Fiction

Keith Baker, Inheritance.
When a retired policeman is killed, his son's investigation uncovers secrets that could shatter Northern Ireland's tenuous peace.

Sebastian Barry, Annie Dunne.
A woman who kept house for her brother until he married is taken in by a cousin who has a farm in Wicklow, but the happiness she finds there may be threatened.

Clare Boylan, Beloved Stranger.
After 50 years of marriage, a woman must learn to cope on her own when her husband is diagnosed with a bipolar disorder.

Maeve Binchy, Tara Road.
An Irish woman whose husband left her trades houses for the summer with an American woman grieving for her son.

Maeve Brennan, Springs of Affection.
A collection of stories featuring three middle-class families in Dublin.

Anna Burns, No Bones.
A girl grows up in the harsh & violent environment of Belfast during the height of the Troubles.

Lisa Carey, The Mermaids Singing.
After her mother’s death, a girl is taken by her grandmother to an island off the coast of Ireland, where she meets the father she never knew.

Annabel Davis-Goff, The Dower House.
In the mid-20th century, an Anglo-Irish girl grows up in genteel poverty in the dower house of the crumbling family estate.

Seamus Deane, Reading in the Dark.
A boy growing up in Northern Ireland in the 40s and ‘50s tries to unlock the secrets that haunt his family.

Roddy Doyle, The Commitments.
A group of working-class Irish youths form a band with a mission: To bring Soul to Dublin.

Finbar's Hotel.
A group of interrelated stories by various Irish novelists recount the events of one night at a failing Dublin hotel. Sequel is Ladies’ Night at Finbar’s Hotel.

Julian Gough, Juno and Juliet.
A lighthearted and intelligent tale of twin sisters who experience university life in Galway and the radiance of newfound love.

Jeannette Haien, The All of It.
A priest is puzzled by the deathbed confession of one of his parishioners until the woman who lived as the man’s wife for 50 years tells him the whole truth of their lives together.

Kerry Hardie, A Winter Marriage.
A woman who has had three husbands marries a prosperous man with an Irish estate but then begins to doubt her decision.

Erin Hart, Haunted Ground.
An ancient corpse found in an Irish peat bog may be linked to a modern-day disappearance of a woman and her child.

James Joyce, Dubliners.
A classic collection of stories about life in Dublin from Ireland’s most celebrated author.

John Keane, The Teapots Are Out.
A charming collection of eccentric tales about life in Ireland.

Cathy Kelly, Someone Like You.
Three very different Irish women become friends on a trip to Egypt and keep in touch after they return home.

Marian Keyes, Watermelon.
A new mother returns to her family in Dublin when her husband leaves her for another woman.

Norah Labiner, Miniatures.
A young American takes a job as housekeeper for a pair of writers in Ireland and discovers a bundle of letters that hold the key to a secret in her employers’ past as well as her own.

Stephen Lawhead, Patrick: Son of Ireland.
The life of the Irish saint between his escape from slavery and the beginning of his missionary work.

Morgan Llywelyn, Finn Mac Cool.
The story of the warrior who became one of Ireland’s most legendary figures.

Beth Lorden, But Come Ye Back.
When her husband retires, a woman convinces him to relocate from the United States to her small hometown in Galway.

Regina McBride, The Nature of Water and Air.
A girl growing up on the Irish coast loses her twin and yearns for the love of her mother, whose secret sorrow she is determined to understand.

John McGahern, By the Lake.
A year in the life of a small Irish village peopled by eccentric and colorful inhabitants.

Bernard MacLaverty, Grace Notes.
A gifted composer returns to Belfast for her father's funeral and confronts several ghosts from her past.

Christopher Nolan, The Banyan Tree.
An old Irish woman looks back on her life as she tries to keep the family farm together in hopes of her youngest son’s return.

Edna O’Brien, In the Forest.
After disturbed man returns to his childhood home, the murdered bodies of a priest, an young mother, and her son are discovered.

Brendan O’Carroll, Agnes Browne.
An Irish widow in 1960s Dublin tries to support her seven children. First in a series.

Frank O’Connor, Collected Stories.
Tales from one of Ireland’s premier storytellers.

