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…...

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...

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...

"Breezy, sophisticated, hilarious, rude and aching with sweetness: Love, Nina might be the most charming book I've ever read." -- Maria Semple, author of Where'd You Go, BernadetteIn 1982, 20-year-old Nina Stibbe moved to London to work as a nanny to two opinionated and lively young boys. In frequent letters home to her sister, Nina described her trials and triumphs: there's a cat nobody likes, suppertime visits from a famous local playwright, a mysterious...

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,...

One of the most beloved novels in recent years, Plainsong was a best-seller from coast to coast—and now Kent Haruf returns to the High Plains community of Holt, Colorado, with a story of even more masterful authority.When the McPheron brothers see Victoria Roubideaux, the single mother they’d taken in, move from their ranch to begin college, an emptiness opens before them—and for many other townspeople it also promises to be a long, hard winter. A young boy living alone wi...

From the New York Times bestselling author of Room, a young French burlesque dancer living in San Francisco is ready to risk anything in order to solve her friend’s murder—but only if the killer doesn’t get her first.Summer of 1876: San Francisco is in the fierce grip of a record-breaking heat wave and a smallpox epidemic. Through the window of a railroad saloon, a young woman named Jenny Bonnet is shot dead.The survivor, her friend Blanch...

One of the most accomplished, acclaimed, and garlanded writers, Hilary Mantel delivers a brilliant collection of contemporary storiesIn The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, Hilary Mantel's trademark gifts of penetrating characterization, unsparing eye, and rascally intelligence are once again fully on display.Stories of dislocation and family fracture, of whimsical infidelities and sudden deaths with sinister causes, brilliantly unsettle the reader in that unmis...