Island Books: 261 books

In 1985, The Female Line: Northern Irish Women Writers was published. A pioneering anthology at the time, it gave many Northern Irish women writers their first opportunity for publication. Now, over thirty years later, Female Lines: New Writing by Women from Northern Ireland – a stunning mosaic...

Paris 1972. Eileen Gray, Irish designer and architect now in her 90s, is the reluctant darling of the international media, second time around. After years of living in reclusive oblivion the record breaking price paid for her Destiny screen in the Doucet sale has her back in the news. Bruce Chatwin,...

Ernest Gebler, the writer of such international bestsellers as The Plymouth Adventure and Call Me Daddy (which became the film Hoffman), led a remarkable life. In this unauthorized biography, Carlo Gebler, Ernest's estranged son, tells the many stories of his father's life, from Ernest's turbulent...

Eva has managed to spend her twenties successfully hiding from herself in New York. Attempting to write, but really only writing her epitaph, she returns to Ireland to confront the past that has made her what she is. Eva has managed to spend her twenties successfully hiding from herself in an alcohol-fuelled...

A memory-eating, closet-dwelling beast escapes its confines; a Somali girl in a Donegal school is tougher than she seems; under a jasmine tree in Andalucía a woman waits for her stolen son; at the edge of a city, two brothers step unwittingly into a game that turns deadly. The scope and diversity...

This publication draws upon the fields of science, economics and business strategy to chart the future of humankind's relationship to the ocean. A healthy ocean provides the basis for a prosperous world, and oceans have been largely ignored as a driver of human well-being until now. Ocean health has...

‘I have seen many, very many United Irishmen, and with a few exceptions they are . . . the most God-provoking Democrats on this side of Hell.’ Born into the Anglo-Irish landowning class of Co. Down, Archibald Hamilton Rowan (1751–1832) led a colourful life. Heavily influenced by the celebrated...

On Easter Monday, 24th of April 1916, members of the Irish Citizen Army and the Irish Volunteers, under the command of Pádraig Pearse and James Connolly, occupied the General Post Office in Sackville Street, Dublin. From the portico of this iconic building, an independent Irish Republic was declared....

An eclectic mix of prose, poetry and more from the archives of Sunday Miscellany, celebrating 100 years of Croke Park. This wonderful selection captures the emotional magic of how the games connect with the joy and despair of this unique Irish experience. The collection recalls many of the great matches of the last 100 years from Croke Park.

He beat her. Broke skin, left her needing stitches, and begged his sister to furnish him with an alibi. My husband. What on earth have I married? A dormant monster?’ Secrets, once disturbed, can ruin a life that has been spent trying to hide them. Two voices – one living, one dead – compete...

Thomas Kinsella s life and work spans almost the entire history of the Irish state. His life and work has engaged with some of the most fundamental ruptures, moments, scandals and developments in the history of this nation and its people. The fight for independence, the economic shift to liberalism...

Alex gets taken to the doctor more often that Alex likes. Dr White takes an awful lot of blood samples - so greedy is he for blood that he uses a double syringe and he sends great big bottles of if to the 'lab'. This makes Alex suspicious - and sure enough, the blood 'samples' are not going to a lab...

“You have to see what’s through and under and over and behind things. You have to pay real attention…” Tom, an aging music executive, retiree and sailor meets Clare, a young, beautiful and somewhat mysterious woman on the quays of a Sicilian port. The two strangers share an unpredictable voyage...

Visitors are reminded that they are about to enter the Wunderkammer, a floating chamber where normal spacetime conventions no longer apply… A bomb blast in the London Underground rips through space and time, unearthing four stories that whirl, collide and pass each other by. Sometime around now,...