The Deadwood Encore by Kathleen Murray – CARLOW
In the Forest by Edna O’Brian – CLARE
A Lesson in Malice by Katherine Kirwan – CORK
Orchid Blue
Montpelier Parade by Karl Geary – DUBLIN
The Good People by Hannah Kent – KERRY
Snowflake by Louise Nealon – KILDARE
Her Kind by Niamh Boyce – KILKENNY
There Came A-Tapping by Andrea Carter – LAOIS
Without My Cloak by Kate O’Brien – LIMERICK
Wild Houses by Colin Barrett – MAYO
When All Is Said by Anne Griffin – MEATH
Minor Monument by Ian Malaney – OFFALY
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry – SLIGO
The Queen of Dirt Island by Donal Ryan – TIPPERARY
The Amusements by Aingeala Flannery – WATERFORD
Valley of the Squinting Windows by Brinsley MacNamara – WESTMEATH
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan – WEXFORD
Dirty Little Secrets by Jo Spain – WICKLOW
Border Angels by Anthony Quinn – ARMAGH
The Sunken Road by Ciaran McMenamin – FERMANAGH
Reading In The Dark by Seamus Deane – LONDONDERRY
Big Girl, Small Town by Michelle Gallen – TYRONEA tale of folklore and murder, set in the SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS
A book for every county in IRELAND
17th April 2025
A book for every county in Ireland. The island of Ireland is a land of stunning natural beauty, rich history, and vibrant culture. Known as the ‘Emerald Isle’ for its lush green landscapes, it boasts dramatic coastlines, rolling hills, and numerous lakes and rivers.
The island comprises the Republic of Ireland, an independent state occupying most of the landmass, and Northern Ireland, a part of the United Kingdom.
Steeped in ancient history, Ireland features prehistoric monuments, medieval castles, and a legacy of Celtic mythology and folklore. Its people are known for their warmth, hospitality, and storytelling tradition. It has a great literary tradition.
In this special post we list our selection of great books for every one of the 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland and every one of the 6 counties of Northern Ireland.
REPUBLIC OF IRELAND
The Deadwood Encore by Kathleen Murray – CARLOW
Frank Whelan is the seventh son of a seventh son, so by now should have inherited his father’s legendary healing power, but still hasn’t managed to graduate beyond small-time skin afflictions.
He already feels adrift when his twin, Bernie, reveals a life-changing decision that calls into question everything Frank thought he knew about his place in the family. And then he discovers his father had been keeping secrets of his own.
And so Frank turns to an unlikely source for guidance and finds himself on a quest for answers… from this world, and the next.
A boundlessly inventive novel about the past’s hold over the present, set in an Irish community alive with old magic and extraordinary possibility, The Deadwood Encore is an electrifying debut from one of Ireland’s most acclaimed short-fiction authors.
The Barracks by John McGahern – CAVAN
The iconic debut novel by ‘one of the greatest writers of our era’ (Hilary Mantel) and ‘the Irish novelist everyone should read’ (Colm Tóibín).
Elizabeth Reegan, after years of freedom – and loneliness – marries into the enclosed Irish village of her upbringing. The children are not her own; her husband is straining to break free from the servile security of the police force; and her own life, threatened by illness, seems to be losing the last vestiges of its purpose. Moving between tragedy and savage comedy, desperation and joy, John McGahern’s first novel is one of haunting power.
In the Forest by Edna O’Brian – CLARE
Set in the countryside of western Ireland, In the Forest centres on unwitting victims for sacrifice: a radiant young woman, her young son and a trusting priest, all despatched to the wilderness of a young man’s unbridled, deranged fantasies.
Edna O’Brien’s riveting, frightening and brilliantly told new novel reminds us that anything can happen when protection isn’t afforded to either perpetrator or victim . . .
A Lesson in Malice by Katherine Kirwan – CORK
A visit to her old university takes an unexpected turn for solicitor Finn Fitzpatrick when she receives an exclusive invitation. She is far from high profile on the legal scene, so why is she on the guestlist for a select gathering in the College president’s private dining room?
