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| | BRANDON AUTHORS ON TOUR |
 | KEN BRUEN
Friday 4 April
NoirCon 2008, Philadelphia, USA: Ken Bruen will receive the first David L. Goodis Award.
www.NoirCon.com
PAUL CHARLES
Thursday 10 April Ramelton Community Library, Old Meetinghouse, Ramelton, Co. Donegal.
ALICE TAYLOR
Friday 18 April
Book launch, The Parish, at The Private Collector Gallery, Innishannon, Co. Cork.
Saturday April 26
1.00pm Eason, Patrick Street, Cork
Wednesday April 30
8.00pm Benners Hotel, Dingle, Féile na Bealtaine reading
Saturday 3 May
1.00pm Hughes & Hughes, St Stephen’s Green, Dublin
Thursday 8 May
2.30pm Philips Bookshop, Mallow
Friday 9 May
7.30pm Eason, Dungarvan Shopping Centre
Saturday 10 May
1.00pm O’Farrell’s, Bandon
Tuesday 13 May
Mayo County Library, John Moore Road, Castlebar, Co. Mayo
Wednesday 14 May
1.00pm Dubray Bookshop, Shop Street, Galway
Friday 16 May
3.00pm Kanturk Bookshop
Saturday 17 May
1.00pm O’Mahony’s Bookshop, O’Connell Street, Limerick
4.00pm Newcastle West Bookstore
Saturday 24 May
12.00 Killorglin Library reading
3.30pm Killarney Bookshop
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| | THE BEST OF FICTION IN 2008 |  | MARCH
Sam Millar: Bloodstorm FIRST EDITION
“Millar writes with such intensity his words can often knock the breath clean from your lungs. His gritty style takes no prisoners, and his stories always ask the question other authors shy away from.” Belfast Telegraph
Sam Millar is a winner of the 1998 Brian Moore Short Story Award, and other awards. In 2005 Brandon published his first crime novel, The Redemption Factory, which was published in the US by Thunder’s Mouth, and in 2006 his second crime novel, The Darkness of Bones; both will be published in France by Fayard. His memoir, On the Brinks, was a bestseller in Ireland.
APRIL
Ken Bruen. The Dramatist – A Jack Taylor novel
NEW B FORMAT PAPERBACK EDITION
"Collectively, the Jack Taylor novels are Bruen's masterwork, and The Dramatist is the darkest and most profound installment of the series to date." This Week
"Quirky, quality fiction." Observer
Ken Bruen has been a finalist for the Edgar, Anthony, and Barry Awards, and has won a Macavity Award and two Shamus Awards for the Jack Taylor series. He lives in Galway.
Paul Charles. The Dust of Death
NEW B FORMAT PAPERBACK EDITION
“From its killer first line to its last, The Dust of Death is compelling and elegant, like a well-woven garrotte.” Mark Billingham
“A mystery that's as smooth as a good single malt and none the less satisfying." John Harvey
Paul Charles was born and raised in Magherafelt in the north of Ireland and is one of Europe’s best known music promoters and agents. He is the author of eight Inspector Christy Kennedy novels, the most recent of which, Sweetwater, was published in 2006. The Dust of Death is the first of a new series, set in Donegal and featuring Inspector Starrett.
MAY
Barry McCrea. The First Verse
FIRST EDITION
Awarded the Ferro-Grumley Award for Fiction, past winners of which include Jamie O'Neill, Edmund White, and Colm Toibin
“In this brilliant first novel, the best of recent memory, a young Irish writer of great psychological dexterity takes on a handful of exciting themes. For a hundred years, Ireland has provided the English-speaking world with its most eloquent writers; Barry McCrea now joins this illustrious company.” Edmund White
Barry McCrea was born in 1974 and grew up in Dalkey, near Dublin; he was educated at Gonzaga College, and Trinity College, Dublin, where he studied French and Spanish literature. He received a Ph.D from Princeton University in 2004, and currently teaches Comparative Literature at Yale University.
