Poolbeg Press: 75 books

Sam Leahy is a shy, fifteen-year-old boy navigating two social worlds: the uptight bullies at his all-boys’ private school and the small uncouth gang in his neighbourhood. This gang of five follows the typical teenage-boy pattern: they drink, smoke, cause fights and vandalize property. Sam...

Bill Kelly survived a tough childhood in Dublin to become one of Ireland’s foremost journalists, perhaps best known for his Sunday Press soccer column as ‘Big Bill’ which was so popular it ran for thirty years. Here, with the sure touch of a born storyteller, he takes us back to his tenement...

The son of dysfunctional and destitute parents secures employment as a member of the morning breakfast staff in Dublin’s Shelbourne Hotel. The job affords the boy a respite from his father’s profound apathy and his mother’s obsession with religion. His father Paddy, an ex-British army soldier,...

Kevin Skelton watched helplessly as a bomb ripped apart the life he knew. It was 15 August 1998, and the place was Omagh, County Tyrone. Kevin’s wife Mena was one of the 29 people killed that day, and hisdaughter Shauna was horrifically injured. Kevin was just yards away when the bomb struck, and...

Conor O’Clery has been a witness to some of the major world events of the last thirty years, including the Troubles in Northern Ireland; the ending of the Cold War as viewed from Moscow; the reluctant opening up of China to the West; the Clinton years in the White House; and the 9/11 attacks. As...

What would you do if you could be a child again for one more day?  If I Was a Child Again is a collection of memories and inspirational words from some of Ireland’s finest writers, journalists and TV personalities as they tell us what they would do if they could be a child again for one...

On the 21st June 2007 Alexandra Kavanagh left home, chatted to her neighbour, got onto the DART, arrived at Dalkey train station and disappeared . . . Tom is distraught. His wife is missing, his world has fallen apart and his only focus is on finding her.   For seventeen...

What happens when you find answers to questions you never even asked? When Ben discovers he is adopted, he is determined to find out who his ‘real’ family are – but why does he want to be ‘committed’ to Knockmore, a residential farm for ‘troubled teens’? What does he hope to learn...

At the beginning of August 1907, an early-morning train from Monte Carlo pulled into the Gare Saint-Charles in Marseilles. A trunk with a forwarding address was taken to the baggage section to await transportation. Some hours later a station employee, Louis Pons, noticed blood dripping from the trunk....

A World of Our Own is a mother’s account of how autism challenged her family and changed her life. Young mother Aileen McCallan is filled with love and joy at the birth of her second son, Cian. Now she feels she can settle into motherhood and a comfortable life. But it is not to be. From...

On a fine calm morning in September 1852, a strikingly handsome man and his beautiful wife stepped onto a hired boat in Howth Harbour, Dublin, to set out on a day trip. The destination was Ireland’s Eye, a small uninhabited island less than a mile to the north of the harbour.   He was an...

A fellow was talking at the bar in a pub in Virginia, County Cavan: “I don’t know where all this fuss about smoking is coming from. I’ve been smoking for forty years and there’s nothing wrong with my lung.” Sign seen on a Connemara pub: “Good clean entertainment in this pub every...

The Irish National Liberation Army was one of the most ruthless terrorist organisations during the troubles in Northern Ireland. Formed in 1974 as a splinter group of the Official IRA, the INLA's campaign of murder throughout the 1970s and 1980s included such notorious acts as the bombing of the Droppin'...

Young Gabriel Walsh has been uprooted from his poverty-stricken life in Dublin and transplanted to a castle in Tarrytown, New York State. This reversal of fortune has come about through Margaret Burke Sheridan, a retired opera diva who in her prime sang at La Scala and was Puccini’s favourite Madame...