Three days later, a body is discovered on College grounds. And, as the police launch their hunt for the killer, everyone who was at dinner that night falls under suspicion. Including Finn.
Soon, she’s investigating the murder, unearthing the bitter rivalries and hidden agendas lurking beneath the success of her fellow dinner guests. As the mysteries and revelations pile up, Finn finds herself keeping secrets from those around her – but at what cost?
The Coast Road by Alan Murrin – DONEGAL
It’s 1994 in County Donegal, Ireland, and everyone is talking about Colette Crowley – the writer, the bohemian, the woman who left her husband and sons to pursue a relationship with a married man in Dublin. But now Colette is back, and nobody knows why.
Returning to the community to try and reclaim her old life, Colette quickly learns that they are unwilling to give it back to her. The man to whom she is still married is denying her access to her children, and while the legalisation of divorce might be just around the corner, Colette finds herself caught between her old life and the freedom for which she risked everything. Desperate to see her children, she enlists the help of Izzy, a housewife and mother of two, and the women forge a friendship that will send them on a spiralling journey – one toward a path of self-discovery, and the other toward tragedy.
Brilliantly observed from a sharp new literary talent, The Coast Road is a novel about a closed community and the consequences of daring to move against the tide.
Orchid Blue by Eoin McNamee – DOWN
The plot focuses on the real life murder of Pearl Gamble near Newry in 1961 and the subsequent arrest, trial and execution of Robert McGladdery for her murder – the last man hanged in Northern Ireland. Forensic investigation, was McGladdery guilty?
Montpelier Parade by Karl Geary – DUBLIN
The house is on Montpelier Parade: just across town, but it might as well be a different world. Working on the garden with his father one Saturday, Sonny is full of curiosity. Then the back door eases open and she comes down the path towards him. Vera.
Chance meetings become shy arrangements, and soon Sonny is in love for the first time. Casting off his lonely life of dreams and quiet violence for this new, intoxicating encounter, he longs to know Vera, even to save her. But what is it that Vera isn’t telling him?
Unfolding in the sea-bright, rain-soaked Dublin of early spring, Montpelier Paradeis a beautiful, cinematic novel about desire, longing, grief, hope and the things that remain unspoken. It is about how deeply we can connect with one another, and the choices we must also make alone.
Galway Confidential by Ken Bruen – GALWAY
In the private-detective business, you get on the wrong side of some dangerous people. For Galway investigator Jack Taylor, that meant a violent assault that left him comatose.
Waking up during the Covid pandemic, Jack struggles to cope with the radical changes the world has seen during his absence. Work – and the bottle – helps.
One thing that never changes is the venality of human nature. Local nuns are being attacked, the perpetrator wielding a hammer, and Jack is called in to investigate. With no help from official channels, he finds himself hunting a particularly vicious criminal – alone – once again.
And as he delves deeper into these senseless attacks, Jack soon discovers a darkness that makes him wish he had never woken up.
The Good People by Hannah Kent – KERRY
Based on true events, The Good People is Hannah Kent’s engrossing novel about superstition and devoted love.
Ireland, 1825.
Nóra, bereft after the sudden death of her husband, finds herself alone and caring for her young grandson Micheál, who cannot speak or walk. What happened to the healthy, happy grandson she met when her daughter was still alive?
Mary arrives in the valley to help Nóra just as the whispers are spreading: stories of unexplained misfortunes, of illnesses, and rumours that Micheál is a changeling child who is bringing bad luck to the valley.
Nance has lived in the valley all of her life. She is a healer who knows how to use the plants and berries of the woodland; she understands the magic in the old ways. And she might be able to help Micheál . . .
As these three women are drawn together in the hope of restoring Micheál, their world of folklore and belief, of ritual and stories, tightens around them. It will lead them down a dangerous path, and force them to question everything they have ever known.