JUNE
PJ Curtis. The Lightning Tree
NEW B FORMAT PAPERBACK EDITION
"This is one of those extraordinary books that appears out of nowhere but which captures an atmosphere that enthrals and enchants... This has the makings of a folk classic.” Des Kenny
“Mariah’s voice comes from an Ireland in which there was time and space to attend to the delicate detail of both the natural and the supernatural worlds. In PJ Curtis’s hands, her story becomes a poignant elegy for that more beautiful Ireland.” Nuala O’Faolain
PJ Curtis has been a professional broadcaster, record producer, author and music historian. He has worked in Nashville, Memphis and Phoenix but has returned to his native place, the Burren, and to his memories of meeting as a ten-year-old the remarkable Mariah. He has won many awards for radio documentaries and other work, and he is the author of three previous books.
SEPTEMBER
Paul Charles. The Beautiful Sound of Silence
A DI Christy Kennedy Mystery
FIRST EDITION
“This series deserves recognition on a par with those of Inspectors Jury, Morse and Tennyson.“ Publishers Weekly
“Reflective tea-drinking Irish Detective Christy Kennedy is a wonderful creation.” The Times
Ken Bruen. American Skin FIRST EDITION
“Ken Bruen's biggest, boldest, most sweeping and heartfelt novel yet.” C. J. Box
“Ken Bruen’s artfully violent and distinctly human voice is in full effect with American Skin. There are few crime novelists today who write with such passion and bravado.” George Pelecanos
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| | OTHER RECENT FICTION | Mary Rose Callaghan. Billy, Come Home
“Billy, Come Home works. It exposes the blatant prejudice against sufferers [from schizophrenia] and their families, but retains the structure of a dramatic story.” Sunday Tribune
“The eighth novel by Mary Rose Callaghan, it is a principled piece of work that seeks to give voice to the realities of lives often distorted by myth, fear and societal ignorance... This thoughtful and poignant novel places ethics rather than aesthetics at its core – its motivation is to challenge prejudices and create a society respectful of difference. For Billy to come home he needs a home to come back to. This is the message of the novel, a message that (through narrative style) is made very simply clear.” The Irish Times
“[A] clear-eyed look at what the Celtic Tiger Irish are really like behind their double front doors – and to be honest, we don’t come out all that well.
“Set in the plush, SUV-crowded suburbs of Dublin, Billy, Come Home is a harrowing story of murder, bigotry and loss – but it’s also a scathing depic-tion of the way our society treats the ‘duine le dia’...
“This is a compelling tale of lives lived on the margin, of the increasing problem of homelessness and the ever-increasing coldness at the heart of our society.” Irish Examiner
“Callaghan convincingly portrays the struggles of a woman trying to protect her vulnerable brother, and this glimpse into the world of a family affected by mental illness makes compelling reading.” Irish Mail on Sunday
“Set in the Dublin suburbs, this is the highly disturbing tale of homeless Billy, a sufferer of schizophrenia who is accused of the violent murder of a teenage girl. Callaghan throws us into the deep end, unprepared from the first page.
“We follow his sister Angie to London, where she is on the way to identify a body fished out of the Thames that may be that of her brother. Through the voice of Angie, we hang our communal heads as we see with what ease the cloud of suspicion falls on Billy.
“This book starts as a fairly standard murder mystery but soon unravels into a devastating account of mental illness that questions society’s dire lack of resources and its narrow-minded view of those who suffer from it.
