Collects the best of the author's essays from five decades of the "Irish Times" to reflect a changing culture as well as her observations on such topics as the royal wedding, waitressing, and boring airline companions.

A breakaway bestseller since its first printing, All Souls takes us deep into Michael Patrick MacDonald's Southie, the proudly insular neighborhood with the highest concentration of white poverty in America. Rocked by Whitey Bulger's crime schemes and busing riots, MacDonald's Southie is populated by sharply hewn characters like his Ma, a miniskirted, accordion-playing single mother who endures the deaths of four of her eleven children....

"A sweeping, unforgettable novel fromThe New York Timesbest-selling author of Maine, about the hope, sacrifice, and love between two sisters and the secret that drives them apart. Nora and Theresa Flynn are twenty-one and seventeen when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. Nora is the responsible sister; she's shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn't sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by...

James Maroney from Clare. "Capt." Nicholas Costello from Kilkenny. The Lucey and Hodnett sisters from Cork. The many Linnehans from Limerick. Bridget McGovern from Cavan. These were some of Haverhill's Irish. Some came by sailing ship during the years of the Great Famine. Others came by steamship at the end of the century. The immigrants hailed from every part of Ireland, but especially from the province of Munster. They were drawn to Haverhill, Massachusetts,...

Stories about ordinary people going about ordinary lives will always be fascinating when told by a writer blessed with extraordinary talent, insight, and compassion. This Year It Will Be Different, is a stunning new work that brings us the magic and spirit of Christmas in fifteen stories filled with Maeve Binchy's trademark wit, charm, and sheer storytelling genius. Instead of nostalgia, Binchy evokes contemporary life; instead of Christmas homilies,...

Idylls of the King (1859-1885) is a cycle of narrative poems by British poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Written while Tennyson was serving as Poet Laureate, Idylls of the King reworks the medieval Arthurian legend in blank verse and with an elegiac tone. Based on Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur and the early British Mabinogion manuscripts, Tennyson's work connects an ancient tradition to the reign and ideals of Queen Victoria. "The Coming of Arthur"...

"Measure for Measure," while listed among William Shakespeare's comedies, is doubtless among the darkest of his lighter works and remains one of the Bard's most popular plays. When the Duke of Vienna decides to go undercover in his own city, he leaves Angelo, his deputy, in charge and disguises himself as a monk to see how things progress in his absence. Angelo, who purports to be a man of honor and a stickler for the rules, arrests young Claudio...

"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland....

The enthralling third novel in the chronicle of the O'Malleys in the twentieth century. The fourth of the O'Malley chronicles is narrated by the ravishing Rosemarie, dedicated wife of our intrepid and trouble-prone hero, Chucky Cronin O'Malley. Destined to be compared to the Lanny Budd novels of Upton Sinclair and the Chicago novels of James T. Farrell, September Song follows the crazy O'Malley saga from Chucky's appointment as Ambassador to Germany...