Nine lives. Four generations. One family. The MacEntees are no ordinary family. Determined to be different to other people, they have carved out a place for themselves in Irish life by the sheer force of their own personalities. But when a horrifying act of violence befalls television star Alma, a chain of events is set in motion that will leave even the MacEntees struggling to make sense of who they are.

Nazneen is a teenager forced into an arranged marriage with an older man and misery seems to stretch ahead for her. Fearfully leaving the sultry oppression of her Bangladeshi village, Nazneen finds herself cloistered in a small flat in a high-rise block in the East End of London. Because she speaks no English, she is obliged to depend totally on her husband. But it becomes apparent that, of the two, she is the real survivor.…

Spanning four centuries, The Long Gaze Back features 22 new stories by some of the most talented Irish women writers working today. Taken together, the collected works of these writers reveal an enrapturing, unnerving, and piercingly beautiful mosaic of a lively literary landscape. The anthology presents an inclusive and celebratory portrait of the high calibre of contemporary literature in Ireland. These stories run the gamut from heartbreaking to humorous, but each leaves a lasting impression. They chart the passions, obligations, trials and tribulations of a variety of vividly drawn characters with unflinching honesty and relentless compassion. These are stories to savour.

American Maggie Monroe is a journalist for New York's hard-hitting current affairs show Newsline. Independent and fearless, the more cutting-edge the story, the happier she is. But when her next assignment turns out to be an in-depth documentary on the decline of England's ruling classes, she's furious at being sent to cover a bloody tea party.

Over the past decade, Simon Van Booy has been listening to people’s stories. With these personal accounts as a starting point, he has crafted a powerful collection of short fiction that takes listeners into the innermost lives of everyday people. From a family saved from ruin by a mysterious benefactor to a downtrodden boxer who shows unexpected kindness to a mugger, these tales reveal not only the precarious balance maintained between grief and happiness in our lives but also how the echoes of personal tragedy can shape us for the better. 

In a small Kent town in the 1950s, a bewildered little girl is growing up. Ostracised because of her colour, she tries her best to fit in, but nobody wants anything to do with her. A nanny climbs the steps of a smart London address. She’s convinced that her connection to the family behind the door is more than professional. And on the walls of an English stately home, amongst the family portraits, hangs an eighteenth-century oil painting of a mysterious black woman in a silk gown.

If families are like solar systems - bodies that orbit in time around one another, sometimes close and sometimes far away - what is the force that moves them? And what are the consequences when one planet tugs others off course? Lotte is an astronomer who spends her nights peering into deep space rather than looking too closely at herself. Returning to her hometown after years abroad, and reeling from a devastating diagnosis, she finds that much has changed. Lotte’s father has remarried, and she’s estranged from her former best friend, Eve. 

Andrew Sanderson, brilliant surgeon and renowned musician, is still grieving the death of his wife Mary when his younger daughter turns up on the doorstep having left her philandering husband. It’s not long before the house is overrun with daughters, grandchildren, sons-in-law and a boisterous stray dog called Storm. At Andrew's time of life, is this really what he needs? One thing is sure, home is a lot more interesting than it once was, and things have certainly changed from when he was a boy.

Sue Townsend, creator of the much-loved Adrian Mole series, tells a compassionate and gritty story of love and loss in Ghost Children. Seventeen years ago Angela Carr aborted an unwanted child. The child's father, Christopher Moore, was devastated by the loss and retreated from the world. However, when he makes a horrifying discovery on the heath, he finds that he is compelled to confront Angela about the past. As they start seeing each other again, can they avoid past mistakes? And will their future together be eclipsed by the mistakes of yesterday?

Marion Zetland lives with her domineering older brother, John, in a decaying Georgian townhouse on the edge of a northern seaside resort. A timid spinster in her 50s who still sleeps with teddy bears, Marion does her best to shut out the shocking secret that John keeps in the cellar. Until, suddenly, John has a heart attack, and Marion is forced to go down to the cellar herself and face the gruesome truth that her brother has kept hidden. As questions are asked and secrets unravel, maybe John isn't the only one with a dark side.

For 15-year-old Michael Berg, a chance meeting with an older woman leads to far more than he ever imagined. The woman in question is Hanna, and before long they embark on a passionate, clandestine love affair which leaves Michael both euphoric and confused. For Hanna is not all she seems. Years later, as a law student observing a trial in Germany, Michael is shocked to realise that the person in the dock is Hanna. The woman he had loved is a criminal.

A book about family, selfishness and compassion on Ireland's Atlantic coast, from the Booker Prize-winner. Hanna, Dan, Constance and Emmet return to the west coast of Ireland for a final family Christmas in the home their mother is about to sell. As the feast turns to near painful comedy, a last, desperate act from Rosaleen - a woman who doesn't quite know how to love her own children - forces them to confront the weight of family ties and the road that brought them home.

The stunning new novel from Costa-Novel-Award-winning novelist Maggie O'Farrell: a portrait of an Irish family in crisis in the legendary heatwave of 1976.

This is a singular memoir: an excavation of mother love, a candid account of the agonies and absurdities of the cancer experience and a doggedly optimistic paean to life. When Genevieve Fox finds a lump in her throat, she turns up for the hospital diagnosis in a party frock and fancy hair. I can't have cancer, she thinks. I've done my hair. But there is another reason she can't countenance cancer. Genevieve was orphaned to it at the age of nine.

The nine surviving children of the Hegarty clan gather in Dublin for the wake of their wayward brother Liam. It wasn't the drink that killed him - although that certainly helped - it was what happened to him as a boy in his grandmother's house in the winter of 1968.