The Tain Bo Cualinge, centrepiece of the eighth-century Ulster cycle of heroic tales, is Ireland's great epic. It tells the story of a great cattle-raid, the invasion of Ulster by the armies of Medb and Ailill, Queen and King of Connacht, and their allies, seeking to carry off the great Brown Bull of Cualige. The hero of the tale is Cuchulainn, the Hound of Ulster, who resists the invaders single-handed while Ulster's warriors lie sick.

X + Y = K is an astonishing work by the late Ciaran Carson – an electrifying fusion of memoir, ghost story, and speculative fiction that pushes his lifelong preoccupations with memory, time, and perception into audacious new territory. Moving between Belfast and London, the novel traces the fractured consciousness of Kilpatrick, a man haunted by migraine visions, childhood trauma, and the spectral machinery of history. As séances, scientific experiments, and art-historical meditat...

‘I write to try to see you as you were, or what you have become. You left no forwarding address: that was part of your intention. For when we wrote those letters to each other all those years ago, we wrote as much for ourselves as for each other.’More than twenty years after the end of their love affair, Gabriel receives a cryptic postcard from an old flame. It is the first of thirteen cards from her, each one provoking a series of reveries about their life and love in 1980s Belfas...

‘He took out his watch and looked at it. He rested for one minute as timed on his watch. He opened the briefcase and took out a passport and a pair of spectacles. He put the spectacles on and looked at his passport, and realised he was the man in the picture. A gunshot rang out.’Part thriller, part spy novel, Exchange Place is set between Belfast and Paris and tracks the individual movements of two men, John Kilfeather and John Kilpatrick, who are trying to solve a mystery...

'Quite simply the best version of Dante there is' PAUL MULDOON, Irish Times.Almost eight centuries after its first publication, Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy remains an icon of Italian literature and of the epic genre. In Inferno, the first volume, the poet Virgil leads Dante's hero through hell, showing him the inhabitants of each of its nine circles and examples of the divine justice meted out to them.In this beautifully produced Apollo Library...

One of Ireland's most celebrated writers, musicians, and poets, Ciaran Carson was born in Belfast and has spent his life there. In The Star Factory, he makes himself the cartographer of his home city's spaces, symbolic and literal, the scribe of its byways and avenues, from Abbey Road to Zetland Street.Belfast has seen transformation: once the fifth-greatest industrial city in the world, the home of the S.S. Titanic, it has more recently been a battleground of sec...

Ciaran Carson is among the most restlessly groundbreaking poets now writing in English. In From Elsewhere, he adds yet another dimension to his poetry and to the act of translation by combining them in homage to the French poet Jean Follain (1903–1971). Carson not only translates the original, but also adds his own poetic rendition, crafting a mosaic of translation and free response. The implications of Follain's poems are often made arrestingly explicit in Carson's versions. The silences ...

Winner of the 2021 Women's Prize for FictionA SUNDAY TIMES & NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERThe spectacular new novel from the bestselling author of JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL, 'one of our greatest living authors' NEW YORK MAGAZINE__________________________________Piranesi lives in the House. Perhaps he always has.In his notebook...

STEP INTO ANOTHER WORLD - OF MAGIC, MAYHEM, MONSTERS AND MANIACAL GODS - IN STEPHEN FRY'S MOMENTOUS SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER, MYTHOS'A romp through the lives of ancient Greek gods. Fry is at his story-telling best . . . the gods will be pleased' TimesDiscover Stephen Fry's magnificent retelling of the greatest myths and legends ever told . . .___________No one loves and quarrels, desi...

THE MULTI AWARD-WINNING NOVEL FROM ONE OF OUR GREATEST LIVING COMEDIC WRITERS'A tragicomic triumph. You won't read a sadder, truer, funnier novel this year' Guardian____________The Barnes family are in trouble.Until recently they ran the biggest business in town, now they’re teetering on the brink of bankruptcy – and that’s just the start of their problems. Dickie and Imelda’s marriage is hanging by a thread; straig...

AN ACCLAIMED, EMMY-NOMINATED TV SERIES ON AMAZON PRIME VIDEOWINNER OF THE HUGO, LOCUS AND BRAM STOKER AWARDS'To give him his full title: Neil Gaiman, Architect of Worlds, Svengali of Plot, Shaman of Character, Exploder of Cliché, Master Craftsman of Style, Dreamer Laureate of the Republic of Letters' DAVID MITCHELL'Original, engrossing, and endlessly inventive' GEORGE R.R. MARTIN'Brilliant a...

A BEST BOOK OF 2024 IN THE SUNDAY TIMES, THE SPECTATOR, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT, INDEPENDENT, SCOTSMAN AND THE NEW YORKER'Extraordinary.' MARINA HYDE'Pitch-perfect.' OBSERVER'An utter joy to read.' MONICA ALI'Majestic.' INDEPENDENT'A masterpiece.' JOHN LANCHESTER'Addictively enjoyable.'