Publisher: Amila Jay
Around the World in Eighty Days is an adventure novel by the French writer Jules Verne, first published in French in 1872. In the story, Phileas Fogg of London and his newly employed French valet Passepartout attempt to circumnavigate the world in 80 days on a wager of £20,000 set by his friends at the Reform Club. It is one of Verne's most acclaimed works.
This is a true story of riches to rags to riches, by one of Britain's most colourful entrepreneurs of the last 50 years. It records 70 years of British social and political history by someone who was there and was nicknamed 'Mr Death' by the media. Its backdrop is the taboo subject of death and the machinations of the funeral industry. It has amazing personal troughs and peaks that are described with the honesty of 'open-heart surgery' by a writer is encouraging you to 'give it a go'. It is pacey, racy, irreverent, tragic, uplifting but also completely true. Featured song: 'Stiff' performed by Gary O'Brien and Nick Rye of Lucho. Written by Howard Hodgson, Mike O’Sullivan, Gary O’Brien and Nick Rye.Show book
Space may be the final frontier, but no frontier has ever captured the American imagination like the “Wild West”, which still evokes images of dusty cowboys, outlaws, gunfights, gamblers, and barroom brawls over 100 years after the West was settled. A constant fixture in American pop culture, the 19th century American West continues to be vividly and colorful portrayed not just as a place but as a state of mind. Almost absent in the perceptions of modern America is the comprehension of African Americans participating so prolifically in the building of the nation. Print fiction idealizing the cowboy life to Eastern readers would not depict what had ignited the war for which so many had an utter revulsion. The black man of the post-war years did not inspire the white spirit so essential for reveling in the old system. The 20th century’s television and cinematic offerings operated on the same drive, and the existence of black cattle workers was all but blotted out. Indeed, many of the modern age are barely aware that an African-American ever “stepped foot on the West bank of the Mississippi River.” No one saw the black cowboy on screen or in print, the two information industries that shaped our perception of America’s westward expansion. Therefore, a collective assumption that they must never have existed at all was nationally internalized. However, as UCLA professors Philip Durham and Everett L. Jones, authors of The Negro Cowboys, reminded readers, about 25% of cowboys working in the West were African-American. They further noted that former slaves emigrating from the South entered virtually every viable profession in the plains, mountain ranges, and on to the Pacific. Their contribution ranged from the military to mining, exploration, farming, and in the construction of the West’s first towns.Show book
The #1 Irish bestseller and winner of Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the 2019 An Post Irish Book Awards, winner of the 2020 Dalkey Literary Awards, named Best Book of the Year by the Guardian, Observer, Image, Irish Times, New Statesman, and Irish Independent, Sinéad Gleeson’s essays chronicle—in crystalline, tender, powerful prose—life in a body as it goes through sickness, health, motherhood, and love of all kinds. ""I have come to think of all the metal in my body as artificial stars, glistening beneath the skin, a constellation of old and new metal. A map, a tracing of connections and a guide to looking at things from different angles."" We treat the body as an afterthought, until it no longer can be. Until the pain or the pleasure is too great. Sinéad Gleeson’s life has been marked by terrible illness, including leukemia and debilitating arthritis. As a child, she bathed in the springs of Lourdes, ever hopeful that her body would cooperate, ever looking forward to the day when she could take her body for granted. But just as she turns inward to explore her own pain, and then the marvel of recovery, and then the arrival of her greatest joys—falling in love, becoming a mother—she turns her gaze outward. She delves into history, art, literature, and music, plotting the intimate experience of life in a women’s body across a wide-ranging map. From Nick Cave to Taylor Swift, Botticelli to Frida Kahlo, Louisa May Alcott to Lucy Grealy, Constellations is an investigation into the different ways of seeing, both uniquely personal and universal in its resonances. In the tradition of some of our finest life writers, Gleeson explores—in her own spirited, generous voice—the fierceness of being alive. She has written “a book [that] every woman should read” (Eimear McBride).Show book
In late 2024 Ireland, a nation of just 7 million people, stood at the top of rugby union's world rankings. Ireland's rise to such an exalted position has been the great triumph of rugby's professional era. For a nation that fought tooth and nail to keep the game amateur, their progress since 2000 has been extraordinary. The trophies, once so rare in Irish rugby hands, have become almost commonplace. Grand Slams, Six Nations Championships, Triple Crowns have all stood in the IRFU offices in Dublin. But that is the top tier of the game. What is the health of the sport at other levels all around Ireland? In this book award-winning international rugby writer Peter Bills seeks to take the pulse of the game at every level - schools, clubs, provinces - as well as the fast-expanding women's game. For if rugby at grassroots level withers, the decline will affect everyone. And how can rugby learn to live side by side with the ubiquitous GAA? Featuring interviews with some legendary names of Irish rugby, such as Keith Wood, Willie John McBride, Tony Ward, Bill Mulcahy, Gordon D'Arcy, Trevor Ringland, Nigel Carr and Tommy Bowe, we also hear from men and women from junior and club rugby, at clubs like Dingle, Kinsale, Monkstown, Boyne, Westport, City of Derry, Donegal Town, Omagh and Oughterard. All of them are doing stirring work behind the scenes for their local clubs and communities as Bills goes in search of the soul of Irish rugby.Show book
The Austrian writer Joseph Roth's first novel, 'Das Spinnennetz', 1923, intensely chronicles the development of a fascist and the first steps in his rise to power. It is a vivid portrait of the nationalist fervor and the struggle between Right and Left in Germany during the years immediately following the end of the Great War, or First World War. Two days after its serial publication in the Vienna Arbeiterzeitung ('The Worker'), Adolf Hitler and General Erich Ludendorff set in motion the Munich 'Beer Hall Putsch'. 'The Spiderweb' - here translated by the narrator - is a prophetic look into the political machinery that was to force its author into exile in France ten years later, where he died in 1939 at the age of 45.
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“This book is the next best thing to going birdwatching with Jennifer. Read it for the sheer pleasure of going travelling in the wild with an informed, engaging guide.” - Pradip Krishen, Author of Trees of Delhi and Jungle Trees of Central India Tasked with steering a very important client through an area of unrest and insurgency, Jennifer embarks on a thrilling adventure to navigate uncharted territories on the edge of India’s map. The region has a rich tapestry of diverse ethnicities that contribute to our nation’s cultural mosaic. Armed with an appreciation of Natural History and its ability to raise one’s consciousness to the wider world, Pete and Jennifer, through shared exploration, experience things out of their normal frame of reference.Show book