Snowflake by Louise Nealon – KILDARE
Eighteen-year-old Debbie White lives on a dairy farm with her mother, Maeve, and her uncle, Billy. Billy sleeps out in a caravan in the garden with a bottle of whiskey and the stars overhead for company. Maeve spends her days recording her dreams, which she believes to be prophecies.
This world is Debbie’s normal, but she is about to step into life as a student at Trinity College in Dublin. As she navigates between sophisticated new friends and the family bubble, things begin to unravel. Maeve’s eccentricity tilts into something darker, while Billy’s drinking gets worse. Debbie struggles to cope with the weirdest, most difficult parts of herself, her family and her small life. But the fierce love of the White family is never in doubt, and Debbie discovers that even the oddest of families are places of safety.
A startling, honest, laugh and cry novel about growing up and leaving home, only to find that you’ve taken it with you, Snowflake is a novel for a generation, and for everyone who’s taken those first, terrifying steps towards adulthood.
Her Kind by Niamh Boyce – KILKENNY
‘Gripping … a story of loss, ambition, misogyny, family love and what it means to belong … evocative and atmospheric’ Irish Times
1324, Kilkennie: A time of suspicion and conspiracy. A place where zealous men rage against each other – and even more against uppity women
A woman finds refuge with her daughter in the household of a childhood friend.
The friend, Alice Kytler, gives her former companion a new name, Petronelle, a job as a servant, and warns her to hide their old connection.
But in aligning herself with a powerful woman, Petronelle and her child are in more danger than they ever faced in the savage countryside …
Tense, moving and atmospheric Her Kind is vivid reimagining of the events leading to the Kilkenny Witch Trial.
There Came A-Tapping by Andrea Carter – LAOIS
Since losing her parents in a car crash as a teen, Allie has struggled to cope. Meeting Rory finally made things easier. She’s come to rely on him for almost everything, so when he disappears while filming a documentary in the West of Ireland, she fears she’ll come undone. Again.
Tap…
When a couple arrive at the Dublin apartment she and Rory share, claiming to be the new tenants, Allie is distraught. Why did Rory let out their home without telling her? And – where is he?
Tap-tap…
She seeks refuge at the run-down and reputedly haunted Raven Cottage in the Slieve Bloom mountains, where she and Rory were planning to move one day. Allie slowly starts to build a life for herself – and begins to believe that she might manage to make it alone.
Tap-tap-tap…
But then Rory’s car is found submerged at the end of a pier, nowhere near where he was supposed to be – and the body in the driver’s seat isn’t his. Alison starts to revisit her memories of their time together, and begins to question if she can trust them…
Kala by Colin Walsh – LEITRIM
In the seaside town of Kinlough, on Ireland’s west coast, three old friends are thrown together for the first time in years. They—Helen, Joe and Mush—were part of an original group of six inseparable teenagers in the summer of 2003, with motherless, reckless Kala Lanann as their group’s white-hot center. Soon after that summer’s peak, Kala disappeared without a trace.
Now it’s fifteen years later: Helen has reluctantly returned to Ireland for her father’s wedding; Joe is a world-famous musician, newly back in town; and Mush has never left, too scared to venture beyond the counter of his mother’s café. But human remains have been discovered in the woods. Two more girls have gone missing. And as past and present begin to collide, the estranged friends are forced to confront their own complicity in the events that led to Kala’s disappearance, and to try to stop Kinlough’s violent patterns repeating themselves once again…
Against the backdrop of a town suffocating on its own secrets, in a story that builds from a smoulder to a stunning climax, Kala brilliantly examines the sometimes brutal costs of belonging, as well as the battle in the human heart between vengeance and forgiveness, despair and redemption.
Without My Cloak by Kate O’Brien – LIMERICK
When Anthony Considine creeps into Mellick town with a stolen horse in 1789, it sets the destiny of his family for decades to come. By the 1850s, through thrift and hard work, his son Honest John has made the Considines a leading Mellick family. With his father’s money, John’s son Anthony builds a grand country house for his wife and children – but especially for his youngest son Denis, who he adores, little knowing that one day Denis will threaten the toil of generations with his love for a peasant girl . . .
