"Highly readable" – Irish News "A gripping appraisal of Northern Ireland's turbulent first century. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how we have got to where we are today." – Suzanne Breen, Belfast Telegraph "A timely and lucid analysis of the Troubles that asks hard questions of successive British governments. The good news for the current government is that it also offers some answers." – Rory Carroll, The Guardian *** "For God's sake, bring me a large Scotch. What a bloody awful country!" Home Secretary Reginald Maudling, returning from his first visit to Northern Ireland in 1970 As a long and bloody guerrilla war staggered to a close on the island of Ireland, Britain beat a retreat from all but a small portion of the country – and thus, in 1921, Northern Ireland was born. That partition, says Kevin Meagher, has been an unmitigated disaster for Nationalists and Unionists alike. Following the fraught history of British rule in Ireland, a better future was there for the taking but was lost amid political paralysis, while the resulting fifty years of devolution succeeded only in creating a brooding sectarian stalemate that exploded into the Troubles. In a stark but reasoned critique, Meagher traces the landmark events in Northern Ireland's century of existence, exploring the missed signals, the turning points, the principled decisions that should have been taken, as well as the raw realpolitik of how Northern Ireland has been governed over the past 100 years. Thoughtful and sometimes provocative, What a Bloody Awful Country reflects on how both Loyalists and Republicans might have played their cards differently and, ultimately, how the actions of successive British governments have amounted to a masterclass in failed statecraft.

For over two centuries, the 'Irish question' has dogged UK politics. Though the Good Friday Agreement carved a fragile peace from the bloodshed of the Troubles, the Brexit process has shown a largely uncomprehending British audience just how uneasy that peace always was – and thrown new light on Northern Ireland's uncertain constitutional status. Remote from the British mainland in its politics, economy and cultural attitudes, Northern Ireland is, in effect, in an antechamber, its place within the UK conditional on the border poll guaranteed by the peace process. As shifting demographic trends erode the once-dominant Protestant–Unionist majority, making a future referendum a racing certainty, the reunification of Ireland becomes a question not of if but when – and how. In this new, fully updated edition of A United Ireland, Kevin Meagher argues that a reasoned, pragmatic discussion about Britain's relationship with its nearest neighbour is now long overdue, and questions that have remained unasked (and perhaps unthought) must now be answered.

In the second of Georgia Evans' supernatural trilogy, Gloria Prewitt must reveal her greatest secret to have any hope of saving the people she loves. . . As the district nurse for a country village outside London, Gloria has the respect of the town and the satisfaction of helping those who need it most. She'd lose both if anyone discovered that she turns into a furry red fox and runs through the Surrey hills by moonlight. But what she sees on those wild nights suggests Brytewood is under attack--from a saboteur with superhuman powers and the force of the Nazi Luftwaffe behind him. What can one werefox do against a predator with devastating weapons at his command--and the strength of the undead besides? What can a woman with a secret reveal without losing all she has? With the help of a couple of Devonshire Pixies, a Welsh dragon, and two men too stubborn to admit they're outnumbered, Gloria might just find out the answers. . .

Mavis Gallant is the modern master of what Henry James called the international story, the fine-grained evocation of the quandaries of people who must make their way in the world without any place to call their own. The irreducible complexity of the very idea of home is especially at issue in the stories Gallant has written about Montreal, where she was born, although she has lived in Paris for more than half a century. Varieties of Exile, Russell Banks's extensive new selection from Gallant's work, demonstrates anew the remarkable reach of this writer's singular art. Among its contents are three previously uncollected stories, as well as the celebrated semi-autobiographical sequence about Linnet Muir—stories that are wise, funny, and full of insight into the perils and promise of growing up and breaking loose.

A heartwarming tale of yuletide merriment by the New York Times bestselling author of An Irish Country Doctor

A New York Times bestseller! They burned her home. They stole her brother and sister. But vengeance is following. Shy South hoped to bury her bloody past and ride away smiling, but she'll have to sharpen up some bad old ways to get her family back, and she's not a woman to flinch from what needs doing. She sets off in pursuit with only a pair of oxen and her cowardly old step father Lamb for company. But it turns out Lamb's buried a bloody past of his own. And out in the lawless Far Country the past never stays buried. Their journey will take them across the barren plains to a frontier town gripped by gold fever, through feud, duel and massacre, high into the unmapped mountains to a reckoning with the Ghosts. Even worse, it will force them into an alliance with Nicomo Cosca, infamous soldier of fortune, and his feckless lawyer Temple, two men no one should ever have to trust . . . Red Country takes place in the same world as the First Law trilogy, Best Served Cold, andThe Heroes. This novel also represents the return of Logen Ninefingers, one of Abercrombie's most beloved characters.

Patrick Taylor's devoted readers know Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly as a pugnacious general practitioner in the quaint Irish village of Ballybucklebo. Now Taylor turns back the clock to give us a portrait of the young Fingal—and show us the pivotal events that shaped the man he would become. In the 1930s, fresh from a stint in the Royal Navy Reserve, and against the wishes of his disapproving father, Fingal O'Reilly goes to Dublin to study medicine. Fingal and his fellow aspiring doctors face the arduous demands of Trinity College and Sir Patrick Dun's Hospital. The hours are long and the cases challenging, but Fingal manages to find time to box and play rugby—and to romance a fetching, gray-eyed nurse named Kitty O'Hallorhan. Dublin is a city of slums and tenements, where brutal poverty breeds diseases that the limited medical knowledge of the time is often ill-equipped to handle. His teachers warn Fingal not to become too attached to his patients, but can he truly harden himself to the suffering he sees all around him—or can he find a way to care for his patients without breaking his heart? A Dublin Student Doctor is a moving, deeply human story that will touch longtime fans as well as readers who are meeting Doctor Fingal O'Reilly for the very first time. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.