Happy New Year to all our members and friends!


Fancy trying something new for 2011? Have a look at some of our new books. This is just a small selection of recent additions to our collection, and if you don't spot anything interesting come in and talk to our staff we are always happy to recommend something to suit any taste. 

The News Where You Are - Catherine O'Flynn

“Writing a second novel is a nervy business for a writer, especially when the first one has been unexpectedly and wonderfully successful, as was Catherine O'Flynn's debut What Was Lost, which went on to win the 2008 Costa first novel and a cluster of other awards. But O'Flynn need not be nervous. Her second novel, The News Where You Are, establishes her as, let's say, the JG Ballard of Birmingham. As Ballard dealt with the landscape of the motorway and made it his own, so O'Flynn deals with her particular city, finding poetry and meaning where others see merely boredom and dereliction. It is a most moving book. Lightly flinging a joke or two in the reader's direction, a snatch or so of knowledgeable brightness, O'Flynn comes across as the mistress of compassion.… This [is a] blend of Dickens and Alan Bennett, written in the kind of stripped-down, flat style that so suits its time and place. I loved it, and am haunted by it. While What Was Lost benefited from the existence of an actual child ghost ... this book is set in a less metaphorical, less fanciful world, but it has equal power. If you can write two good novels you can write another and another and another: I am sure O'Flynn will and I look forward to them.”--Fay Weldon, The Guardian


Conversations With Myself - Nelson Mandela

'Gathered from letters and bits of Mandela's unpublished autobiography, this book offers fresh and moving insights into the man behind the symbol...' --R W Johnson, Sunday Times Culture Magazine

'The documents present a remarkably candid picture of the former ANC leader... [and] the book also reveals flashes of Mr Mandela's mischievous humour. While being treated in hospital for tuberculosis, he was presented with a breakfast of bacon and eggs which a guard warned him was contrary to the order from his doctor to eat a cholesterol-free diet. The now 92-year-old freedom fighter replied: "Today, I am prepared to die; I am going to eat it."' --Independent 


The Empty Family: Stories - Colm Toibín

'I imagined lamplight, shadows, soft voices, clothes put away, the low sound of late news on the radio. And I thought as I crossed the bridge at Baggot Street to face the last stretch of my own journey home that no matter what I had done, I had not done that.’ In the captivating stories that make up The Empty Family Colm Tóibín delineates with a tender and unique sensibility lives of unspoken or unconscious longing, of individuals, often willingly, cast adrift from their history. From the young Pakistani immigrant who seeks some kind of permanence in a strange town to the Irish woman reluctantly returning to Dublin and discovering a city that refuses to acknowledge her long absence each of Tóibín’s stories manage to contain whole worlds: stories of fleeing the past and returning home, of family threads lost and ultimately regained.'


Astonishingly precise, depicting complex and conflicted states of mind with rare clarity (Observer)


The Governor: The Life and Times Of The Man Who Ran Mountjoy - John Lonergan 

In his talks to communities throughout the length and breath of Ireland, John Lonergan finds himself coming back to one theme: the importance of kindness. It is an unexpected theme for the former boss of Ireland's biggest and toughest prison, Mountjoy, but then John Lonergan is an unusual man. John entered the prison service in 1968 and in the years that followed, as he saw human nature at its worst - and often, unexpectedly, at its best - he developed a deep understanding both of human nature and of Irish society. Now, after 42 years in the service, 26 of them as the most senior prison officer in the country, John tells his fascinating life story - from his idyllic childhood in rural Tipperary, to coming face to face with the ugliest face of Irish life, to grappling with the politics of working in a service that was the plaything of officials and politicians. His description of life in the prison service is not only a gripping account of humanity at its rawest, but also an invaluable primer for anyone in top level management. Revealing, surprising and inspiring "The Governor" gives a unique insight into modern Ireland.
'Honest, forthright, highly readable ... thoughtful and compassionate' -- The Irish Times 23.10.10