Solace by Belinda McKeon – LONGFORD
Mark Casey did not expect to fall in love. But from the minute he saw Joanne Lynch across the garden of a Dublin pub, it seemed that nothing else was possible.
But Mark is also drawn back – guiltily – to his family and the land they have farmed for generations, and when he discovers the truth behind a family feud, it threatens to destroy this passionate love affair.
Nothing On Earth by Conor O’Callaghan – LOUTH
SHORTLISTED FOR THE KERRY GROUP IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2017
It is the hottest August in living memory.
A frightened girl bangs on a door. A man answers. From the moment he invites her in, his world will never be the same again.
She will tell him about her family, and their strange life in the show home of an abandoned housing estate. The long, blistering days spent sunbathing; the airless nights filled with inexplicable noises; the words that appear on the windows, written in dust.
Why are members of her family disappearing, one by one? Is she telling the truth? Is he?
In a world where reality is beginning to blur, how can we know what to believe?
Wild Houses by Colin Barrett – MAYO
WINNER OF THE NERO BOOK AWARDS DEBUT FICTION AWARD 2024
As Ballina prepares for its biggest weekend of the year, the simmering feud between small-time dealer, Cillian English, and County Mayo’s fraternal enforcers, Gabe and Sketch Ferdia, spills over into violence and an ugly ultimatum.
When the reclusive Dev answers his door on Friday night he finds Doll – Cillian’s bruised, sullen, teenage brother – in the clutches of Gabe and Sketch. Jostled by his nefarious cousins, goaded by his dead mother’s dog and struck by spinning lights, Dev is unwillingly drawn headlong into the Ferdias’ revenge fantasy.
Meanwhile, seventeen-year-old Nicky can’t shake the feeling something bad has happened to her boyfriend Doll. Hungover, reeling from a fractious Friday night and plagued by ghosts of her own, Nicky sets out on a feverish mission to save Doll, even as she questions her future in Ballina.
The beautifully crafted, thrillingly-told story of two outsiders striving to find themselves as their worlds collapse in chaos and violence, Wild Houses is the long-anticipated debut novel from award-winning and critically-acclaimed short story writer, Colin Barrett.
When All Is Said by Anne Griffin – MEATH
‘I’m here to remember – all that I have been and all that I will never be again.’
At the bar of a grand hotel in a small Irish town sits 84-year-old Maurice Hannigan. He’s alone, as usual -though tonight is anything but. Pull up a stool and charge your glass, because Maurice is finally ready to tell his story.
Over the course of this evening, he will raise five toasts to the five people who have meant the most to him. Through these stories – of unspoken joy and regret, a secret tragedy kept hidden, a fierce love that never found its voice – the life of one man will be powerfully and poignantly laid bare.
Heart-breaking and heart-warming all at once, the voice of Maurice Hannigan will stay with you long after all is said.
The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe – MONAGHAN
A modern classic of Irish fiction, shortlisted for the 1992 Booker prize.
When I was a young lad twenty or thirty or forty years ago I lived in a small town where they were all after me on account of what I done on Mrs Nugent.
Francie Brady is a small-town rascal who spends his days turning a blind eye to the troubles at home and getting up to mischief with his best friend Joe – hiding in the chicken-house, shouting abuse at fish in the local stream. But after a disagreement with his neighbour Mrs Nugent over her son’s missing comic books, Francie’s reckless streak spirals out of control and gives rise to a monstrous obsession . . .
Fearless, shocking and blackly funny, Patrick McCabe’s The Butcher Boy won the 1992 Irish Times Literature Prize and was shortlisted for the 1992 Booker Prize. It is a modern classic of Irish fiction, a portrait of the insidious violence latent in small town life and of a frenzied young man lashing out at everyone, even himself.
