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. 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.
THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE COSTA NOVEL AWARD 2018 WINNER OF THE AN POST IRISH BOOK AWARDS NOVEL OF THE YEAR WINNER OF THE SPECSAVERS NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS INTERNATIONAL AUTHOR OF THE YEAR SHORTLISTED FOR THE IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR AWARD 2019 LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018 LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2019 LONGLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2019 Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in the west of Ireland, but the similarities end there. In school, Connell is popular and well-liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation - awkward but electrifying - something life-changing begins. Normal People is a story of mutual fascination, friendship and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find they can't.
On March 3, 1947 Archibald Isaac Ferguson is born. From that single beginning, his life will take four simultaneous and independent fictional paths. Four boys who are the same boy, will go on to lead four parallel and entirely different lives. Fergusons story rushes on across twentieth-century America. A sweeping story of birthright and possibility, of love and the fullness of life itself.
"a fascinating reflection on totalitarianism as refracted through Orwell's times and our own" The Guardian
London, chief city of Airstrip One, the third most populous province of Oceania. It's 1984 and Julia Worthing works as a mechanic fixing the novel-writing machines in the Fiction Department at the Ministry of Truth. Under the ideology of IngSoc and the rule of the Party and its leader Big Brother, Julia is a model citizen - cheerfully cynical, believing in nothing and caring not at all about politics. She knows how to survive in a world of constant surveillance, Thought Police, Newspeak, Doublethink, child spies and the black markets of the prole neighbourhoods. She's very good at staying alive.
But Julia becomes intrigued by a colleague from the Records Department - a mid-level worker of the Outer Party called Winston Smith, she comes to realise that she's losing her grip and can no longer safely navigate her world.
Seventy-five years after Orwell finished writing his iconic novel, Sandra Newman has tackled the world of Big Brother in a truly convincing way, offering a dramatically different, feminist narrative that is true to and stands alongside the original. For the millions of readers who have been brought up with Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, here, finally, is a provocative, vital and utterly satisfying companion novel.
A contemporary novel which tells the story of Marco Stanley Fogg - orphan, child of the 1960s - spanning three generations. The narrative moves from the early years of this century to the first lunar landings, from Manhattan to the landscape of the American West.
"This season''s most-anticipated first outing." (Vogue) "A Lynchian reinterpretation of The Virgin Suicides." (Observer) "An astonishing debut that will burrow under your skin." (Sunday Times) In Falls Landing, Florida - a place built of theme parks, swampy lakes, and scorched bougainvillea flowers - something sinister lurks in the deep. A gang of thirteen-year-old girls obsessively orbit around the local preacher''s daughter, Sammy. She is mesmerizing, older, and in love with Eddie. But suddenly, Sammy goes missing. Where is she? Watching from a distance, they edge ever closer to discovering a dark secret about their fame-hungry town and the cruel cost of a ticket out. What they uncover will continue to haunt them for the rest of their lives.
Through a darkly beautiful and brutally compelling lens, Dizz Tate captures the violence, horrors, and manic joys of girlhood. Brutes is a novel about the seemingly unbreakable bonds in the ''we'' of young friendship, and the moment it is broken forever.
A tender masterpiece of love, memory and loss from one of the world''s great writers.
The life of Sy Baumgartner - noted author, and soon-to-be retired philosophy professor - has been defined by his deep, abiding love for his wife, Anna. Now Anna is gone, and Baumgartner is embarking on his seventies whilst trying to live with her absence. But Anna''s voice is everywhere still, in every spiral of memory and reminiscence, in each recalled episode of the passionate forty years they shared.
Rich with compassion, wit and an eye for beauty in the smallest, most transient episodes of ordinary life, Baumgartner is one of Auster''s most luminous works - a tender late masterpiece of the ache of memory.
Secs, sans cavalier, les mots Et leur galop infatigable Quand Depuis le fond de l'étang, les étoiles Régissent une vie.
« Ariel, génie de l'air de La Tempête, de Shakespeare, est aussi le nom du cheval blanc que montait à l'aube dans le Devon, en Angleterre, l'un des plus extraordinaires poètes du XXe siècle, Sylvia Plath, aux derniers mois de sa courte vie.
