Recent Reads from Irish Authors

by Anne Enright

Centering around celebrated Irish poet Phil McDaragh, who was lauded in public but was carelessly selfish at home, three generations of McDaragh women must contend with inheritances—poetic wonder, abandonment and a sustaining love—in this intricately woven tapestry of longing, betrayal and hope.

by Paul Murray

Avoiding the fact that his once-lucrative car business is going under, Dickie Barnes struggles to be a good person while his family falls apart, wondering if a single moment of bad luck can change the direction of a life and if there’s still time to find a happy ending.

by Elaine Feeney

Jamie O'Neill loves the color red. He also loves tall trees, patterns, rain that comes with wind, the curvature of certain objects, books with dust jackets, rivers, cats, and Edgar Allan Poe. At age 13, there are two things he wants most in life: to build a Perpetual Motion Machine, and to connect with his mother, Noelle, who died when he was born. In his mind, these things are intimately linked, and at his new school, despite the daily barrage of bullies and cathedral bells, he meets two teachers who might be able to help him, though each struggles against inertias of their own.

by Paul Lynch

With Ireland caught in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack, as the life she knows and the ones she loves disappear before her eyes, must decide how far she’ll go to save her family and what—or who—she is willing to leave behind.

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.

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.

by Sally Rooney

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 get together, they break apart. Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?

by Tana French

Moving to rural Ireland, Cal Hooper, who took early retirement from Chicago PD, has built a relationship with Lena and is gradually turning teenager Trey Reddy into a good kid, but when Trey's long-absent father reappears with an English millionaire and a get-rich-quick scheme, Trey wants revenge.

by Sheila Armstrong

Told through a chorus of voices, this is a disquieting story of an unidentified man as told by those who crossed paths with him on the last day of his life.

by Hazel Hayes

Out of Love begins at the end. Angel and Theo call it quits after nearly five years, and while holding a box of her ex-boyfriend's belongings, Angel wonders: How could they have spent so long together? When did they fall out of love? Were there good times before the bad? But instead of moving forward through the emotional fallout of a break-up, Out of Love moves backward in time, weaving together an already unraveled tapestry, from tragic ending to magical first kiss.

by Claire Keegan

In So Late in the Day, Cathal faces a long weekend as his mind agitates over a woman with whom he could have spent his life, had he behaved differently; in The Long and Painful Death, a writer’s arrival at the seaside home of Heinrich Böll for a residency is disrupted by an academic who imposes his presence and opinions; and in Antarctica, a married woman travels out of town to see what it’s like to sleep with another man and ends up in the grip of a possessive stranger.

by Sebastian Barry

When two former colleagues turn up at his door with questions about a decades-old case, one that has haunted him for years, recently retired policeman Tom Kettle finds himself pulled into the darkest currents of his past.

by Sarah Gilmartin

To mark the anniversary of a death in the family, Kate meticulously plans a dinner party, but by the end of the night, old tensions have flared, the guests are gone, and Kate is spinning out of control. Set between from the 1990s and the present day, from Carlow to Dublin, the family farmhouse to Trinity College, Dinner Party is a beautifully observed, dark and twisty novel that thrillingly unravels into family secrets and tragedy. 

by Emma Donoghue

In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city center, where expectant mothers who have come down with the terrible new Flu are quarantined together. Into Julia's regimented world step two outsiders—Doctor Kathleen Lynn, a rumored Rebel on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney. In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over three days, these women change each other's lives in unexpected ways. 

by Anna Burns

Set during The Troubles in Northern Ireland, the story follows an unnamed 18-year-old girl as she begins being harassed by a local paramilitary known as the milkman, as the girl attempts to avoid him and keep spreading rumors at bay.