“Billy Come Home is an important, hard-hitting story of what happens when society fails to protect its most vulnerable.” Irish World
“This isn’t, ultimately, a bleak book. It ends with a glimmer of hope, and throughout the characters develop in surprising and satisfying ways. “In a world obsessed with belongings, and with the trivia of consumerism, it is refreshing to read a novel that ignores these preoccupations.” Books Ireland
Paul Charles. Sweetwater
“With more twists than a turkey twizzler, lovers of crime fiction will gobble up this super sleuth novel. “It’s a gentle read with clever quirks, inventive murders and the grime, colour and pizzazz of London’s Camden Town. Irish Detective Christy Kennedy is no Cracker or Sherlock – he prefers tea to whisky or junk – but his passion for solving complex puzzles and cunning crimes drives the book, page after page.” News of the World
"Unlike so many other fictional cops, Kennedy is embarrassingly normal and level-headed, with a believable and lasting love interest and a genuine understanding of the complexities of life in contemporary London – almost like an Inspector Morse without the irascibility and lovelorn aspirations...The puzzle slowly fits together, exposing a rich pagaent of human relationships. An exemplary case for the quiet sleuth of British crime fiction." Guardian
"Sweetwater tells the story of a missing man in Camden town, which is ex-cellently evoked, particularly the area round the market. As are the attempts by DI Kennedy to solve the mystery. Author Paul Charles delivers another en-gaging detective mystery in the Morse tradition." Verbal Magazine
"Two things lift this series out of the ordinary: one is the sense of place; the other is the character of Kennedy, a refreshingly gimmick-free old-school copper." Mail on Sunday
"If writers such as Mark Timlin and Ken Bruen could be said to be writing London noir, then Paul Charles might be said to be penning London Blanc... Christy is an engaging type, as he stumbles through the investigation, and the method of the killing is highly original in the extreme. And there's a very nice little twist in the closing chapter that caught me unawares." The Irish Times
“A writer who treads in the classic footsteps of Morse and Maigret.” Guardian
“Paul Charles' feel for the small corners of a big city, and his sympathy with his large cast of characters, give his book a life which you leave thinking you would like to revisit it again soon.” Sunday Independent
“Reflective tea-drinking Irish Detective Christy Kennedy is a wonderful creation.” The Times
“Agatha Christie for people who inhale.” Nigel Williamson, The Times
“If you enjoy Morse, you’ll enjoy Kennedy.” BBC Radio 2
John Maher. The Luck Penny
“John Maher's debut novel compels through its subtle emphasis on the need to remain open to plural readings of history and culture, so that the power of the past to determine the future might be mitigated.
“Maher wisely resists the temptation to moralise or to judge Victorian manners and beliefs by 21st-century standards. Instead, he invites us to trace the shadowy threads of modernity within obscure historical moments.
“Recurring references to sectarian clashes in Ulster, Chartist disturbances in London and "trouble in the Punjab" evoke a sense of simmering crisis that has clear contemporary resonances. Far from emphasising the remoteness of the past, The Luck Penny brings it into propinquity with the present and suggests that change and reconciliation, both personal and political, must be predicated on an affective understanding of actual – as op-posed to imaginary – others.” The Irish Times
“An expertly crafted, tender tale of grief, language and land... London wheezes with cholera yet whirrs dizzily with life, while the Irish countryside hums with secrets, superstition and political unrest. The characterisation is deftly observed – the social mores of the day, the prejudices and cultural differences are beautifully illuminated in the interplay between coloniser and colonised... The contrasting roles that ring throughout the story – the poised, restrained yet rich inflections of the English settlers, the musical and roman-tic, yet earthly Irish lilt and the ancient, impenetrable Babylonian text – inter-weave to create a compelling study of a world where it truly does take all sorts. A richly rewarding read." Metro
“John Maher’s novel The Luck Penny, which lyrically and intelligently anatomises the soul of an age not entirely dissimilar to our own, the mid-19th century, when the world shot forward at a spectacular rate of knots, ushering in coal and steel and cholera in the process. A story of the modern age in by-gone times by a modern mind in touch with the future.” Patrick McCabe, Sunday Tribune
“Beautifully written... Maher writes with wonderful sympathy and insight... Mrs Tours and Eliza Drew, with all their worries and problems come across as particularly intriguing and arresting creations... He is equally strong on evincing the religious, class and linguistic divisions that hold the townspeople apart... The Luck Penny is the work of a dedicated and gifted writer who has plenty to say.” Sunday Business Post
“John Maher confirms himself as one of Irish writing’s bright stars with this meditation on death.… [A] superbly executed story about bereavement told through characters that intrigue from the first. There’s a contemplative im-mediacy to The Luck Penny – from the start you care about what happens to its central characters – and its linguistic abundance has a wide appeal. Maher is a writer concerned with placing his story in a period in Ireland that reflects the ignorance and gombeenism of the past, but also its religious and political hopefulness.
“The Luck Penny is an outstanding Irish novel for the wider English-reading world because ultimately it’s the exploration of the universality of death – and its sometime corollary of redemption. Maher is clearly a writer of sufficient gift to create a vision capable of emphasising such intention to his readership.
“The author of the short story collection, The Coast of Malabar is surely destined to eclipse his already substantial reputation with this exceptionally realised novel. Superb matter.” Sunday Tribune
“John Maher is a complex and intriguing writer. …As high-class entertainment this is seriously comic storytelling.” Irish Independent
“An accomplished confection of death, trauma, psychosis, paranoia, illicit love, colonial power and native subversion.” Irish Book Review
Douglas A. Martin. Branwell
“The American novelist and poet, Douglas A. Martin, goes beyond speculation into an imaginative evocation of his subject’s life, using biographical facts to create an uncomfortable but convincing fictional world...
