Irish poet Catherine Phil MacCarthy's fourth collection of poems, The Invisible Threshold explores from several angles the idea of 'threshold' or the 'liminal', the state of being in transition from one moment to the next. These poems celebrate life with a deep sense of wonder. They capture transformational moments of experience where mortality and loss, as well as the ties between the body and spirit, are explored. Reconciliation with a mother's death brings "a sense of first breath on the earth" ('Facing the Rising Sun') and acknowledges that grief delivers a new freedom, where intense life is "open to pure being" ('Turning South') and the abundant energies of summer. Catherine Phil MacCarthy was born in Co. Limerick, in 1954 and educated at University College Cork, Trinity College Dublin, and Central School of Speech and Drama, London. Her collections of poetry include This Hour of the Tide (1994), the blue globe (1998) and Suntrap (2007). She has also published a novel, One Room an Everywhere (2003). She won the Fish International Poetry Prize in 2010, and is a former editor of Poetry Ireland Review.

'A wild, sleazy, drug-filled odyssey ... Doyle's maverick novel deserves the accolades coming its way' Independent 'The best work to date from a writer who gets better and better with each release' Irish Indepdendent 'A masterclass in what not to do' New Statesman 'His best book so far: riddling, irreverent, fearless' TLS Rob has spent most of his confusing adult life wandering, writing, and imbibing literature and narcotics in equally vast doses. Now, stranded between reckless youth and middle age, between exaltation and despair, his travels have acquired a de facto purpose: the immemorial quest for transcendent meaning. On a lurid pilgrimage for cheap thrills and universal truth, Doyle's narrator takes us from the menacing peripheries of Paris to the drug-fuelled clubland of Berlin, from art festivals to sun-kissed islands, through metaphysical awakenings in Asia and the brink of destruction in Europe, into the shattering revelations brought on by the psychedelic DMT. A dazzling, intimate, and profound celebration of art and ageing, sex and desire, the limits of thought and the extremes of sensation, Threshold confirms Doyle as one of the most original writers in contemporary literature.

From the author of the bestselling Anam Cara comes a beautiful collection of blessings to help readers through both the everyday and the extraordinary events of their lives. John O’Donohue, Irish teacher and poet, has been widely praised for his gift of drawing on Celtic spiritual traditions to create words of inspiration and wisdom for today. In To Bless the Space Between Us, his compelling blend of elegant, poetic language and spiritual insight offers readers comfort and encouragement on their journeys through life. O’Donohue looks at life’s thresholds—getting married, having children, starting a new job—and offers invaluable guidelines for making the transition from a known, familiar world into a new, unmapped territory. Most profoundly, however, O’Donohue explains “blessing” as a way of life, as a lens through which the whole world is transformed. O’Donohue awakens readers to timeless truths and shows the power they have to answer contemporary dilemmas and ease us through periods of change.

French philosopher and dramatist, Gabriel Marcel (1888-1973), who belonged to the movement of French existentialism, is one of the most insightful thinkers of the twentieth century. Unlike some of his contemporaries who took existentialism in an atheistic, even nihilistic, direction, Marcel approaches human existence from a theistic perspective, and gives priority to the themes of hope, fidelity and faith in the human search for meaning in a challenging world. Author of seventeen major works of philosophy, Marcel also wrote more than thirty plays, including tragedies and comedies, many of which were staged in theaters in Paris, Germany, Belgium, England, Ireland and the United States. Marcel regarded dramatic art as having priority in both a chronological and an intellectual sense. His plays deal with challenging experiences and issues of contention that arise between people, especially families, in day-to-day life. Describing his own style as "post-Ibsen," because it involves a sense of realism, depictions of passion and sincerity, and a sense of moral duty, Marcel''s plays rarely provide complete or settled answers to the difficulties they confront, but suggest possibilities both of interpretation and with regard to the choices on life''s journey. One of his aims is to allow audiences (and readers) not only to arrive at their own conclusions, but to feel the echo of the dramatic action in their own lives, and so provoke both insight and critical reflection on the dramas of existence. The plays in this new volume were written early in his career, and were published together under the title Le Seuil invisible (The Invisible Threshold) in 1913. The first play, Grace, explores the theme of religious conversion. The drama depicts a crisis between characters of genuine depth and sincerity, who are struggling with different interpretations of shared experiences. After a serious illness, Gerard, one of the main protagonists, undergoes a religious conversion, an experience which allows of two different and irreconcilable interpretations. The first is the interpretation of the scientific materialist; the second regards Gerard''s illness not as a cause but as an occasion to exercise the subject''s creative freedom. The play also raises the question of grace: the role that God may play in the choice of faith. Marcel asks us to consider the sincerity of our choices, and those attitudes and temptations that play a role in our motivations, in a profound dramatization of the experience of the religious as it emerges through challenging life situations. Similar themes are addressed but developed differently in the second play, The Sandcastle. Through the character of Moirans, this drama explores the confrontation between one''s beliefs and their consequences when faced with challenging family and social circumstances. The play asks us to think about what happens when our beliefs and theories, especially about religion, morality and politics, come up against situations in life that can test them. Marcel raises issues of moral character, commitment and sincerity, and introduces the role doubt plays in the way we form and hold our convictions. The springboard for the unfolding of the drama is Moirans'' egotism, and his growing realization of the difference between accepting Christianity in an intellectual and cultural sense, and a Christianity that is lived. This predicament then provokes his daughter, Clarisse, into some profound soul-searching of her own. Drama of this profundity offers audiences and readers a mirror that reflects their own problems, which leads to further awareness and understanding. Marcel''s dramatic works deal with the difficulties in acknowledging many of life''s most profound experiences, in reacting to them in an authentic way, and often illustrates our failures with regard to them. One of the major themes of both his dramatic and philosophical work is that life''s most profound, fulfilling experiences are being compromised more than ever in what he describes as the modern, broken world (le monde cassé), one unfortunately characterized by alienation, loss of meaning and feelings of despair. These new plays of Marcel''s, here translated into English for the first time, will appeal to all who are interested in the role of grace in everyday life, in the influence of culture on belief, the relationship between faith and reason, the choice of faith in a secular world, and the struggle between inauthentic and authentic existence. Marcel raises profound questions about these and related topics, but does not offer final answers. In his plays, he leaves that to us.

'Threshold Poetics: Milton and Intersubjectivity' is a study of the challenge intersubjective experience poses to doctrinal formulations of difference. Focusing on 'Paradise Lost' and 'Samson Agonistes' and using feminist and relational psychoanalytic theory, the project examines representations of looking, working, eating, conversing, and touching, to argue that encounters between selves in 'threshold space' dismantle the binary oppositions that support categorical thinking. A key term throughout the study is recognition, defined as the capacity to tolerate both sameness and difference between separate selves. Recognition of likeness-in-difference thus undermines the exclusionary logic of patriarchal and poitical hierarchies. Both Eve and Dalila demonstrate the ability to respect the borders of the other while seeking out similarity, but where 'Paradise Lost' depicts the eventual achievements of intersubjective understanding between Adam and Eve after the fall, 'Samson Agonistes' records its failure when Samson, maintaining the boundaries of difference, refuses Dalila's effort to make contact.