New Irish Non-Fiction

The story of the life of Henry Joy McCracken is fused with the history and environs of eighteenth-century Belfast.

The story of the life of Henry Joy McCracken is fused with the history and environs of eighteenth-century Belfast.

Dublin in the 1970s ... as you might never have imagined it. Life and death, heaven and hell and everything in between. Gangs of marauding skinheads, persecuted dwarfs, put-upon amateur dramatists and discommoded vagrants, vengeful rats, mythical icons and ? ctional heros, all surfacing in a river of consciousness that James Joyce, himself, could have been proud of.

LOCAL invites us into a forgotten corner of contemporary Ireland – Tallaght, on the periphery of Dublin – where Pete Smyth has lived and worked for over thirty years. Smyth’s uniquely intimate account captures the richness and humour of a community at the frontline of Ireland’s rapid modernisation. His approach is deeply affectionate, but without sentimentality, inviting us into private spaces, moments of quiet drama – and some wild nights in his local, the Killinarden House pub.

Maria thinks it is going to be a dull summer until she meets a strange boy with an unusual request. An exciting and unpredictable ghost story for younger readers that's a little scary, but not too scary!

In 1968, Conn Curran summed up his life-long companionship with Joyce, including the 1904 photograph he took of his friend in his family’s back garden. With this re-issue of Curran’s book, another group of University College Dubliners takes a new look at his work, delving into the Curran-Laird collection at the James Joyce Library.

"Bright lights. Awards and film festivals. Glittering premieres." It's never been that kind of life for Max Pellegrino, a little-known Italian actor who plies his trade in the dubbing industry and secretly pines for a film career that has never been realised.

The title of the book might suggest that this is a book about the buildings of Trinity College, indeed just its residential buildings, but in truth it is a beautifully illustrated and researched production, a labour of love by R A?(Andrew) Somerville, otherwise known to a generation of economics students at TCD for his lectures in financial and mathematical economics. This book contains a history of the early buildings of Trinity College, from the Elizabethan Quadrangle up to the residential buildings of the early 18th century.

Re-Print. Peter Somerville-Large's celebrated account of an exploration, by bicycle, of the beautiful, ragged coastline of West Cork is published here for the first time in paperback.