Ariel, borne décisive marquant un "avant" et un "après", parole intense jusqu'à la rage parfois, question de vie ou de mort.
Ariel, jusqu'au bout, l'extrémité du dernier souffle. » Valérie Rouzeau.
Juliet is enraged at the victory of men over women in family life. Amanda is warding off thoughts of death with obsessive housework. Solly is confronting her own buried femininity in the person of her Italian lodger. This novel talks about the domestic lives, private thoughts and fears of a group of women.
A story of a sudden and powerful romance that blooms between seventeen-year-old Elio and his father's house guest Oliver during a restless summer on the Italian Riviera. It tells how unrelenting currents of obsession and fear, fascination and desire threaten to overwhelm the lovers who at first feign indifference to the charge between them.
A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass in New Zealand's South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike, leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, a guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. But they hadn't figured on the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine, who also has an interest in the place. Can they trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust each other?
A propulsive literary thriller from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Luminaries, Birnam Wood is Shakespearean in its wit, drama and immersion in character. It is a brilliantly constructed tale of intentions, actions and consequences, and an unflinching examination of the human impulse to ensure our own survival.
The new novel by the legendary Edna O'Brien, author of The Country Girls (dramatised on BBC Radio 4 in August 2019). Captured, abducted and married into Boko Haram, the narrator of this story witnesses and suffers the horrors of a community of men governed by a brutal code of violence. Barely more than a girl herself, she must soon learn how to survive as a woman with a child of her own. Just as the world around her seems entirely consumed by madness, bound for hell, she is offered an escape of sorts - but only into another landscape of trials and terrors amidst the unforgiving wilds of northeastern Nigeria, through the forest and beyond; a place where her traumas are met with the blinkered judgement of a society in denial. How do we love in a world that has lost its moorings? How can we comprehend the barbarism of our enemies, and learn forgiveness for atrocities committed in the name of ideology? Edna O'Brien's new novel pierces to the heart of these questions: and the result is her masterpiece.
The story of Walt, an irrepressible orphan from the Mid-West. Under the tutelage of the mesmerising Master Yehudi, Walt is taken back to the mysterious house on the plains to prepare not only for the ability to fly, but also for the stardom that will accompany it.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE AN POST IRISH BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023
SHORTLISTED FOR THE STREGA EUROPEAN PRIZE
A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
A NEW YORK TIMES EDITOR'S CHOICE
AN AMAZON TOP 10 BOOK OF DECEMBER 2023
A Book of the Year for 2023 according to the Guardian, FT, Irish Independent, Irish Examiner, Sunday Independent, Economist, Big Issue, Daily Telegraph, Irish Times and Waterstones
'A CRUCIAL BOOK FOR OUR CURRENT TIMES... BRILLIANTLY HAUNTING.' OBSERVER
The explosive literary sensation: a mother faces a terrible choice as Ireland slides into totalitarianism
On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her step. Two officers from Ireland's newly formed secret police are here to interrogate her husband, Larry, a trade unionist.
Ireland is falling apart. The country is in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and when her husband disappears, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a society that is quickly unravelling. Soon, she must decide just how far she is willing to go to keep her family safe.
Exhilarating, terrifying and propulsive, Paul Lynch's Booker Prize-winning novel is a devastating vision of a country falling apart and a moving portrait of the resilience of the human spirit when faced with the darkest of times.
'A compassionate, propulsive and timely novel that forces the reader to imagine - what if this was me?' FT
A plane crashes on an uninhabited island and the only survivors, a group of schoolboys, assemble on the beach and wait to be rescued. By day they inhabit a land of bright fantastic birds and dark blue seas, but at night their dreams are haunted by the image of a terrifying beast.
In this, his first novel, William Golding gave the traditional adventure story an ironic, devastating twist. The boys' delicate sense of order fades, and their childish fears are transformed into something deeper and more primitive. Their games take on a horrible significance, and before long the well-behaved party of schoolboys has turned into a tribe of faceless, murderous savages.
First published in 1954, Lord of the Flies is now recognized as a classic, one of the most celebrated of all modern novels.
