Dublin Seven is the gritty, violent, sometimes raunchy story of nineteen-year-old Shane coming up as a small-time cocaine dealer in Dublin. Raw and fast-moving, think Trainspotting or The Wire, but set in Celtic Tiger Ireland.
While Ireland (like much of the rest of the world) was in lockdown in Spring and Summer 2020, we scratched our heads and wondered what to do to help lift people's spirits. We decided to join forces with Irish Pensions & Finance and run a competition celebrating Irish people's love of a good story - and a good laugh.
It is winter, just before Christmas. On the cliffs above the transit town of Port Hiver, stands a decommissioned lighthouse. Inside, a man who calls himself Peter Boniface, ponders the falling snow and his imminent retirement. Boniface, a psychotherapist, is plucked by the arrival of an unexpected visitor out of his reverie and into the most hazardous case of his career. His visitor is bones, a former paramilitary, seeking, he says, 'to make a good death'. The Lighthouse Keeper, in the form of a case history, is an account of this encounter, the outcome of which will determine everything about the remaining lives of both men. Nothing less than an examination of the conflicting values underpinning Irish culture, the novel traces the intersecting worlds of its two protagonists, extending in significance far beyond the confines of Boniface's consulting room.
The Weinstein affair in Hollywood has grabbed the headlines for months. Controlling behaviour, particularly of men towards women, is far more common, in all walks of life, than we have been led to believe.
Re-edited and re-jacketed for 2022. How He Wins, by the best-selling author of Steps to Freedom, focuses in particular on the impact of abuse on the target-woman’s family members, and features numerous powerful personal stories. It is essential reading for any woman who has been the target of domestic abuse and has found herself abandoned by the community.
'Edge of Heaven' is classic dystopian sci-fi. In a city of meagre resources, under lockdown because of a mysterious virus, Boston and Danae, search for vital medicine and discover not everything is as it seems.
Joe McGowan's booming business Brennan & McGowan sold 1,650 private homes in less than five years, becoming embroiled in many legal battles along the way, with banks, planners and compensation cases running into millions of pounds. This resulted in Joe and his business partner being pilloried before the tribunal. In this revealing biography, Joe McGowan reveals the explosive story behind what Tribunal counsel Patricia Dillon SC called 'a lifetime of lies'.