselling author of Room, Emma Donoghue, Hood is a graceful tale of a young woman who must come to terms with love and loss in the wake of her partner’s sudden passing. The New York Times Book Review calls Hood “utterly charming,” writing that,“Ms. Donoghue displays her confidence by avoiding the grandiose and the showy, and dipping into the ordinary with control and the
TransAtlantic
Colum McCann · 328 pages
A tale spanning 150 years and two continents reimagines the peace efforts of democracy champion Frederick Douglass, Senator George Mitchell and World War I airmen John Alcock and Teddy Brown through the experiences of four generations of women from a matriarchal clan. Newfoundland, 1919. Two aviators, Jack Alcock and Arthur Brown, set course for Ireland as they attempt the first nonstop flight ac
A Line Made by Walking
Sara Baume · 321 pages
Retreating to her family's rural house in Ireland to escape the challenges of urban life, artist Frankie explores the chain of events that have challenged her mental stability and art education. As she picks up photography once more, she searches for meaning and healing while examining the natural world around her.
Martin Sloane
Michael Redhill · 282 pages
"What does it really mean to love another person? The question hovers like a persistent wisp of fog over the story of Martin Sloane, an Irish-born artist who creates intricate, object-filled boxes, and Jolene Iolas, the young American woman who finds herself drawn first to Martin Sloane's art and then to the man himself. The story of their relationship across nearly two decades, and of Jolene's s
The Newton Letter
John Banville · 82 pages
A historian, trying to finish a long-overdue book on Isaac Newton, rents a cottage not far by train from Dublin for the summer. He starts a relationship with one of the members of the family he rents from. As the lives around him change, he gives up on his writing, only to have his life change as well. The entirety of the story is written in a letter to a friend.
The Music Lesson
Katharine Weber · 178 pages
The diary of a New York art historian as she keeps company a Vermeer painting, being held by the IRA for ransom. Alone in her lover's cottage in Ireland, Patricia Dolan admires the woman on canvas. "She's beautiful," she writes. By the author of Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear.
The Walking People
Mary Beth Keane · 404 pages
Greta Cahill never believed she would leave her village in the west of Ireland until she found herself on a ship bound for New York. Labeled a "softheaded goose" by her family, Greta discovers that in America she can fall in love, raise her own family, and earn a living. Though she longs to return and show her family what she has made of herself, her decision to spare her children knowledge of a s
The Misremembered Man
Christina McKenna · 309 pages
A beautifully rendered portrait of rural life in Ulster which contrasts the vivid portrayal of the universal search for love against the darker tale of Jamie's early years.
Conversations with Friends
Sally Rooney · 315 pages
Frances is a coolheaded and darkly observant young woman, vaguely pursuing a career in writing while studying in Dublin. Her best friend is the beautiful and endlessly self-possessed Bobbi. At a local poetry performance one night, they meet a well-known photographer, and as the girls are then gradually drawn into her world, Frances is reluctantly impressed by the older woman’s sophisticated home a
Academy Street
Mary Costello · 192 pages
"A vibrant, intimate, hypnotic portrait of one woman's life, from an important new writer. Tess Lohan is the kind of woman that we meet and fail to notice every day. A single mother. A nurse. A quiet woman, who nonetheless feels things acutely--a woman with tumultuous emotions and few people to share them with. Academy Street is Mary Costello's luminous portrait of a whole life. It follows Tess fr
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne
Brian Moore · 230 pages
Pond
Claire-Louise Bennett · 184 pages
"Longlisted for the 2016 International Dylan Thomas Prize "What Bennett aims at is nothing short of a re-enchantment of the world... This is a truly stunning debut, beautifully written and profoundly witty." -The Guardian Immediately upon its publication in Ireland, Claire-Louise Bennett's debut began to attract attention well beyond the expectations of the tiny Irish press that published it. A de
Eggshells
Caitriona Lally · 272 pages
Vivian doesn't feel like she fits in - and never has. As a child, she was so whimsical that her parents told her she was "left by fairies." Now, living alone in Dublin, the neighbors treat her like she's crazy, her older sister condescends to her, social workers seem to have registered her as troubled, and she hasn't a friend in the world. So, she decides it's time to change her life: She begins b
The Forgotten Waltz
Anne Enright · 240 pages
During a snowstorm, Gina Moynihan reminisces the string of events that brought her the love of her life, Sean Vallely, and recalls their affair.
Dublinesque
Enrique Vila-Matas · 311 pages
Samuel Riba is about to turn 60. A successful publisher in Barcelona, he has published many of his generation's most important authors. But he is increasingly prone to attacks of anxiety - about the digital revolution and its threat to books and 'high culture', and about the fact that he has yet to discover in the younger generation a writer of 'genius'. One night he has a vivid dream that takes p
Paula Spencer
Roddy Doyle · 288 pages
Ten years on from The Woman Who Walked into Doors, Roddy Doyle returns to one of his greatest characters, Paula SpencerWhen we first met Paula Spencer – in The Woman Who Walked into Doors – she was thirty-nine, recently widowed, an alcoholic struggling to hold her family together. Paula Spencer begins on the eve of Paula's forty-eighth birthday. She hasn't had a drink for four months and five days
Tender
Belinda McKeon · 424 pages
When they meet in Dublin in the late nineties, Catherine was a sheltered college student; James an adventurous, charismatic young artist. In a city brimming with possibilities, he spurs her to take life on with gusto. But as Catherine opens herself to new experiences, James's life becomes a prison; as changed as the new Ireland may be, it is still not a place in which he feels able to truly be him
Charming Billy
Alice McDermott · 280 pages
Everyone loved him. If you knew Billy at all, then you loved him. The late Billy Lynch's family and friends, a party of forty-seven, gather at a small bar and grill somewhere in the Bronx to remember better times in good company, and to redeem the pleasure of a drink or two from the miserable thing that a drink had become in Billy's life. His widow, Maeve, is there and everyone admires the way she
Midwinter Break
Bernard MacLaverty · 242 pages
Gerry, once an architect, is forgetful and set in his ways. Stella is tired of his lifestyle, worried about their marriage, and angry at his constant undermining of her religious faith. Things are not helped by memories that have begun to resurface of a troubled time in their native Ireland. As their midwinter break comes to an end, we understand how far apart they are--and can only watch as they
The Weight of Him
Ethel Rohan · 326 pages
"At four hundred pounds, Billy Brennan can always count on food. From his earliest memories, he has loved food's colors, textures and tastes. The way flavors go off in his mouth. How food keeps his mind still and his bad feelings quiet. Food has always made everything better, until the day Billy's beloved son Michael takes his own life. Billy determines to make a difference in Michael's memory and