fiction ireland

Hardcover. Boston, G K Hall & Co, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 585 pages. Lists and provides the reader with descriptions of 1440 titles, 121 authors, with a brief plot summary. If you love the classic English mystery novels of the first half of the 20th century, this is a great book to have on your shelf. It chronicles all of the authors, novels and lead characters from these books. Special features include a list of 100 classics of the genre, explanations and charts of England's Police and class system, and maps of Great Britan and Ireland. Dust jacket with minor edgewear, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan, 1st US, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket, 165 pages with b&w drawings by Ralph Pinto. A leprechaun must recapture the tune he lost to a fiddler. Pinto's chapter-top illustrations liven this already lively chain of Irish folk tales, loosely tied together through Brogeen the Leprechuan. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Scribner, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. McKinty's second novel is a brutal tale of revenge starring a young illegal immigrant from Ireland who chooses a criminal career in New York over unemployment in Belfast. Arriving in the city in the early 1990s, the antihero Michael Forsythe lands a spot as an enforcer for Irish mobster Darkey White. Though Forsythe at first keeps his hands relatively clean, he soon racks up a significant number of kills in skirmishes with rival crews as well as with Dominican gangs warring for control of the streets. An affair with his boss's girlfriend leads to a setup: he and his mates are trapped in a drug sting in Mexico and abandoned in a remote prison. "If someone grows up in the civil war of Belfast in the seventies and eighties, perhaps violence is his only form of meaningful expression," McKinty writes early in the novel, and the bulk of the story recounts Forsythe's grisly efforts to escape and avenge himself, including a stint with a Dominican group seeking to oust Darkey White. The pace is brisk and energetic, but Forsythe remains a cipher-a self-educated intellectual who listens to Tolstoy on tape during a stakeout but exhibits puzzlingly little interest in finding an alternative to the gun and the knife. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1st, 1907, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in light green pictorial cloth, 241 pages. An historical adventure set in Ireland. A novel on Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the last significant claimant of the Stuart dynasty to the British throne and leader of the Jacobite rebellion in 1745-46. Previous owner's inscription on front fly leaf. Uncommon title.

Hardcover. NY, E.P. Dutton, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 251 pages. A story of murder and family intrigue set in Ireland.

Hardcover. New York, Viking Penguin, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 288 pages. Hardcover with black & white illustrations. Dust jacket with only minor wear. Clean, unmarked copy.

Hardcover. London, Harvill Press, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a translucent dust jacket, 165 pages. Illustrated with Steve Pyke's b&w photographs. SIGNED BY BOTH O'GRADY AND PYKE on the title page. Stranded in a dismal flat in England, the protagonist remembers his happy childhood in Ireland, the rough living and working conditions in England, and his only love. The language is quite simple and often Hiberno Irish, but deeply imaginative and so lyrical, that the line between prose and poetry gets blurred. The beautiful black/white pictures added to this book, and the author's ability to portray Irish music help to give an insight into Irish culture. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st US, 1900, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth stamped in gilt and three colors, 384 pages plus publisher's ads in rear. 12 b&w illustrations by Charles Sheldon. Desmond Kennedy is a young Irish lad who left Ireland to join the Irish Brigade in the service of Louis XIV of France. In Paris he incurred the deadly hatred of a powerful courtier from whom he had rescued a young girl who had been kidnapped, and his perils are of absorbing interest. Captured in an attempted Jacobite invasion of Scotland, he escaped in a most extraordinary manner. As aid-de-camp to the Duke of Berwick he experienced thrilling adventures in Flanders. Transferred to the Army in Spain, he was nearly assassinated, but escaped to return, when peace was declared, to his native land, having received pardon and having recovered his estates. Previous owner's signature on a blank prelim page, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 273 pages. Hardcover. SIGNED BY AUTHOR. Decked foreedge. Teal fabric covered, Very clean inside and out. Review from back cover, "There's a cast of characters worthy of a modern-day Shakespeare; bathetic descriptions of using the lavatory that would have had Beckett smiling; and the gods' playful pursuit of women that could be lifted straight from Ovid's The Art of Love. Banville, already esteemed for the brilliance of his language, proves in this novel to have a mastery, too, of these many colliding universes."