WINNER OF THE KERRY GROUP IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2018
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION, THE WILLIAM SAROYAN INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR WRITING 2018 & FRANCE'S PRIX LITTERATURE MONDE (2019)
Winter is closing in and Ireland is in the grip of famine. Early one October morning, Grace's mother snatches her from sleep, brutally cuts her hair and tells her: 'You are the strong one now.'
Her mother fits her up in men's clothes and casts her out, as she is no longer safe at home. With her younger brother Colly in tow, she sets off on a remarkable journey against the looming shadow of her country's darkest hour.
'' Beautiful World, Where Are You is Rooney''s best novel.'' THE TIMES ***PRE-ORDER NOW*** *The Sunday Times and Global number one bestseller* *Winner of Novel of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards* *A Book of the Year in The Times , the Guardian , the Irish Times and the Financial Times* ''A tour de force.'' Anne Enright, Guardian ''Rooney''s best novel yet.'' Brandon Taylor, New York Times ''Get ready to have your heart broken all over again.'' Red ''The book moved me to tears more than once.'' The Times Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he''d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend Eileen is getting over a break-up and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen and Simon are still young - but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they worry about sex and friendship and the times they live in. Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?
'This book. This book. I read it in one day. I hear I'm not alone.' - Sarah Jessica Parker (Instagram) WINNER OF THE SUNDAY TIMES / PFD YOUNG WRITER OF THE YEAR SHORTLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2018 SHORTLISTED FOR THE KERRY GROUP IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2018 SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2018 LONGLISTED FOR THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE 2018 A SUNDAY TIMES , OBSERVER AND TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR Frances is twenty-one years old, cool-headed and observant. A student in Dublin and an aspiring writer, at night she performs spoken word with her best friend Bobbi, who used to be her girlfriend. When they are interviewed and then befriended by Melissa, a well-known journalist who is married to Nick, an actor, they enter a world of beautiful houses, raucous dinner parties and holidays in Provence, beginning a complex menage-a-quatre. But when Frances and Nick get unexpectedly closer, the sharply witty and emotion-averse Frances is forced to honestly confront her own vulnerabilities for the first time.
Juxtaposes two tales about mothers, trans-sexuality, kitchens, love, tragedy, and the terms they all come to in the minds of a pair of free-spirited young women in contemporary Japan.
A masterpiece in storytelling from the global bestselling author of Unsheltered and Flight Behaviour. WINNER OF THE WOMEN''S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2010 THE MULTI-MILLION COPY SELLING AUTHOR ''It''s EPIC. Righteously angry, DEEPLY moving, wholly immersive, totally convincing and exquisitely written.'' MARIAN KEYES ''A fantastic read.'' EMILY MAITLIS ____________ Demon Copperhead is a once-in-a-generation novel that breaks and mends your heart in the way only the best fiction can. Demon''s story begins with his traumatic birth to a single mother in a single-wide trailer, looking ''like a little blue prizefighter.'' For the life ahead of him he would need all of that fighting spirit, along with buckets of charm, a quick wit, and some unexpected talents, legal and otherwise. In the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, poverty isn''t an idea, it''s as natural as the grass grows. For a generation growing up in this world, at the heart of the modern opioid crisis, addiction isn''t an abstraction, it''s neighbours, parents, and friends. ''Family'' could mean love, or reluctant foster care. For Demon, born on the wrong side of luck, the affection and safety he craves is as remote as the ocean he dreams of seeing one day. The wonder is in how far he''s willing to travel to try and get there. Suffused with truth, anger and compassion, Demon Copperhead is an epic tale of love, loss and everything in between. ____________ What readers are saying: ***** ''An amazing, beautifully written story I cannot wait to recommend to everyone I know.'' ***** ''Powerful and brilliant. To immerse yourself in a Kingsolver novel is to put yourself in the hands of a master.'' ***** ''A must read and heart-opening book.'' ***** ''This book is not to be missed.'' ***** ''Amazingly complex. . . [Kingsolver] is, by far, one of the greatest living authors''
Midway through his life, an artist begins to paint upside down. In Paris, a woman is attacked by a stranger in the street. A mother dies. A man falls to his death. Couples seek escape in distant lands. "Parade" is a path-breaking novel of art, womanhood and violence, from the author of the Outline trilogy.