Joseph O’Connor, The Salesman.
A salesman decides to take matters into his own hands when the man responsible for his daughter’s terrible injuries escapes from prison.

Brian O’Doherty, The Deposition of Father McGreevy.
A journalist uncovers the deposition given by a priest telling of the terrible circumstances that led to the destruction of an Irish village.

Nuala O’Faolain, My Dream of You.
A writer researches a 19th divorce case involving possible adultery between an English gentlewoman and an Irish groom during the Famine.

Sean O’Faolain, A Nest of Simple Folk.
A young Irishman comes into conflict with his parents as he prefers the traditional rural life to their new middle-class status.

Jamie O’Neill, At Swim, Two Boys.
Two boys who make a pact to swim to an island in Dublin Bay become involved in the Easter Rising of 1916 and fall in love with each other.

Juliene Osborne-McKnight, I Am of Irelaunde.
Returning to Ireland where he had been a slave, Patrick is full of anger but something happens that causes him to reexamine his life and faith.

David Park, The Big Snow.
A blizzard shuts down a town in Northern Ireland and the lives of its inhabitants are transformed.

James Ryan, Seeds of Doubt.
A woman who gave up a baby for adoption as a teenager returns to Ireland after her father’s death.

Mary Ryan, The Song of the Tide.
A girl’s life is changed one summer when her American cousin comes to visit.

Alice Taylor, The Woman of the House.
After her brother’s death, a woman tries to help her sister-in-law run the farm and struggles with the neighbors and the local priest.

Colm Toibin, The Blackwater Lightship.
A woman learns that her brother has AIDS and must cope with his imminent death and with her estranged mother.

William Trevor, The Story of Lucy Gault.
A woman in Ireland spends her life longing for forgiveness when an impulsive childhood act tears her family apart.


Mystery

John Brady, A Carra King.
While his boss is on leave, Inspector Minogue takes charge when an American tourist is found dead in the trunk of a rental car. Part of a series.

Ken Bruen, The Guards.
After he’s kicked out of the Garda, Jack Taylor is asked to investigate a girl’s apparent suicide.

Dicey Deere, The Irish Cairn Murder.
An American expatriate with a cottage in Ireland helps a local boy whose family has been receiving threats. Part of a series.

Bartholomew Gill, Death of an Irish Sea Wolf.
Inspector Peter McGarr investigates three deaths, three disappearances and two missing boats that may be related to a missing WWII treasure. Part of a series.

Sheila Pim, Creeping Venom.
When an old woman is poisoned in a small Irish village, one of the suspects helps the beleaguered police force solve the crime.

Peter Tremayne, Our Lady of Darkness.
In 7th century Ireland, Sister Fidelma races to prove that her good friend Brother Eadulf is innocent of the accusations that he raped and murdered a novitiate. Part of a series.



Biography

Elaine Crowley, A Dublin Girl: Growing Up in the 1930s.

Dermott Healy, The Bend for Home.
At the center of this family memoir is a diary the author kept as a boy.

Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes.
Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography of the author’s childhood in Limerick.

Frank O’Connor, An Only Child.
Story of the author’s early years as the shy child of poor parents to his release from prison as a
revolutionary at the age of twenty.

Nuala O’Faolain, Are you somebody? The Accidental Memoirs of a Dublin Woman.
Includes columns originally published in the Irish Times.

Dennis Smith, A Song for Mary: An Irish-American Memory.
Absorbing memoir of the author’s impoverished boyhood on Manhattan’s East Side during the 1950s.

Alice Taylor, To School Through the Fields: An Irish Country Reminiscence.
Reminiscences of rural County Cork.

William Trevor, Excursions in the Real World.
One of the greatest living writers of short stories tells deeply personal stories of his childhood in
south Ireland.

Marrie Walsh, An Irish Country Childhood.
Scenes of the author’s childhood in County Mayo evoke a world lost to us today — a world of spring wells and peat fires.

Richard White, Remembering Ahanagran: Storytelling in a Family’s Past.
The author examines the tales his immigrant mother told of her early life in Ireland and Chicago and discovers surprising truths.