Billy Irish


Book Description

THE STORY: The scene is a rundown farm in Vermont where two brothers, Billy Irish and Joe Witness, tell each other tales of their conversations with the likes of Mick Jagger and Bob Dylan and (as they also imagine themselves to be Jesse and Frank J




Life Sentences


Book Description

*THE #3 IRISH BESTSELLER* 'Momentous and epic' BERNARD MACLAVERTY 'Superb and moving' JOHN BANVILLE 'A lovely, piercing book' SEBASTIAN BARRY Three generations. More than a century of famine, war, violence and love. At sixteen Nancy, the only member of her family to survive the Great Famine, leaves her small island for the mainland. Finding work in a grand house on the edge of Cork City, she feels irrepressibly drawn to the charismatic gardener Michael Egan, sparking a love affair that soon throws her into a fight for her life. In 1920, Nancy's son Jer has lived through battles of his own as a soldier in the Great War. Now drunk in a jail cell, he struggles to piece together where he has come from, and who he wants to be. And in the early 1980s, Jer's youngest child Nellie is nearing the end of her life in a council house, moments away from her childhood home; remembering the night when she and her family stole back something that was rightfully theirs, she imagines what lies in store for those who will survive her. 'Brilliantly immerses us in its respective time periods' SUNDAY TIMES




Billy


Book Description

By turns heartbreaking and hilarious, this intimate biography of the British comic is “a triumph of the will, an Angela’s Ashes with punch lines” (Publishers Weekly). One of the UK’s most beloved stand-up comedians, Billy Connolly is recognized around the world for his HBO comedy specials and roles in movies like The Boondock Saints and Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. An inspiration to generations of British comedians, including such stars as Eddie Izzard, Billy is known simply as “The Big Yin” in his native Scotland. But his road to success was anything but easy. Abandoned by his mother in a Glasgow tenement, abused by his father and the cruel aunt who became his caretaker, he would seem to have little chance of survival let alone meteoric success. Billy, the revelatory, poignant, and wildly entertaining biography is written by the woman who knows him best—his wife. Pamela Stephenson, a clinical psychologist, takes us through the heartbreaking and hilarious life of this comic legend, providing an intimate window into what made him the man he is today.




Charming Billy


Book Description

Charming Billy is the winner of the 1998 National Book Award for Fiction. Alice McDermott's striking novel, Charming Billy, is a study of the lies that bind and the weight of familial love, of the way good intentions can be as destructive as the truth they were meant to hide. Billy Lynch's family and friends have gathered to comfort his widow, and to pay their respects to one of the last great romantics. As they trade tales of his famous humor, immense charm, and consuming sorrow, a complex portrait emerges of an enigmatic man, a loyal friend, a beloved husband, an incurable alcoholic.




Billy Beg and His Bull


Book Description

With magical gifts from the bull his mother had given him, the son of an Irish king manages to prove his bravery and win a princess as his wife.




Zero Hour for Gen X


Book Description

In Zero Hour for Gen X, Matthew Hennessey calls on his generation, Generation X, to take a stand against tech-obsessed millennials, apathetic baby boomers, utopian Silicon Valley “visionaries,” and the menace to top them all: the soft totalitarian conspiracy known as the Internet of Things. Soon Gen Xers will be the only cohort of Americans who remember life as it was lived before the arrival of the Internet. They are, as Hennessey dubs them, “the last adult generation,” the sole remaining link to a time when childhood was still a bit dangerous but produced adults who were naturally resilient. More than a decade into the social media revolution, the American public is waking up to the idea that the tech sector’s intentions might not be as pure as advertised. The mountains of money being made off our browsing habits and purchase histories are used to fund ever-more extravagant and utopian projects that, by their very natures, will corrode the foundations of free society, leaving us all helpless and digitally enslaved to an elite crew of ultra-sophisticated tech geniuses. But it’s not too late to turn the tide. There’s still time for Gen X to write its own future. A spirited defense of free speech, eye contact, and the virtues of patience, Zero Hour for Gen X is a cultural history of the last 35 years, an analysis of the current social and historical moment, and a generational call to arms.




One Thousand Things Worth Knowing


Book Description

Another wild, expansive collection from the eternally surprising Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Smuggling diesel; Ben-Hur (the movie, yes, but also Lew Wallace's original book, and Seosamh Mac Grianna's Gaelic translation); a real trip to Havana; an imaginary trip to the Château d'If: Paul Muldoon's newest collection of poems, his twelfth, is exceptionally wide-ranging in its subject matter—as we've come to expect from this master of self-reinvention. He can be somber or quick-witted—often within the same poem: The mournful refrain of "Cuthbert and the Otters" is "I cannot thole the thought of Seamus Heaney dead," but that doesn't stop Muldoon from quipping that the ancient Danes "are already dyeing everything beige / In anticipation, perhaps, of the carpet and mustard factories." If this masterful, multifarious collection does have a theme, it is watchfulness. "War is to wealth as performance is to appraisal," he warns in "Recalculating." And "Source is to leak as Ireland is to debt." Heedful, hard-won, head-turning, heartfelt, these poems attempt to bring scrutiny to bear on everything, including scrutiny itself. One Thousand Things Worth Knowing confirms Nick Laird's assessment, in The New York Review of Books, that Muldoon is "the most formally ambitious and technically innovative of modern poets," an experimenter and craftsman who "writes poems like no one else."




The Billboard


Book Description




Secrets and Shadows


Book Description

A collection of three crime mysteries by Giles Ekins, now available in one volume! Dead Girl Found: When Janet hears her deceased daughter's voice accusing her husband of abuse during a spiritualist meeting, it sets off a chain of events that leads to the deaths of both parents. DCI Grace Swan is called in to investigate, but she's still reeling from the loss of her partner and struggling with her superiors. Told from alternating viewpoints, Dead Girl Found is a thrilling murder mystery that keeps you guessing which side holds the truth. Gallows Walk: As DI Christopher Yarrow delves deeper into the investigation of the bungled bank robbery in West Garside, the small town becomes more and more tense. The killer, who has already taken two lives, is still at large and seems to be taunting Yarrow and his team at every turn. With the pressure mounting, Yarrow must race against the clock to catch the killer before he strikes again. But as he uncovers more about the killer's identity, he begins to realize that this case may be more complicated than he ever imagined. Will he be able to solve the case before it's too late? Murder By Illusion: Stage illusionist Charlie Chilton's career is going nowhere until the mysterious Asmodeus Tchort offers him a deal to become the most famous illusionist in the world. Charlie's success quickly follows, but soon he finds himself haunted by nightmares and plagued by gruesome murders as he tours his new act around the country. As the bodies pile up, Charlie begins to wonder if he has become a killer himself, and the true identity of his benefactor becomes more and more unclear.




The Scots-Irish in the Hills of Tennessee


Book Description

Absorbing stories of a race of people who created the civilization in the American wilderness and helped lay the solid foundations for the greatest nation on earth. The Scots-Irish Presbyterians settled in the American frontier during with the 18th century were a unique breed of people with an independent spirit which boldly challenged the arbitrary powers of monarchs and established the church.