“Martin’s sure touch and admirable restraint is evident from the opening description of the famous parsonage...
“The prose keeps pace with Branwell’s degeneration, losing coherence (but not poetic power) as he loses his mind...
“Martin has evocatively captured the sad parameters of Branwell’s world, revealing the pattern of his self-destructive path through life in a way that is painful but also memorable.” The Irish Times
"Martin's method of controlling his chaotic protagonist is to choose a spare, stripped-down style which could not be more different from the opaquely inconsequential, rambling prose Branwell himself was producing... This is a novel written with pity rather than empathy [and] impressive diction." Times Literary Supplement
“Through its simple, dreamlike language [Martin] creates a haunting picture of a precocious child who grew into a sensitive, easily-led adult – buoyed up by the admiration of drinking cronies and cast down by each small setback. Though this is Branwell’s story, one of the most fascinating aspects of Martin's biographical novel is the different perspective it gives of his sisters; Branwell is the family's 'great Irish hope', and nobody put much store in the girls' artistic potential. Yet Branwell, the pride of the family, ends up dis-graced, while it is his sisters, working away quietly and without fuss, who achieve greatness. A thoughtful, lyrical exploration of an almost forgotten figure.” Metro Ireland
“Patrick Branwell Brontë is one of those peripheral figures in literary history, lurking in the shadows of his more famous siblings. The sole Brontë brother, Branwell was educated at home with his sisters Charlotte, Emily, and Anne after the death of their mother and two sisters—a cloistered environment that fed their voracious communal imagination. The foursome created fantastical stories about the kingdoms of Gondal and Angria. But while the three sisters went on to achieve literary fame (despite near impossible odds for women writers), Branwell drifted through his short life, unable to stick with any of his jobs as portrait painter, railroad clerk, or tutor.
“Martin avoids the temptation of plunging headfirst into the gothic, instead conveying Branwell's psychic turmoil in simple, stripped-down sentences. A hopeless romantic, Martin's hero lives inside a dream, dazed by his failure and an unacceptable interest in other young men. Most Brontë biographies suggest that he was fired from a tutoring position because he fathered an illegitimate child, but this novel hints at another kind of scandal involving Branwell's male charge: ‘He can show him some things if he doesn't tell his parents, in the stable. He could have a little drink there sometime. Just one.’ Martin sparsely fills in the outlines of Branwell's dissolution, a suitably phantom account of the man who painted himself out of his own family portrait.” Village Voice
“Following his strong debut, Martin's new novel is stylistically complex and emotionally evocative. Branwell Bronte emerges as a fascinating lost charac-ter, both muse and devil to his sisters' passions, giving us a new dimension to this ever fascinating family.” Darcy Steinke
“Douglas Martin's new book is an opium dream, akin to the quasi-documentary recits of Herve Guibert – lyrical, hypnotic, genre-bending. Martin's novel functions as a fictional essay on the troubled, alluring legend of Branwell Bronte, as well as a truly poetic experiment in how to push autobiographical fantasy to its limits. I enjoyed it immensely.” Wayne Koestenbaum
Emer Martin. Baby Zero
“Martin’s gaze is undaunted and courageous... and her artistic and moral integrity are to be applauded.
“She’s a fine writer, too, with an elegant turn of phrase, finely judged sense of pace and – always a bonus in a work of this nature – a sensitive ear for the way people really speak...
“Like Margaret Atwood’s classic dystopian fable, The Handmaid’s Tale, which ploughed a similar furrow, Baby Zero shines a pure, unflinching light on a world where, as Marguerite points out, torture and brutalisation of men is decried as racism, but the same treatment of women is defended as ‘tradi-tion’.” Irish Independent
“The true beauty in Baby Zero is the richness of the prose and the characters – and little Leila in particular. The prose is simple, yet dazzling, fast, taut and rhythmic. And Leila is a jewel of humanity, the heart and soul of a novel coming down with heart, soul, wisdom, pain, fun and the stupidity of families.
