Touchy Subjects is about things that make people wince: taboos, controversies, secrets and lies. Some of the events that characters crash into are grand, tragic ones: miscarriage, overdose, missing persons. Other topics, like religion and money, are not inherently taboo, but they can cause acute discomfort because people disagree so vehemently. These stories are about the spectrum of feeling that runs from awkwardness through embarrassment to shame.

Set in the second half of the eighteenth century, Barry Lyndon is the fictional autobiography of an adventurer and rogue. Born into the petty Irish gentry, and outmanoeuvred in his first love-affair, a ruined Barry volunteers for the British army. After seeing service in Germany he deserts and, after a brief spell as a spy, pursues the career of a gambler in the dissolute clubs and courts of Europe. In a determined effort to enter fashionable society he marries a titled heiress but is fina...

Inspired by the true events of the most notorious evictions in Irish history…1861, Donegal, IrelandTen years ago Declan Conaghan’s father died in the Great Famine, and since then, Declan has kept his promise to keep his family out of the workhouse. But all that is threatened with the arrival of new landlord, John Adair. Adair is quick to cause trouble and fear among his tenants. When he turns them off his land, Declan has no option but to break his promise…...

In 1914, Willie Dunne, barely eighteen years old, leaves behind Dublin, his family, and the girl he plans to marry in order to enlist in the Allied forces and face the Germans on the Western Front. Once there, he encounters a horror of violence and gore he could not have imagined and sustains his spirit with only the words on the pages from home and the camaraderie of the mud-covered Irish boys who fight and die by his side.Dimly aware of the political tensions that have grown in I...

THE GLOBALIST is the first in-depth biography of an international power-broker who was instrumental in shaping the global economy that we know today.PETER SUTHERLAND played a defining role in world history over the past 25 years and was arguably the most influential Irish person ever to have lived. He was Ireland’s youngest ever attorney general; the youngest ever European Commissioner; UN special representative for migration; and special adviser to the Vatican.His landmark...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Battle by Paul O'Connell, read by John Cormack.There has never been a rugby player quite like Paul O'Connell. His name is synonymous with passion, heart and determination. But he is also the thinking man's rugby player, a legendary student of the game.As the heartbeat of Munster, British and Irish Lions captain in 2009, and captain of the first Ireland team to retain the Six Nations championship, O'Conn...

Resurrecting buried scandals, audacious hoaxes and private tragedies, Emma Donoghue has written a sequence of short stories about peculiar moments in the history of the British Isles. Here artists mix with poisoners and countesses rub shoulders with cross-dressers, vicars and revolutionaries; the Second Coming is proclaimed in Scotland; and a miniature girl becomes a tiny skeleton in a London museum.

In a world prone to violent flooding, Britain, ravaged 20 years earlier by a deadly virus, has been largely cut off. Survivors are few and far between, most of them infertile. Children are a rare commodity. For 22-year-old Roza Polanski, life with her family in their isolated tower block is relatively comfortable. But when a stranger called Aashay Kent arrives, everything changes. Roza can't shake the feeling that there's more to Aashay than he's letting on. Is there more to life beyond th...

Dan Carter's last game as an All Black culminated with him declared Man of the Match following the 2015 Rugby World Cup final at Twickenham - an unforgettable ending to the career of the greatest fly-half of all time.But along with the triumphs of his signature World Cup win, his performance against the Lions in 2005, and an unprecedented run of Bledisloe Cup successes, there was also the pain and doubt he felt during a prolonged period of injury and rehab following the 2011 World ...

A lyrical and deeply affecting novel recounting the seven days a father spends on the road with his daughter after kidnapping her during a parental visit.Attending a New England summer camp, young Eric Schroder-a first-generation East German immigrant-adopts the last name Kennedy to more easily fit in, a fateful white lie that will set him on an improbable and ultimately tragic course.Schroder relates the story of Eric's urgent escape years later to Lake Ch...

From Mary Beth Keane, the bestselling author of Ask Again, Yes, comes a historical novel set in early-20th-century New York City about the woman known as “Typhoid Mary,” who becomes, “in Keane’s assured hands…a sympathetic, complex, and even inspiring character” (O, The Oprah Magazine).On the eve of the 20th century, Mary Mallon emigrated from Ireland at age fifteen to make her way in New York City. Brave, headstrong, and dreaming of being a cook,...

**THE CROSS SPORTS BOOK AWARDS AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE YEARA SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'Brilliant, gripping, beautifully written, real,' says Jonathan Northcroft.**So, you think you know Joey Barton. Think again.No Nonsense is a game-changing autobiography which will redefine the most fascinating figure in British football. It is the raw yet redemptive story of a man shaped by rejection and the consequences of his mistakes. He has represented Engl...