See new releases, catch up on what you missed, or find your next read in our First Flush database for Irish Book Week
It’s Irish Book Week and all around the country bookshops are hosting events, readings, signings and more.
Below you can find some of the new releases this month—but you can also search our database First Flush all the way back to 2021 where you can see all Irish-authored, Irish-interest and Irish-published books.
Find your book at your local bookshop and support the work of our fantastic booksellers around Ireland—who offer a personal and online service to rival the commercial juggernauts.
This Boy’s Heart, by John Creedon (Gill Books)
Coming at the end of October This Boy’s Heart is the latest from John Creedon. The book is set in a city-centre household bursting with humanity, with a cast of a dozen children and another dozen adults—including beloved aunts, an American writer, an African doctor and a Scottish bookie.
‘A thing of beauty. I adored it. Full of heart and warmth and humour, this is a book to lift your spirits.’—Donal Ryan
The streets outside are teeming with brewery horses, Christian Brothers, beat clubs, dance halls, a Turkish Delight shop—and a pub where a child could sit up on a high stool and smoke his cigarette in peace. Summers are spent farmed out to friends and family in the countryside, with hilarious tales of donkey derbies and cow chases. Set in wildly contrasting worlds – from urban exotica to spacious meadows, from the classroom of fifty boys to the open road – these are stories of friendship, fun, family and folklore.
There is an absolute bounty of Irish children’s books this month, so maybe instead of picking up that celebrity-written title look at the wealth of talent on our shelves. Many children’s books experts have chosen their favourites this month, with Sarah Webb writing a five-part series in The Independent, Ruth Ennis championing the Discover Irish Children’s Books Challenge 2024 on social media, and Irish Book Week featuring events for children up and down the country. See the choices from Discover Irish Children’s Books here.
Two beautiful bird-themed books are out this autumn. Murmurations by James Crombie (Hachette Ireland), and Nature Boy, by Seán Ronayne (The Lilliput Press).
In the dusk hours of a November evening in 2020, James Crombie set out for the shore of Lough Ennell, Co. Westmeath with no goal except to find a brief reprieve from the chaos of modern life. One of Ireland’s most lauded sports photographers, Crombie had spent months each year travelling the globe, snapping glimpses of sporting glory amid roaring crowds. Once the pandemic arrived however, he found himself suspended in an unfamiliar moment of stillness, where his focus could roam beyond the pitch. When a close friend came to him in a moment of grief, the pair made for the lake.
You can find a selection of these beautiful images on display during the Dublin Book Festival
What Crombie found on the shore that evening – an undulating murmuration of starlings, dancing above the surface of the water – would change his life forever.
Desperate to capture the beauty of the murmurations, and to better understand this phenomenon and the surroundings of the lake itself, Crombie began a four year journey, travelling to lake shore for over 100 days per year. In his efforts to capture the formations of the magical birds, Crombie managed to chart the stunning natural cycles of the lake and the surrounding countryside.
An incredible combination of narrative and photography, this is a book about one man’s quest to capture the beauty of an Irish natural phenomenon, and about how our local environments harbour a wealth of beauty and complexity, if only we’re able to look closely enough.
You can find a selection of these beautiful images on display during the Dublin Book Festival at the Festival Hub in The Printworks, Dublin Castle from 11am – 4pm, Friday November 8th to Sunday November 10th. James Crombie will be doing a walk-through of his exhibition on Friday 8 November from 11.45am – 12.30pm, followed by a book signing. Find more details here.
Seán Ronayne wrote the introduction for Murmurations, and his book Nature Boy also turns on the healing power of nature.
Knowing he was different from an early age, Seán was nicknamed ‘nature boy’ by the other kids. He struggled to fit in and would often escape to the woods and coastlines around his home in Cork. There he discovered his passion – identifying and understanding birds through their sound and song—something which would save him in the months following a near‑death experience in his late teens.
As Seán found his path working as an ornithologist, he realised that by highlighting the wonder and beauty of the natural world, he could draw attention to the danger it currently faces. At thirty-two he received an autism diagnosis and his life finally started to make sense. In Nature Boy, we are taken from the Sahara Desert, the jungles of Nepal and the streets of Thailand, to discovering the night sounds of Catalunya, and Seán’s mission to record all the regularly occurring bird species in Ireland.
There are sports books aplenty this season with Johnny Sexton’s biography front and centre, which offers an honest look at his childhood, his sometimes unpromising-seeming early experiences in club and professional rugby, his relationships with key teammates and coaches (including Brian O’Driscoll, Paul O’Connell, Joe Schmidt and Andy Farrell), and his ideas about the game.
In Whatever it Takes, Richie Hogan tells the story of his dazzling hurling career, from his obsession with maintaining high standards in the Kilkenny team, to the stand-out moments on the pitch and the challenges he encountered along the way that threatened to derail everything.
In Unbeatable Eric Haughan deep-dives into Dublin’s seven years in footballing nirvana, an era of dominance and drama in which Gaelic football changed forever. Reviewing crucial matches and speaking to players and backroom staff, he pieces together the story of arguably the greatest side the game has ever seen . and the teams who tried to catch them.
There’s a Monster Behind the Door, by Gaelle Belem, translated into English by Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert (Bullaun Press) is Kevin Curran‘s book recommendation for Irish Book Week. ‘Set in La Reunion, it is a funny and equally disturbing look at life on the margins.’
In her review for Books Ireland, Ruby Eastwood describes Let’s Dance, by Lucy Sweeney Byrne as a study of claustrophobia. ‘Sweeney Byrne masterfully evokes the sense of hopeless yearning, the tantalising little square of blue sky seen from inside the prison cell. The trapped women in her stories are tragic because they still have the capacity to imagine a vast, glorious freedom outside, out there, away from their lives, away from themselves.’
These are just some of the books out this month—have a browse through the database and find your book for Irish Book Week! And if you can, support our bookshops.
