Showing results by narrator "Gerry O'Brien" in All Categories

Created by an Irish clergyman, Melmoth is one of the most fiendish characters in literature. In a satanic bargain, Melmoth exchanges his soul for immortality. The story of his tortured wanderings through the centuries is pieced together through those who have been implored by Melmoth to take over his pact with the devil. Influenced by the Gothic romances of the late 18th century, Maturin's diabolic tale raised the genre to a new and macabre pitch. Its many admirers include Poe, Balzac, Oscar Wilde and Baudelaire.

Artemis Fowl is no stranger to trouble. In fact he's a magnet for it. Man-eating trolls, armed and dangerous (not to mention high-tech) fairies, flame-throwing goblins - he's seen the lot. He had decided to forego criminal activity of the more magical kind. However...now his mother is gravely ill. He must travel back through time to steal the cure from the clutches of the devious mastermind.... Artemis Fowl.

Still stinging from his unceremonious ouster from the Garda Siochana, and staring at the world through the smoky bottom of his beer mug, Jack Taylor is stuck in Galway with nothing to look forward to. He is teetering on the brink of his life's sharpest edges, his memories of the past cutting deep into his soul and his prospects for the future non-existent.

In June 1922, just seven months after Sinn Féin negotiators signed a compromise treaty with representatives of the British government to create the Irish Free State, Ireland collapsed into civil war. While the body count suggests it was far less devastating than other European civil wars, it had a harrowing impact on the country and cast a long shadow, socially, economically and politically, which included both public rows and recriminations and deep, often private traumas.

For too long the people of Tír na nÓg have suffered under the dominion of the drunes: strange druids who have poisoned the land with their magic. Sláine has had enough of their tyranny and, through the Earth Goddess, he learns some shocking truths about the priesthood and his own future. Now Sláine must unite the four kings of Tír na nÓg and use their mystical weapons as he and the Sessair tribe prepare for all-out war!

Introducing George Markham, lately of the 65th Regiment of Foot, now Lieutenant of Marines on His Britannic Majesty’s frigate Hebe. Irishman, papist, reputed coward; he is a man with something to prove. As the winter of 1793 comes to the Mediterranean coast of France, so too does the chill wind of the Revolutionary terror. When the Hebe is sent to help the Bourbon city of Toulon, Markham will have to prove he is a worthy officer of Marines…or die in the attempt.

These are 20 new crime mysteries together in one large collection, taken from a string of short stories set in the late 19th century. No fictional characters are more renowned for their powers of thought and observation than Sherlock Holmes and his faithful companion, Dr. John Watson.

Tales of the Elders of Ireland (Acallam na Senórach) represents the largest literary text surviving from 12th-century Ireland, the most comprehensive early collection of Fenian stories and poetry. Three parallel worlds interact: the contemporary Christian world of Saint Patrick with his scribes, clerics, occasional angels, and souls rescued from Hell; the earlier pagan world of the ancient, giant Fenians and an array of Irish kings; and the timeless Otherworld, peopled by ever-young shape-shifting fairies.

Jack Taylor has never quite been able to get his life together, but now he has truly hit rock bottom. Still reeling from a violent family tragedy, Taylor is busy drowning his grief in Jameson and uppers, as usual, when a high-profile officer in the local Garda is murdered. After another Guard is found dead, and then another, Taylor’s old colleagues from the force implore him to take on the case.

In the summer of 2020 sportswriter David Walsh asked Pippa York if she’d be interested to be his travelling companion for the Tour de France. The deal was that he would sort out the logistics beforehand, the hotels, the transport details and she would do the day to day tasks of getting them about and adding her insight occasionally. It would also mean she would return to the race she had ridden eleven times as Robert Millar. This is the resulting book: a unique and entertaining sporting odyssey, The Escape uses the minutiae of Pippa and David’s trip.

In Heart, Be at Peace, which can be listened to independently, Donal picks up the twenty-one voices from The Spinning Heart ten years on, in 2019. Small-town Ireland is a different place, the economy having recovered from the economic crash that served as a backdrop to the events in that book. Now the work is back, the dramas have all seemingly died down, the dark days of recession and struggle are over. But a new menace is creeping around the lakeshore and the lanes of the town, old grudges are festering and new ones are rising, and the peace of the community is about to be shattered.

America - the land of opportunity, a place where economic prosperity beckons: - but not for PI Jack Taylor, who's just been refused entry.Disappointed and bitter, he thinks that an encounter with an over-friendly stranger in an airport bar is the least of his problems. Except that this stranger seems to know rather more than he should about Jack.Jack thinks no more of their meeting and resumes his old life in Galway.

David Rupert, a complete outsider with no connection to Ireland, rose to the very top of the Real IRA, all while working for the FBI and British intelligence. But the story is really about just how a bored, frustrated New York trucking manager becomes one of Britain’s most valued spies, brings down the entire IRA structure and makes $10 million in the process.

Eugene Duffy is turning 70; his son Jim is turning 40. For decades now, they’ve been running the family hardware shop and living in good-natured bachelor harmony. But time is marching on, and with thoughts of old age weighing heavily on his mind, Eugene is growing increasingly concerned about his son’s future. He resolves to help in the best way possible: by finding Jim a wife. And he’s not going to let anyone—let alone Jim himself—stand in his way.

Dracula is an 1897 Gothic horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker. Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, the novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to move from Transylvania to England so he may find new blood and spread the undead curse, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor Abraham Van Helsing.

In the aftermath of Ireland's financial collapse, dangerous tensions surface in an Irish town. As violence flares, the characters face a battle between public persona and inner desires. Through a chorus of unique voices, each struggling to tell their own kind of truth, a single authentic tale unfolds.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is the first novel of Irish writer James Joyce. A Künstlerroman in a modernist style, it traces the intellectual and religious philosophical awakening of young Stephen Dedalus, a fictional alter ego of Joyce and an allusion to Daedalus, the consummate craftsman of Greek mythology. Stephen questions and rebels against the Catholic and Irish conventions under which he has grown up, culminating in his self-exile from Ireland to Europe.

One of the great novels in the Irish comic tradition, The Crock of Gold (1912) consists of six parts. Bringing together pagan gods, policemen, prisoners, leprechauns and animals, the narrative concerns a philosopher and his quest to find the most beautiful woman in the world, Cáitilin Ni Murrachu, who has been abducted by the god Pan. His journey takes him from dark forests to the spectacular heights of pagan gods, as he experiences encounters that will change him forever.

Ireland’s Secret War reveals strategic Nazi intentions for Ireland and the real role of leading government figures of the time, placing Dan Bryan and G2—the military intelligence branch of the Irish Defence Forces—at the centre of the country’s battle against Nazi Germany. With the help of over 35 hours of previously unpublished audio recordings that were held in storage in Northern California for over 50 years, Marc Mc Menamin reveals the extraordinary unheard history of WWII in Ireland, told from the point of view of the main protagonists.

Saint Patrick was, by his own admission, a controversial figure. Convicted in a trial by his elders in Britain and hounded by rumors that he settled in Ireland for financial gain, the man who was to become Ireland’s patron saint battled against great odds before succeeding as a missionary. Saint Patrick Retold draws on recent research to offer a fresh assessment of Patrick’s travails and achievements. This is the first biography in nearly 50 years to explore Patrick’s career against the background of historical events in late antique Britain and Ireland.