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In November 1968, at the age of twenty-two, Andrew McNeillie left his job and his girlfriend in Wales and travelled to Inishmore. He was not a tourist: he stayed eleven months in Aran, living alone in a tiny house. An Aran Keening is a richly lyrical memoir of that time, a celebration of the island and its people, a lament for a way of life that was infused with a deep sadness then and that no longer exists. Based closely on a contemporary journal and on letters home – which are quoted at length, and which show the author to have been an immensely gifted young writer – An Aran Keening tells of a time before electricity and landing strips, a time of true poverty for many. Island life was, in both mind and body, more stark and dramatic then than now; it stood closer to the candle- and horse-powered nineteenth century than to the digitized twenty-first. McNeillie fished and trapped for his food – his accounts of his methods are among the most dazzling passages in the book – and writes with great love, but without a trace of romanticism, about the natural world of Aran. With extraordinary sensitivity and subtlety, he recounts the awkward, sometimes fraught, but ultimately enriching interactions between the green outsider he was and the people of Inishmore, and the islanders’ tragic internal struggles. An Aran Keening commemorates both the immortality of youth, in all its courage, folly and quick tenderness of heart, and the passing of a world. It is a singular addition to the literature of Aran and, in this age of two-a-penny memoirs, one of the finest works in that genre to come out of these islands in recent decades.

Music and Mayhem charts the immersive and explosive life of one of Ireland’s most important musicians, and the golden decade of Irish music he was at the very centre of. Keith Donald’s story begins in Unionist east Belfast, hurtling through vivid memories of a childhood as a musical prodigy, first performing at the BBC aged ten. His story takes him to the classics department of Trinity College Dublin in the early 60s, a hotbed of new ideas, before he becomes enveloped in the beauty of tenor sax. Jazz clubs by night and studying classics by day, Donald soon felt the early onset alcohol addiction, fueld by childhood PTSD. From university he joined the booming showband scene with The Federals in Belfast and The Greenbeats in Dublin, touring the dancehalls and marquees of the Irish country. The 70s saw Donald building a music career in Dublin and Europe, coping with addiction, a crumbling marriage, and forging a separate life as a qualified social worker. It was the 1980s however, when his greatest breakthrough came to pass withthe formation of the Celtic rock supergroup Moving Hearts. With the Hearts Donald was manager, star performer and inspiration, alongside bandmates including Christy Moore and Donal Lunny. Their fusion of jazz, rock and traditional music created the soundtrack of an era and paved the way for a generation of Irish musicians.

The new collection from John Moriarty, edited by Martin Shaw. There is a radical agency in John Moriarty’s work not always acknowledged. As our heads spin with mythological cross-referencing, poetical leaps and the philosophical bent, it is clear that there is nothing domestic, nothing tame, about John Moriarty. The power of Moriarty is that he has found a thousand beautiful ways to say something very disturbing: we have to change our lives. In this small book of big thoughts, award-winning author, mythologist and storyteller Martin Shaw situates Moriarty’s work with respect to our eco-conscious era and a readership seeking spiritual and philosophical guidance. Moriarty asks of us only one thing – that we move our gaze from seeing to beholding. And there the trouble begins, when we realize there is a world beyond us far bigger than our temporary ambitions. A Hut at the Edge of the Village presents a collection of Moriarty’s writings ordered thematically, with sections ranging from place, love and wildness through to voyaging, ceremony and the legitimacy of sorrow. These carefully chosen extracts are supported by an introduction by Martin Shaw and foreword by Tommy Tiernan, a long-time admirer of Moriarty’s work. According to Shaw, ‘These are not pastoral times we are living in, but prophetic. We are at a moment when the world as we understand it has been turned upside down. The challenge is that there are fewer and fewer people who can interpret such happenings in a deep, soulful way. Moriarty can do that. When culture is in woeful crisis, the insights never come from parliament, senate, or committee; they come from the hut at the edge of the village. Let’s go there. There is tremendous, unexpected hope waiting.’

To Aran, I tells how a young man from north Wales found the means to give shape a youthful dream of going to live on Inis Mór, an adventure recorded in his acclaimed first memoir An Aran Keening. This beautiful, high-spirited story blends moments of high farce, poetry and serious social observation, as the young McNeillie – a self-described ‘quare fellow’ – pursues his dream with a kind of fatalistic abandonment. Down but not quite out, he works his way towards Aran - first as a local news reporter on L5 a week in mining towns and villages in the Amman Valley in Wales. From there, he washes up in a condemned property at Waterloo on the Mersey shore in outer Liverpool and finally, aged twenty-one, finds himself in central London and the BBC’s Radio Newsroom at Broadcasting House. After amassing enough money to keep him afloat on Inis Mór for a year, he sets out and, at the end of October 1968, he waved goodbye to a highly promising career, his colleagues, friends and even to his future wife: all to fulfil a dream he had when sixteen, first looking into J.M. Synge’s The Aran Islands, as if it was Chapman’s Homer and he John Keats.

Aristocrat and republican, socialist and artist, feminist and free spirit, Constance Markievicz née Gore-Booth was a pivotal figure in the revolutionary movement that culminated in the Rising of 1916, and in its long and painful aftermath leading to Irish Independence. She was also the first woman ever elected to Parliament and to hold a Cabinet position. From the privileged nineteenth-century world of her youth at Lissadell in Sligo and an artist’s life in Paris, to the dramas and disappoint-ments of revolution and politics in Dublin, her compelling story provides an entrée to that tumultuous period in Irish history. Since its first publication Anne Haverty’s biography has been recognized as a landmark in Markievicz studies, giving a historically complete account of a woman often maligned and misunderstood. Her vivid and engagingly written story will be enjoyed as much by the general reader as by the serious student of Irish history. This revised, updated edition comes with a new introduction.

Youth dives into the lives of four teenagers in Ireland’s most diverse town, Balbriggan. Angel is about to finish school and discover if Drill music and YouTube fame can deliver on their promises. Princess is battling to escape her claustrophobic surroundings and go to university and Dean is ready to come out from under his famous father’s shadow, while Tanya, struggling with the spotlight of internet infamy, is still posting her dream life for all of her faithful followers. Isolated and disorientated by the white noise and seemingly insurmountable expectations of adolescence, our protagonists are desperate to find anything that helps them belong. Oblivious to one another’s presence, potential and struggles, they pass each other on the street as strangers. But when their paths cross, the connections they make will change the course of their lives. Twenty-first century life – hyper-sexualized, social media saturated, anxiety-plagued – is here. Living inside its characters’ heads, and negotiating their interior landscape, this book is a love song to the possibilities of youth. Using insights gained from the young people he works with, Curran’s evocative writing yields the authenticity this novel demands. With instinctive affection and admiration for his characters’ strengths and complexities, Youth is a journey through streets less travelled.