Jimmy Rabbitte hates jazz, always has. But his wife Aiofe loves it, and Jimmy loves Aiofe. So when, in attempt to convert him, she buys him two tickets for a Keith Jarrett concert he decides to take Outspan, former member of Jimmy’s band The Commitments, who has come back into his life after a chance meeting in the cancer clinic. Jarrett is famous for being intolerant of any noise at all – a cough, a sneeze, a wheeze – from the audience, stopping playing and shaming the perpetrator. And Ou...

Brought to you by Penguin.Just moved into a new apartment, alone for the first time in years, Victor Forde goes every evening to Donnelly’s pub for a pint, a slow one.One evening his drink is interrupted. A man in shorts and a pink shirt brings over his pint and sits down. He seems to know Victor’s name and to remember him from school. Says his name is Fitzpatrick.Victor dislikes him on sight, dislikes too the memories that Fitzpatrick stirs up of f...

'A masterpiece' Irish Times**'Exhilarating' Daily TelegraphBorn in the Dublin slums of 1901, his father a one-legged whorehouse bouncer and settler of scores, Henry Smart has to grow up fast.By the time he can walk he's out robbing and begging, often cold and always hungry, but a prince of the streets. By Easter Monday, 1916, he's fourteen years old and already six-foot-two, a soldier in the Irish...

Jimmy Rabbitte is back.The man who invented the Commitments back in the eighties is now forty-seven, with a loving wife, four kids ... and bowel cancer. He isn't dying, he thinks, but he might be.Jimmy still loves his music, and he still loves to hustle - his new thing is finding old bands and then finding the people who loved them enough to pay money for their resurrected singles and albums. On his path through Dublin he meets two of the Commitments - Outspan, whose own il...

Roddy Doyle's 'brilliant' Brilliant is a wonderful, heartwarming middle grade tale of friendship and family.Gloria and Rayzer must save their Uncle Ben. The black dog has got him.At least, that's what they heard their granny say. And she says it's taken Dublin's funny bone too.As Uncle Ben’s Dublin business fails, it's clear to Gloria and Rayzer that something is wrong. He just isn’t his usual cheerful self. Gathering all their courage the ...

This volume brings together under one cover Roddy Doyle's three acclaimed novels about the Rabbite family from Dublin. The Commitments traces the rapid rise and even more rapid fall of Jimmy Rabbite Jr's unusual soul band. In The Snapper, Sharon Rabbite's pregnancy sparks off intense speculation among her friends and family, but she is determined to reveal the identity of the father in her own time. The Van, set during Ireland's 1990 World Cup attempt, follows th...

Two men meet for a pint in a Dublin pub. They chew the fat, set the world to rights, take the piss… They talk about their wives, their kids, their kids’ pets, their football teams and – this being Ireland in 2011–12 –about the euro, the crash, the presidential election, the Queen’s visit. But these men are not parochial or small-minded; one of them knows where to find the missing Colonel Gaddafi (he’s working as a cleaner at Dublin Airport); they worry about Greek debt, the IMF and the bon...

‘A brilliant, one-of-a-kind writer’ DAVID NICHOLLSAt sixty-six, Paula Spencer – mother, grandmother, widow, survivor – is finally living her life.A job at the dry cleaners she enjoys, a man – Joe – with whom she shares what she wants, friends who see her for who she is, and four grown children. Despite its ghosts, Paula has started to push her past aside.That is until Paula’s eldest, Nicola, turns up on her doorstep. Independent, a ...

Love and marriage, children and family, death and grief. Life touches everyone the same, but living under lockdown? It changes us alone.A man abroad wanders the stag-and-hen-strewn streets of Newcastle, as news of the virus at home asks him to question his next move. An exhausted nurse struggles to let go, having lost a much-loved patient in isolation. A middle-aged son, barred from his mother's funeral, wakes to an oncoming hangover of regret. Told with Doyle's si...

A novel of mothers lost and found, "Wilderness" is part roaring adventure, part family drama - with a charm that's all Roddy Doyle's. While Tom and Johnny are on a husky safari in Finland, their half-sister Grainne stays behind to face the mother who abandoned her. But Tom and Johnny are too caught up in their adventure to think of home - until they find themselves lost in the snow, in a desperate struggle for survival...

Jimmy Rabbitte is back.The man who invented the Commitments back in the eighties is now forty-seven, with a loving wife, four kids ... and bowel cancer. He isn’t dying, he thinks, but he might be.Jimmy still loves his music, and he still loves to hustle – his new thing is finding old bands and then finding the people who loved them enough to pay money for their resurrected singles and albums. On his path through Dublin he meets two of the Commitments – Outspan, whose own il...

A Ghostly Little Book brings you five brand new spooky stories from five of the best writers on the planetFrom Edgar Allan Poe to Charles Dickens, from Shirley Jackson to Toni Morrison, the greatest writers have always been drawn to that ancient, mysterious thing: the haunting.A Ghostly Little Book is a slim, beautiful testament to the enduring appeal of the spook, a landmark collection of specially composed modern ghost stories from Roddy...