Minor Monument by Ian Malaney – OFFALY
Set around a small family farm on the edge of a bog, a few miles from the river Shannon, Minor Monuments is a collection of essays unfolding from the landscape of the Irish midlands. Taking in the physical and philosophical power of sound and music, and the effects of Alzheimer’s disease on a family, Ian Maleney questions the nature of home, memory and the complex nature of belonging. A thought-provoking and quietly devastating meditation on family and loss, and with echoes of Tim Robinson and Tara Westover, Minor Monuments is a beautiful and unique literary experience.
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry – SLIGO
Winner of the 2008 Costa Book of the Year
Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize 2008
Winner of the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year 2008
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2008
A Sunday Times Top 100 Novel of the Twenty-First Century
Featured on BBC2’s ‘Between the Covers’ as a Booker Gem 2021
Nearing her one-hundredth birthday, Roseanne McNulty faces an uncertain future, as the Roscommon Regional Mental hospital where she’s spent the best part of her adult life prepares for closure. Over the weeks leading up to this upheaval, she talks often with her psychiatrist Dr Grene, and their relationship intensifies and complicates. Told through their respective journals, the story that emerges is at once shocking and deeply beautiful. Refracted through the haze of memory and retelling, Roseanne’s story becomes an alternative, secret history of Ireland’s changing character and the story of a life blighted by terrible mistreatment and ignorance, and yet marked still by love and passion and hope.
The Queen of Dirt Island by Donal Ryan – TIPPERARY
The Aylward women are mad about each other, but you wouldn’t always think it.
You’d have to know them – in spite of what neighbours might say about raised voices and dramatic scenes – to know that that their house is a place of peace, filled with love, a refuge from the sadness and cruelty of the world.
The head of the family, Nana, is a woman who has buried two sons and whose life has been the family farm.
Her daughter-in-law, Eileen, is estranged from her own parents, having ‘shamed’ them and given birth to Saoirse.
And then there’s Saoirse herself, eavesdropping on lives she cannot comprehend.
It is only when they must battle for the inheritance of Dirt Island – a narrow strip of land adjacent to Eileen’s childhood home – that they truly understand the roots that bind their lives together.
The Amusements by Aingeala Flannery – WATERFORD
In the resort town of Tramore, County Waterford, visitors arrive in waves with the tourist season, reliving the best days of their childhoods at the seaside amusements. Local teenager Helen Grant is indifferent to the charm of her surroundings; infatuated with her glamorous classmate Stella Swaine, she yearns to escape with her to art college, and from there, the world. But leaving Tramore is easier said than done. With an alcoholic father and an unsympathetic mother, Helen’s family life may shatter her dream, just when it seems to be within reach . . .
Valley of the Squinting Windows by Brinsley MacNamara – WESTMEATH
‘Valley of the Squinting Windows’ is a classic Irish novel set in central Ireland c. 1914-16. Garradrimna is a tiny village where everyone is interested in everyone else’s business and wishes them to fail. Twenty years before the events of the book, Nan Byrne has a relationship with a local man, Henry Shannon, hoping to marry him for his wealth. She falls pregnant but Henry refuses to marry her. After a miscarriage, the baby is buried at the bottom of the garden. Henry marries another woman and later dies, while Nan emigrates to England and marries Ned Brennan. They later move back to Garradrimna, where the villagers rejoice in telling Ned about his wife’s past.
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan – WEXFORD
It is 1985, in an Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant, faces into his busiest season. As he does the rounds, he feels the past rising up to meet him – and encounters the complicit silences of a people controlled by the Church.
The long-awaited new work from the author of Foster, Small Things Like These is an unforgettable story of hope, quiet heroism and tenderness.
Dirty Little Secrets by Jo Spain – WICKLOW
In the exclusive gated community of Withered Vale, people’s lives appear as perfect as their beautifully manicured lawns. Money, success, privilege – the residents have it all. Life is good.
There’s just one problem.
Olive Collins’ dead body has been rotting inside number four for the last three months. Her neighbours say they’re shocked at the discovery but nobody thought to check on her when she vanished from sight.