“Ultimately, this is a velvet-gloved, iron-fisted satire on the east – or is it on the west? And it wraps up sweetly – and a little painfully – back at zero…
“Sometimes critics say a novel’s plot is great but the writing isn’t so good, or that the writing is great yet the plot is up-the-left. But this is the first time, I’m sure, that I haven’t been able to break those two things apart. There’s no light between them. They’re equally extraordinary, equally driving the momentum. Baby Zero is a literary unit so flush, confident and unique that it should win a big fat prize, and I suspect it will. And if you’ve read this review this far, you should read this book. It’s as sharp and sore and dizzying as a bullet wound, and will probably stay with you for just as long.” Verbal Magazine
“If there is any justice in the world, her latest novel, Baby Zero (Brandon), will see her break through to the major league of literary writers and cement her reputation as one of the most exciting voices to emerge from this country in the last decade.
“A prophetic and deeply moving work, it examines the clash between the fundamentalism of the East and the commercialism of the West through the lives of three girls from the same family, born at different times of upheaval.” Books Ireland
“It is cogent and urgent in depicting migration and dislocation as the pre-dominant narrative of 21st-century history. Her characters are piquant and memorable; the tale is also very funny in its portrait of Leila's monstrous mother, Farah... [Emer Martin's] portrait of a world defined by the collapse of all notions of community contains lasting strength and beauty." Metro
“This, her third [novel], explores the uncertainties of the post-9/11 world, addressing the conflict between Islam and the West and the problems of im-migration and assimilation through the "river within a river" that is Marguerite's story...
“Indeed Martin's own situation - as an Irish woman married to an Afghan man - makes her uniquely placed to address such fraught issues, and this insight elevates Marguerite's tale into a subtle exploration of the role of history and memory in the construction of identity: ‘You know you're in trouble when the Iranians think you treat women badly.’
“Martin delights in subverting the glib stereotypes of East and West and rejects traditional markers of nationality, identity and ethnicity in favour of a focus on individuals and the similarities between them. Viewed from this perspective, contemporary tensions are nothing more than ‘the same Cowboy and Indian story over and over again in different costumes, in different locations’. Baby Zero is both a convincing tale and a timely warning.” The Irish Times
“A riveting page-turner…. A compelling satire on the clash of civilisations, the success of this story lies in the telling… [Martin’s] artist’s eye rarely takes sides and isn’t afraid to paint warts and all. Drawn in by the details, it’s difficult not to care about what happens to these characters and how their stories end. Painted in large letters on a wall in the centre of Dublin, someone has taken the trouble to proclaim ‘Never forgive, never forget’ – not too far away, another, in even larger letters reads ‘Love Life’. If these slogans represent the writing on the wall of a new, multicultural Ireland, then Emer Martin's Baby Zero offers rare insight into what they might mean." Sunday Tribune
“The differences in each culture are stark, highlighting the freedom children have here in our own country. Just being able to come and go as we please is considered luxury in comparison to the religious and political restrictions imposed on those born into the eastern culture.” Evening Echo
“This is an unflinching tale of extreme oppression... In essence, this novel examines how women and children are trapped and often destroyed by the oppression of eastern fundamentalism and western consumerism – and how men seem to come out best.” Irish Examiner
“An absorbing account of how a family scattered across the world manages to survive through its shared history and heritage.” Irish Mail on Sunday
Agata Schwarz & Louise von Flotow (eds). The Third Shore – Women’s Fiction from East Central Europe
“This collection of short stories is a treasure trove of quirky, funny, touching and insightful work by 25 women writers from 18 countries in the former communist bloc. Flipped open to any page, it offers a window into unique worlds – some political, all intensely imaginative and often unexpectedly funny... Reading the stories was an eye-opening, refreshing experience, offering a rare feeling of discovering worlds that are entirely new but at the same time deeply familiar. That rare feeling is made more evident by the surpassing quality of each tale, and made more exhilarating by the maturity, variety and humour to be found in them.” Sunday Business Post
“A generous serving in a handsome book, with notes and potted biogs of the writers. Not just the most westerly publisher in Europe, Brandon is surely the most European publisher in Ireland.” Books Ireland, February
“These stories are exciting, intriguing and never predictable. The writers rarely observe the decorum of the short story as we have come to expect it... For all their startling narrative tricks and puzzles these stories will appeal for their wide range and honesty.” Books Ireland, April
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