Irish

Saoirse doesn’t believe in love at first sight or happy endings. If they were real, her mother would still be able to remember her name and not in a care home with early onset dementia. A condition that Saoirse may one day turn out to have inherited. So she’s not looking for a relationship. She doesn’t see the point in igniting any romantic sparks if she’s bound to burn out. But after a chance encounter at an end-of-term house party, Saoirse is about to break her own rules. For a girl with one blue freckle, an irresistible sense of mischief, and a passion for rom-coms. Unbothered by Saoirse’s no-relationships rulebook, Ruby proposes a loophole: They don’t need true love to have one summer of fun, complete with every cliché, rom-com montage-worthy date they can dream up—and a binding agreement to end their romance come fall. It would be the perfect plan, if they weren’t forgetting one thing about the Falling in Love Montage: when it’s over, the characters actually fall in love… for real.

In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city center, where expectant mothers who have come down with the terrible new Flu are quarantined together. Into Julia's regimented world step two outsiders—Doctor Kathleen Lynn, a rumoured Rebel on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney. In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over three days, these women change each other's lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, carers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work. In The Pull of the Stars, Emma Donoghue once again finds the light in the darkness in this new classic of hope and survival against all odds.

We are where we come from' That's not true. That's not true because if that's true there's no hope for any of us.Lori is coming home from her first term at university. It's only been a few weeks and already things have gone badly wrong. But none of the rest of the family knows, or understands, what really happened.In this fiercely observed family drama, three teenage girls struggle to define who they are, and why, and where they might be going.Leaves won the George Devine Award 2006, the premier award for new writing by an emerging playwright in the UK and Ireland. The play opened at the Druid Theatre, Galway in March 2007 before transferring to the Royal Court Theatre, London.

Alle mögen Humaira »Hani« Khan – sie ist unkompliziert und eines der beliebtesten Mädchen an der Schule. Doch als sie sich vor ihren Freundinnen als bisexuell outet, sprechen diese ihr ihre Identität ab und sagen, sie könne nicht bi sein, wenn sie bisher nur mit Jungs ausgegangen sei. In Panik platzt Hani heraus, dass sie eine Beziehung hat … mit einem Mädchen, das ihre Freundinnen absolut hassen: Ishita »Ishu« Dey. Ishu ist das genaue Gegenteil von Hani. Sie ist eine akademische Überfliegerin und hofft, dass es sie auf den richtigen Weg fürs College bringt, wenn sie zur Schülersprecherin gewählt wird. Doch Ishita erklärt sich nur bereit, Hani zu helfen, wenn Hani ihr dabei hilft, beliebter zu werden, damit sie eine Chance hat, zur Schülersprecherin gewählt zu werden. Trotz ihres für beide Seiten vorteilhaften Pakts entwickeln sie echte Gefühle füreinander. Aber Beziehungen sind kompliziert, und manche Menschen würden alles tun, um zwei bengalische Mädchen daran zu hindern, ihr Happy End zu bekommen.

Aideen has plenty of problems she can’t fix. Her best (and only) friend is pulling away. Her mother’s drinking problem is a constant concern. She’s even running out of outlandish diseases to fake so she can skip PE. But when Aideen stumbles on her nemesis, overachiever Meabh Kowalski, in the midst of a full-blown meltdown, she sees a problem that—unlike her own disaster of a life—seems refreshingly easy to solve. Meabh is desperate to escape her crushing pile of extracurriculars. Aideen volunteers to help. By pushing Meabh down the stairs. Problem? Solved. Meabh’s sprained ankle is the perfect excuse to ditch her overwhelming schedule. But when another student learns about their little scheme and brings Aideen another “client” who needs her “help,” it kicks off a semester of traded favors, ill-advised hijinks, and an unexpected chance at love. Fixing other people’s problems won’t fix her own, but it might be the push she needs to start.

Selected as an Evening Standard 'one to watch in 2023' It's the early 1990s, and in the Irish village of Crossmore, Lucy feels out of place. Despite her fierce friendships, she's always felt this way, and the conventional path of marriage and motherhood doesn't appeal to her at all. Not even with handsome and doting Martin, her closest childhood friend. Lucy begins to make sense of herself during a long hot summer, when a spark with her school friend Susannah escalates to an all-consuming infatuation, and, very quickly, to a desperate and devastating love. Fearful of rejection from her small and conservative community, Lucy begins living a double life, hiding the most honest parts of herself in stolen moments with Susannah. But with the end of school and the opportunity to leave Crossmore looming, Lucy must choose between two places, two people and two futures, each as terrifying as the other. But only one can offer her real happiness. Sunburn is an astute and tender portrayal of first love, adolescent anxiety and the realities of growing up in a small town where tradition holds people tightly in its grasp.

They said they'd never let a man get in the way of their friendship... \* Laura and Dee haven't spoken since the day they buried a body together. It was supposed to be the best summer of their lives. A break from university, from parents, from wasting their time on Irish boys with farmer's tans. They'd imagined flirting with Ryan Phillippe on a New York rooftop. Instead, with summer jobs waitressing at a country club on Long Island, pickings are slim. Mikey is a bully. Marco is off limits. Jose is angry. Mr Haight is a sleaze. Josh is too keen. And Other Josh… he's something else entirely. It's a miracle only one of them ends up dead. Dee is pretty sure she didn't mean to kill him. Laura, to her credit, never asked. Not until she sends an email, out of the blue, more than twenty years later. It's finally time to mend the biggest heartbreak of that summer; Laura wants her best friend back. A hilarious and heartfelt story about friendship, young women and bad men. Sarah Breen and Emer McLysaght bring their trademark Aisling humour in this completely new direction. Noughties nostalgia and a dead body, it's the novel you didn't know you needed.

A young Irish gangster is caught in a brutal dance between love and loyalty Tony Ward is back in Dublin. After five years in England, where he fled after murdering a rival gang member, he returns to find that his mentor is dead and his best friend has gone straight. Keen to reestablish himself, he jumps at the chance to work for the enforcer of a local crime boss. But Flute Walsh is a far cry from the boy Tony once knew. Drawn to Flute in ways he never expected, Tony finds that the boundaries he thought he understood are beginning to break down. Is there room for connection in a world where nothing stays buried and where retribution is just a bullet away? By turns savage and tender, unexpected and intimate, All Them Dogs is a gripping story of violence, greed, and desire that explores one man’s struggles to find balance in an unsparing world.