The police start to ask questions and the seemingly flawless facade begins to crack. Because, when it comes to Olive’s neighbours, it seems each of them has something to hide, something to lose and everything to gain from her death.
NORTHERN IRELAND
The Last Resort by Jan Carson – ANTRIM
The season’s just begun at Seacliff Caravan Park, but none of the residents are having a good time.
Frankie is haunted by his daughter’s death. Vidas, homeless and far from Lithuania, seeks sanctuary in an abandoned caravan. Anna struggles to shake off the ghost of her overbearing mother. Kathleen struggles to accept her daughter for who she is. Malcolm, a failed illusionist, makes one final attempt to reinvent himself. Agatha Christie-obsessed Alma faces her toughest case yet as she tries to help them all find what they’ve lost.
With trademark wit and playfulness, in this stunning linked short-story collection Jan Carson explores complex family dynamics, ageing, immigration, gender politics, the decline of the Church and the legacy of the Troubles. The Last Resort firmly places Carson as one of the most inventive and daring writers of her generation.
Border Angels by Anthony Quinn – ARMAGH
#2 Inspector Celsius Daly
A charred corpse and a set of footprints in the snow lead Celcius Daly into the twilight world of people trafficking. Inspector Celcius Daly is hunting for a missing woman, Lena Novak, who mysteriously disappeared one winter’s night along the Irish border, leaving in her wake the corpses of two men.
Daly finds himself hooked together with a prostitute and a hit man in a life-or-death chase. His investigation leads them deep into border country, a wild terrain of disappearing lanes and blown-up bridges, abandoned ghost-estates and thick forests – the ultimate refuge for anyone who does not want to be found.
The Sunken Road by Ciaran McMenamin – FERMANAGH
Longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction
Annie, Francie and Archie were inseparable growing up, but in 1914 the boys are seduced by the drama of the Great War. Before leaving their small Irish village for the trenches, Francie promises his true love Annie that he will bring her little brother home safe.
Six years later Francie is on the run, a wanted man in the Irish war of Independence. He needs Annie’s help to escape safely across the border, but that means confronting the truth about why Archie never came back….
Reading In The Dark by Seamus Deane – LONDONDERRY
This is the story of a haunted Irish childhood.
The setting is Derry in the Northern Ireland of the 40s and 50s, fraught with political hatred, family secrets and lethal intrigue. As a young boy tries to make sense of life, poverty and violence shift and obscure the facts; meanwhile his night-time reading of Irish legends weaves enchantment through reality. Claustrophobic but lyrically charged, breathtakingly sad but vibrant and unforgettable, this is one of the finest books about growing up – in Ireland or anywhere – that has ever been written.
Big Girl, Small Town by Michelle Gallen – TYRONE
Routine makes Majella’s world small but change is about to make it a whole lot bigger.
*Stuff Majella knows*
-God doesn’t punish men with baldness for wearing ladies’ knickers
-Banana-flavoured condoms taste the same as nutrition shakes
-Not everyone gets a volley of gunshots over their grave as they are being lowered into the ground
*Stuff Majella doesn’t know*
-That she is autistic
-Why her ma drinks
-Where her da is
Other people find Majella odd. She keeps herself to herself, she doesn’t like gossip and she isn’t interested in knowing her neighbours’ business. But suddenly everyone in the small town in Northern Ireland where she grew up wants to know all about hers.
Since her da disappeared during the Troubles, Majella has tried to live a quiet life with her alcoholic mother. She works in the local chip shop (Monday-Saturday, Sunday off), wears the same clothes every day (overalls, too small), has the same dinner each night (fish and chips, nuked in the microwave) and binge watches Dallas (the best show ever aired on TV) from the safety of her single bed. She has no friends and no boyfriend and Majella thinks things are better that way.
But Majella’s safe and predictable existence is shattered when her grandmother dies and as much as she wants things to go back to normal, Majella comes to realise that maybe there is more to life. And it might just be that from tragedy comes Majella’s one chance at escape.
Enjoy our listings of a great book for every county in Ireland!
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