Staff Picks: Cape Cod Mysteries | Cape Cod In Fiction & Poetry | Death and Dessert | Jodi Picoult Readalikes | Memories of a Not-So-Perfect Childhood | Romantic Comedy | Book Lists from the Staff | Staff Picks | The Ethics of Cloning | Voices of Ireland
No Tears in Ireland: A Memoir, Couterie, Sylvia
Rich sisters leave their French chateau and travel to Ireland with Wally, their Irish governess, expecting to be joined by their parents for a family vacation. Plans go awry when World War ll breaks out and they are marooned in an isolated cottage in the southwest of Ireland for the duration. 940.5481 Cou
McCarthy's Bar, Pete McCarthy.
The author, son of an Irish mother and an English father, travels to the west of Ireland, stopping in bars that bear the family name. McCarthy's First Rule of Travel: "On Arrival, Buy a Local Paper and Go For a Drink. The court cases, property prices and obituaries will tell you more than any guidebook and the drink will help you feel you understand things that are in reality beyond your comprehension." A good rule if I ever heard one. McCarthy is a wise and funny writer. 914.15 McC
Hungry for Home: Leaving the Blaskets: A Journey From the Edge of Ireland, Cole Moreton.
Stunned by the tragic death of their young brother, the members of the Kearney family leave the desolate Blasket Islands and forge a new life in Springfield, Massachusetts. 941.5 Mor
Divorcing Jack, Colin Bateman
After he has a fling with a girl he hardly knows, columnist Dan Starkey's wife throws him out. Dan finds the girlfriend murdered in her bed and then tries to outrun both the IRA and the police. A lively mystery set in Belfast. Mystery/Bateman
Green Shadows, White Whale, Ray Bradbury.
In this autobiographical novel, a young Ray Bradbury goes to Ireland to write the screenplay for John Huston's film Moby Dick. Great dialogue.
The Guards, Ken Bruen.
Set in Galway, Ireland. Unable to give up drinking, an Irish cop is thrown off the force, meets an attractive woman and begins a new career as a private investigator. As dark as a rainy Irish winter's night.
One Day as a Tiger, Anne Haverty.
After his parents die in a car crash, Martin Hawkins has a breakdown and returns to the family farm in Tipperary. There he falls in love with his brother's wife, and raises a genetically altered sheep. Bucolic Ireland with a modern twist.
Mary McGreevy, Walter Keady.
In 1950, redheaded and headstrong Sister Mary Thomas leaves the convent and returns to the village of Kildawree. She scandalizes her old neighbors by taking the part of a man in the village play, and then bearing a child out of wedlock and refusing to name the father. Fiction/Keady
Water, Carry Me, Thomas Moran.
Orphans Una, from County Cork, and Aidan from Enniskillen, County Fermanagh in the North, fall in love in a divided Ireland. Betrayed by Aidan, who is really an IRA man, Una unwittingly smuggles explosives into Ireland and is arrested.
Wild Decembers, Edna O'Brien.
Set on a mountainside in the west of Ireland. Joseph Brennan and newcomer Mick Bugler battle, with tragic consequences, over the ownership of a piece of land. The third member of the triangle, Joseph's sister Breege, cannot decide whether her loyalty lies with her brother or Bugler, her new love.
A Booklist Prepared bythe Reference Department
