Island Books: 261 books

‘Beyond the fence everything is dark, but in here is our own lit-up world. Just me and Flight. Our breath snakes into the night like the aftermath of a firework.’ The only riding fifteen-year-old Declan has ever done is joyriding. When he’s forced to stay with his snobby cousin ‘Princess’...

Mary Kenny’s stunning biography of the notorious Lord Haw-Haw is the most intimate, revealing and dramatic account yet of one of the twentieth century’s most infamous lives. William Joyce – aka ‘Lord Haw-Haw’ – was the notorious propaganda voice for Adolf Hitler, and the last man to be...

More fascinating, hilarious, and uncanny historical tales based on Myles Dungan’s hugely popular Drivetime segment on RTÉ Radio One. The journey will take you through Ireland’s historic influence at home and abroad: from the Irish architect of the White House to the Night of the Big Wind...

"Evocative, nostalgic and written with a wry humour" - Irish Independent "Evoking the lost world of the Irish showbands of the 1960s with the affectionate eye of an insider. The Last Dance is an essential read for anyone who wants to understand where Irish music has come from."...

Before the ‘Ryanair Generation’, leaving home was for good. Half a million Irish men and women left these shores in the nineteen-fifties, forced by decades of economic stagnation to make their lives elsewhere. For many of these emigrants, mostly young and unskilled, Britain was their only hope...

"The history of the Middle Ages [in Ireland] is so neglected that the only figure of renown is Strongbow, the man who led the Norman Invasion of Ireland in the twelfth century ... There is little written about the lives of majority of men, who held no title or land, and even less about women...

Nuala Ní Chonchúir's characters and their relationships have about them that most precious and elusive quality: the ring of truth.' - Gerard Stembridge Lillis leaves behind 1990s Dublin for a summer job working at a lodge in a small lochside village in the Scottish Highlands. Leaving Dublin is a...

A Divided Paradise: An Irishman in the Holy Land is a vivid account of ordinary life in one of the world’s most contested and volatile regions. Award winning journalist David Lynch brings to life stories from both the Palestinian and Israeli street. From coming under fire in the occupied West Bank,...

Dogs Enjoy the Morning is an uproarious novel full of weird and wonderful characters set in Cosmona, a fictitious village somewhere in Ireland . . . The doctor and his loving wife are secretly watched by Gabriel Rock, a one-eyed local Peeping Tom. A shell-shocked chaplain stalks through the...

The Society of St. Vincent de Paul is Ireland’s largest and best-known voluntary charitable organisation. For the first time, this book records the details of the Society’s origins in Ireland and its work in communities all over the country, through the personal recollections of members of the Society and an overview of the services provided to those in need.

First published in 1989 No Laughing Matter: The Life and Times of Flann O’Brien was the first full-length biography of Flann O’Brien. Rich in background, anecdote and social history, it is an extraordinary portrait of a writer and his times, perceptive, sympathetic and authoritative. Flann...

With three Peter Neill novels in one binding, this omnibus provides literary experimentation, creative narrative, and imaginative prose from the second half of the 20th century. A Time Piece addresses three moments in time and four levels of consciousness, revolving character and gender, and the interrelationship...

Hitler’s Irish Slaves tells the shocking story of 32 merchant seamen from Ireland who were held in conditions of great hardship in an SS slave labour camp from 1943 to 1945. Mercilessly punished for their refusal to join the German war effort, and ignored by their own government, they became part...

Temple Street have kept us going. Their everyday has been to care, to help, to heal, to comfort. We bring our babies into this world and we rely so much on those in the wards to help keep them there...From then to now there are catalogues of evidence of the wonderful, beautiful, magical, heart-lifting...