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan, 1st, 1924, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 265 pages. Brick-red cloth with black decoration, color and b/w plates by Wilfred Jones. Previous owner's inscription on half-title page, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, E.P. Dutton, 1st US, 1966, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 214 pages, illustrated in b&w by Charles Keeping. Ex-lib with stamping and residue to endpapers. An adventure story from a 13th c folk-poem with elements from invasions of the 9th and 10th century, redone by a well known modern writer and illustrator. Prince Horn, driven from his father's kingdom at 15 by Turkish invaders, flees to Westernesse and becomes a page at the royal court. Then his love for the Princess is treacherously revealed and he is exiled to Ireland, from which he battles to free his kingdom and win his princess. Published when the author was 24, and the second of his many vivid translations and retellings of traditional narratives.

Hardcover. NY, Harper and Brothers, reprint, 1836, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue textured cloth with decorative gilt title on spine. Vol. 2 ONLY of a ten volume set. This book combines the 3rd and 4th volumes in the original 18 volume set. 213 + 238 pages. Frontis. engraving and illustrated title page reprinted from the 1832 edition. This collection of moral tales written by Maria Edgeworth explores themes of education, family relationships, and social issues in 19th century Ireland. The stories are entertaining and engaging while also providing valuable lessons about life and morality. Edgeworth was a significant figure in the development of the novel as a literary form and her work is still widely read and admired today. Solid binding, mild foxing. Previous owner's name on title page.

Hardcover. NY, Norton, 1st US, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright unclipped dust jacket. This political thriller set in Ireland was a bestseller there and caused some apprehension in political circles.

Hardcover. New York, Random House , 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 402 pages. Cloth boards in a bright dust jacket. Clean, tight copy. The subjects of Salman Rushdie's collection of non-fiction range from The Wizard of Oz, U2, India and Indian writing, the death of Princess Diana, and football, to twentieth-century writers including Angela Carter, Arthur Miller, Edward Said, J. M. Coetzee and Arundhati Roy. In a central section, 'Messages from the Plague Years', Rushdie focuses on the fight against the Iranian fatwa, presenting texts both personal and political, which show for the first time how it was to live through those days. Rushdie's columns for the New York Times confront current issues - Kashmir, Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Islam and the West - as well as lighter topics such as reality TV, sport and sleaze. The book ends with the lectures that give it its title - Rushdie's exploration of the theme of frontiers: crossing them, breaking taboos, and - in the light of September 11 - the world of permeable frontiers in which we all live.

New York, Harcourt Brace, 1st, 1939, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardbound, light blue cloth stamped in black. 155 pages. Top front cover with slight bend. Black & white illustrations by Reginald Birch. Dust jacket fair only with fading, chipping, tears. Brodart cover. The story of an Irish lad and his tin whistle that makes an old cow dance, complete with a Fairy Queen, Celtic humor and a happy ending. No markings.

Hardcover. London, J. M. Dent, 1st UK, 1953, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Poor, Hardcover in poor dust jacket with pieces missing. 180 pages, b&w drawings. 12 authentic tales from Ireland. Book is tight and clean.

Hardcover. NY, Riverhead Books, 1st US, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The secrets people kept, the lies they told. In these visceral, stunningly crafted stories, people are effortlessly cruel to one another, and the natural world is a primitive salve. Here, women are domestically trapped by predatory men. Ireland's folklore and politics loom large, and poverty, emotional and material, seeps through every crack. By an award-winning Irish writer, her second book. Clean copy.

NY, Lincoln MacVeagh. Dial Press, 1st US, 1924, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth with gilt lettering on spine and vignette on front cover, 290 pages. A Story of Northern Ireland before the Revolution. Rich in humor and humanity, it was one of the six novels chosen, out of thousands by Harrap, the English publisher for a cash prize. The green cloth has discoloration, washed out splotches mostly to rear cover and part of spine. The interior is clean, binding tight.