Guest Review by Eoghan Totten

Manuela Moser’s Last night, the mountain is a breathless game of contradictions: part dream, part discourse; yearning and sardonic; halting and cascading. Its terrain is an Echeresque tapestry of grey skies, crushed velvet mountains, rescue helicopters, sex tapes and sad swimming pools. Full of notes and examples that frame and reframe experience, this pamphlet hones in on the ways we assimilate phenomena, cumulatively asking of what, if anything, we can be sure.

Guest Review by Alanna Duffy

With fierce imagination, a woman revisits the moments that shape her life; from crushes on teachers to navigating relationships in a fast-paced world; from overhearing her grandmothers' peculiar stories to nurturing her own personal freedom and a boundless love of literature.

Fusing fantasy with lived experience, Checkout 19 is a vivid and mesmerizing journey through the small traumas and triumphs that define us - as readers, as writers, as human beings.

Our Holiday Gift Guide for friends is packed with ideas for all the different readers in your friend group. ❄️

Our Children and Young Adult Holiday Gift Guide is packed with ideas for the children and young folks on your shopping list. ❄️

Guest Review by Eoghan Totten

Geraldine O’Kane’s anticipated first collection is an impactful introduction to a voice that is compassionate, vivid, and courageous. The poems weave between spaces, timelines and identities bearing witness, most often personal, to the encroachment of violence, loss, and traumatic events on places and relationships — home, mother, lover, community — that we rely on as our source of safety, while exploring the impact of this on the fine balance between good and poor mental health and how that affects everyday forays into new situations. Whether micro or sustained, Geraldine’s work showcases the power of poetry and art to enter as-yet-uncertain places and breath. - Olive Broderick

Charlie Regan’s life isn’t going forward, so she’s decided to go back.

After a tough few years floundering around the British film industry, and watching her father's health rapidly decline, Charlie and her best friend Laura journey to her ancestral home of Clipim, an island off the west coast of Ireland.

This could be the last chance to connect with her dad's history before she loses him. But when the girls arrive, Charlie begins to question both her difficult relationship with Laura and her father's childhood stories. Before long, she's embroiled in a devastating conspiracy that's been sixty years in the making .

Get into the Halloween spirit with these spooky recommendations! From children’s books to nonfiction, we have something for everyone. 🎃

Get into the Halloween spirit with these spooky recommendations! From children’s books to nonfiction, we have something for everyone. 🎃

Rosaleen McDonagh writes fearlessly about a diverse experience of being Irish, a disabled person, and a woman. Unsettled explores racism, abuse, ableism, and resistance, as well as the bonds of community, family, and friends. As an Irish Traveller writing from a feminist perspective, McDonagh’s essays are rich and complex, raw and honest, and above all, uncompromising.

Victoria Kennefick's daring first book, Eat or We Both Starve, draws readers into seemingly recognizable set-pieces - the family home, the shared meal, the rituals of historical occasions, desire - but Kennefick forges this material into new shapes, making them viable again for exploring what it is to live with the past - and not to be consumed by it.

Intimacies exquisitely charts the steps and missteps of young women trying to find their place in the world. From a Belfast student ordering illegal drugs online to end an unwanted pregnancy to a young mother's brush with mortality; from a Christmas Eve walking the city center streets when everything seems possible, to a night flight from Canada which could change a life irrevocably, these are stories of love, loss, and exile, of new beginnings and lives, lived away from 'home'.

Taking in, too, the lives of other women who could be guiding lights - from Monica Lewinsky to Caroline Norton to Sinead O'Connor - Intimacies offers keenly felt and subtly revealing insights into the heartbreak and hope of modern life.

Our teenage years are very important in shaping the women we become. We start to learn more about who we are and to take steps towards our future, but during these years we can often be consumed with doubt and anxiety. We worry about how we look, what people think, whether we should play sports, not getting ‘perfect’ marks, and how many likes and followers we have online.

You’ve Got This! is a positive and empowering guide designed to help girls find their place in the world and grab life with both hands. Full of practical information on handling the challenges of the teenage years with a healthy mindset, it covers topics like finding your friendship tribe, handling peer pressure, healthy body image, periods, love, sex and relationships, exam pressure and navigating the online world.

