Irish Biography

In 1997, Dr Marie Cassidy arrived in Dublin from Glasgow. There to discuss a possible deputy state pathologist post with Professor John Harbison, instead she was whisked by police escort...

I grew up in a psychiatric experiment crossed with an alcoholic experiment. . . . a place run by two people who were extraordinarily drunk and guarded by a potentially...

Storytelling kept alive the myths, legends and history of the Blasket Islands. In her old age, Peig Sayers, recounted her life to her son who recorded the tale in this...

'The one thing you can't fully control in a ship is the water all around you, so part of your plan is always reading and analysing the currents and the...

'Moving and insightful' - Rosanna DavisonRemarkably honest, brutally heroic and darkly humorous memoir following a devastating diagnosis of early onset Parkinson's disease.Twitch is a frank and funny memoir about picking...

Ballybunion to the River Kwai is the remarkable story of Don Kennedy's harrowing experience as an Irish prisoner of war under the Japanese from 1942-45. Vividly narrated by Don's son...

For almost forty years, Paul Williams has chronicled the life and crimes of some of Ireland''s most notorious godfathers, killers and thieves. In Crooks he brings his readers for a...

The book shows Michael's 'logical opportunism' in action, and explains how the Smurfit culture and systems provided a world-beating competitive advantage. 'It is up to others to judge how well...

Joseph Mary Plunkett (1887-1916) from Dublin was one of the leaders of the 1916 Rising, the designer of the military plan and the youngest signatory of the Proclamation. A recognised...

'Mary Kennedy's new book is part memoir, part spiritual guide, part self-help book. It's like the gift of a Christmas visit from a friend' RTE GuideA sense of home, and...

Angels at My Fingertips takes us back to the territory that made Angels in My Hair a million selling, international bestseller. Stories of Lorna's early life in rural Ireland, of...

'From the moment I crossed the mountain I fell in love. With the place, which was more beautiful than any place I'd ever seen. With the people I met there....

'Searing and generous ... a blazing beacon' - Donal Ryan 'Every man and woman should read this' - Sabina Higgins'Written with honesty, power and insight' - Roisin Ingle'Immensely valuable ......

'Harding writes like an angel' Sunday TimesTalking to Strangers, from the No.1 bestselling author of Staring at Lakes, Hanging with the Elephant and On Tuesdays I'm a Buddhist is a...

The Crocodile by the Door by Selina Guinness - shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award - is a remarkable, compelling and moving memoir of a farm, a family and a...

***Winner of the Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Awards - Newcomer of the Year*** 'One of the year's most arresting, humbling and acute memoirs. It is a catch-in-the-throat, life-affirming work...

Throughout his life, Michael Harding has lived with a sense of emptiness - through faith, marriage, fatherhood and his career as a writer, a pervading sense of darkness and unease...

A memoir about death, how to grieve, and the healing power of the sea.Over the course of seven difficult years Miriam Mulcahy lost her mother, father andsister, each grief threatening...

'Sublime' - Donal Ryan, author of Strange Flowers'A book about the raw, riotous, brutally beautiful act of being alive.' - Kerri ni Dochartaigh, author of Thin PlacesAlice Kinsella was in...

Nora Ephron meets Bram Stoker in Sophie White's vivid and ambitious literary non-fiction collection. White asks uncomfortable questions about the lived reality of womanhood in the 21st century, and the...

'The path I have travelled, the things I have done and the people I have met in crisis situations have given me a window into those qualities that make us...

'I have him bitched, balloxed and bewildered, for there's a system and a science in taking the piss out of a screw and I'm a well-trained man at it.' So...

A GARDA, A FORCED ADOPTION, A FIGHT FOR JUSTICEIn 1984, Majella Moynihan was a fresh-faced young garda recruit when she gave birth to a baby boy. Charged with breaching An...

WINNER AT THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS 2025'Fascinating - a great read' - Miriam O'Callaghan'Brilliant, absolutely terrific' - Matt CooperWith a foreword by Richie SadlierFrom the heartbreak of losing his mother...

Following the sudden death of his father in 2016, Dara Waldron found himself disoriented in a world that had once filled him with wonder. A year later, a chance encounter...

'Outstanding' JOHN PRESTON | 'Extraordinary' THE TIMES | 'Superb' ANDREW ROBERTS | 'Vivid and compelling' IRISH TIMES | 'Psychologically shrewd' IRISH INDEPENDENT | 'A page-turning finale' HISTORY TODAYCelebrated reformer and...

'Since I've had my first book published, I've earned more from cleaning than from writing. The home economics don't add up.' HOME ECONOMICS is Caitriona Lally's humorous, thought-provoking memoir of...

Born prematurely, weighing less than a bag of sugar, Oisin Murphy's life has always been one of struggle. From a young age he found communion with horses. Mesmerised by their...

The head of the Guinness family tells the true story of how his ancestors created the largest brewery in the world.In this narrative non-fiction book, Arthur Edward Guinness, the 4th...

While there have been biographies of anti-Treaty male figures such as CathalBrugha, Eamon de Valera and Harry Boland, there has been limited in-depthanalysis of on women on the anti-Treaty side....

'An absolutely brilliant read' Patrick Kielty, Late Late Show, RTE'Blisteringly honest . . . hilarious, traumatic, joyful and terrifying. Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy read!' Liz...

One day in the summer of 2016, Michael Harding's wife brought an unusual gift home from Warsaw. All of a sudden, he found himself falling back into the old religious...

'If you're interested in Dublin, or if you're interested in the novelist John Banville, or if you're interested in radiantly superb sentences about whatever - I'm all three - then...

They could prove nothing. There was no evidence that Helen O'Reilly was ever there. And how would they believe that a woman of Mamie's years could drag the body of...

A GARDA, A FORCED ADOPTION, A FIGHT FOR JUSTICEIn 1984, Majella Moynihan was a fresh-faced young garda recruit when she gave birth to a baby boy. Charged with breaching An...

'Truth telling and truth recovery have seldom been as heart-breaking or necessary as in this powerful story of human vulnerability and failure - and the ultimate triumph of the human...

AS FEATURED ON DESERT ISLAND DISCS, BIG SCOTTISH BOOK CLUB AND THE ZOE BALL BOOKCLUB, A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE SUNDAY TIMES, THE TIMES, GUARDIAN, IRISH TIMES, OBSERVER,...