You’ve Got This! is a supportive companion that will boost self-esteem, inspire positive thinking and build resilience while encouraging you to see the amazing potential in yourself. Discover that the parts of you that are different are your superpowers – own them, cover them in glitter and shine brightly!

In this dark, glittering collection of short stories, Deirdre Sullivan explores the trauma and power that reside in women’s bodies.

A teenage girl tries to fit in at a party held in a haunted house, with unexpected and disastrous consequences. A mother and daughter run a thriving online business selling antique dolls, while their customers get more than they bargained for. And after a stillbirth, a young woman discovers that there is something bizarre and wondrous growing inside of her.

With empathy and invention, Sullivan effortlessly blends genres in stories that are by turns strange and exquisite. Already established as an award-winning writer for children and young adults, I Want to Know That I Will Be Okay marks her arrival as a captivating new voice in literary fiction.

In honor of June being LGBTQ Pride Month, I wanted to share recommendations of children’s books that feature LGBTQ characters and families. Books like these are not just beneficial for LGBTQ families — every child can learn something from books that center a message of love and affirmation for everyone in our community.

If you are looking for ways to talk to the children in your life about LGBTQ issues these books are a great conversation starter. If you are hoping to give a child a book that represents them or their family, there are some great options here. While LGBTQ rights have come a long way in recent years, there is still so much work to be done to build a society where people can show up as their fullest selves and feel safe and welcome.

The season's just begun at Seacliff Caravan Park, but none of the residents are having a good time.

Frankie is haunted by his daughter's death. Vidas, homeless and far from Lithuania, seeks sanctuary in an abandoned caravan. Anna struggles to shake off the ghost of her overbearing mother. Kathleen struggles to accept her daughter for who she is. Malcolm, a failed illusionist, makes one final attempt to reinvent himself. Agatha Christie-obsessed Alma faces her toughest case yet as she tries to help them all find what they've lost.

The poems in Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s much-anticipated new collection take place in hospitals, in cellars, in Parisian parks and American laundromats, inside our screens, and beyond them. Poems of blood and birdsong, of rain and desire, of aftermath and ambivalence, each spoken by a voice, which – like the starlings – sings, at once, both past and present.

When you leave Ireland aged 22 to spend your parents’ money, it’s called a gap year. When Ava leaves Ireland aged 22 to make her own money, she’s not sure what to call it, but it involves:

A badly-paid job in Hong Kong, teaching English grammar to rich children;

Julian, who likes to spend money on Ava and lets her move into his guest room;

Edith, who Ava meets while Julian is out of town and actually listens to her when she talks;

Money, love cynicism, unspoken feelings and unlikely connections

Exciting times ensue.

Forgotten Skills of Cooking, a 2009 cookbook from Irish television chef and cookery school owner Darina Allen, is filled with information on nearly every facet of food preparation for Irish cuisine, as well as a collection of straightforward recipes for nearly every traditional Irish dish you could think of. Some of the techniques described may be a bit niche, expensive, and time-consuming, but there is such a wealth of information that anyone who loves food and cooking can easily learn something they didn’t already know in the book.

They’re a glamorous family, the Caseys. Johnny Casey, his two brothers Ed and Liam, their beautiful, talented wives and all their kids spend a lot of time together - birthday parties, anniversary celebrations, weekends away. And they’re a happy family. Johnny’s wife Jessie - who has the most money - insists on it.

Under the surface, though, conditions are murkier. While some people clash, some people like each other far too much …

Everything stays under control until Ed’s wife, Cara, gets concussion and can’t keep her thoughts to herself. One careless remark at Johnny’s birthday party, with the entire family present, starts Cara spilling out all their secrets.

In the subsequent unravelling, every one of the adults finds themselves wondering if it’s time - finally - to grow up?

Sinéad Hynes is a tough, driven, funny young property developer with a terrifying secret.

No one knows it: not her fellow patients in a failing hospital, and certainly not her family. She has confided only in Google and a shiny magpie.

But she can’t go on like this, tirelessly trying to outstrip her past and in mortal fear of her future. Across the ward, Margaret Rose is running her chaotic family from her rose-gold Nokia. In the neighboring bed, Jane, rarely but piercingly lucid, is searching for a decent bra and for someone to listen. Sinéad needs them both.