An anthology of sixteen short stories about family, friendship, and love features contributions from popular Irish women authors.

A collection of short stories by Cecelia Adher and 18 other writers.

Meet the Clanswomen... International bestselling authors Jenny Colgan, Isla Dewar, and Muriel Gray lead off this dazzling collection of stories by popular and rising Scottish women authors. A sometimes wild, sometimes poignant romp through the lives of Scotswomen, Scottish Girls About Town revels in the universal hilarity and strife of being a girl! They're looking for something moor. In Jenny Colgan's "The Fringes," a hapless heroine heads to the Edinburgh "Fringe" -- a massive theatrical and musical festival -- for a night of her own disastrous drama. Isla Dewar offers up "In the Garden of Mrs. Pink," one woman's look back at her girlhood and the life lessons she learned from an eccentric neighbor. In Muriel Gray's "School-Gate Mums," a single mother with killer instincts settles the score with one of the mothers at her son's school. Whether they're racing their flatmates in a weight-loss contest, reconnecting with long-lost friends, or grappling with the men in their lives, these daughters of Scotland prove that no one can top their audacious spirit and Highland charm.

Born in the U.S.A.... American gals are taking liberties -- and pursuing happiness on their own terms -- in this star-studded story collection featuring the nation's red-hot women writers. They've declared their independence! Jennifer Weiner (In Her Shoes) learns "The Truth About Nigel" -- and the trouble with falling for an incognito Hollywood actor. Lauren Weisberger (The Devil Wears Prada) sends a single New Yorker on a backpacking trip halfway around the world -- where she sees her love life back home with new eyes -- in "The Bamboo Confessions." A harried mom with a hit novel crosses the pond in "My Great Brit Book Tour" by Adriana Trigiani (Lucia, Lucia), and turns a crumbling talk show appearance into a sweet success. Also uniting their talents in this free-spirited anthology are JULIANNA BAGGOTT • CINDY CHUPACK • LYNDA CURNYN • QUINN DALTON • LAUREN HENDERSON • JUDI HENDRICKS • GRETCHEN LASKAS • CLAIRE LaZEBNIK • CHRIS MANBY • SARAH MLYNOWSKI • MELISSA SENATE • JILL SMOLINSKI • NANCY SPARLING • LAURA WOLF

A funny, fierce, and unforgettable read about a young woman working a summer job in a shirt factory in Northern Ireland, while tensions rise both inside and outside the factory walls. Winner of the Comedy Women in Print 2022-23 Published Novel Award It’s the summer of 1994, and all smart-mouthed Maeve Murray wants are good final exam results so she can earn her ticket out of the wee Northern Irish town she has grown up in during the Troubles. She hopes she will soon be in London studying journalism—away from her crowded home, the silence and sadness surrounding her sister’s death, and most of all, away from the violence of her divided community. As a first step, Maeve’s taken a job in a shirt factory working alongside Protestants with her best friends. But getting the right exam results is only part of Maeve’s problem—she’s got to survive a tit-for-tat paramilitary campaign, iron 100 shirts an hour all day every day, and deal with the attentions of Handy Andy Strawbridge, her slick and untrustworthy English boss. Then, as the British loyalist marching season raises tensions among the Catholic and Protestant workforce, Maeve realizes something is going on behind the scenes at the factory. What seems to be a great opportunity to earn money turns out to be a crucible in which Maeve faces the test of a lifetime. Seeking justice for herself and her fellow workers may just be Maeve’s one-way ticket out of town. Bitingly hilarious, clear-eyed, and steeped in the vernacular of its time and place, Factory Girls tackles questions of wealth and power, religion and nationalism, and how young women maintain hope for themselves and the future during divided, violent times. Shortlisted for the 2023 Royal Society of Literature Encore Award (for second novels) and the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize

"Country Girl is Edna O'Brien's exquisite account of her dashing, barrier-busting, up-and-down life."-National Public Radio When Edna O'Brien's first novel, The Country Girls, was published in 1960, it so scandalized the O'Briens' local parish that the book was burned by its priest. O'Brien was undeterred and has since created a body of work that bears comparison with the best writing of the twentieth century. Country Girl brings us face-to-face with a life of high drama and contemplation. Starting with O'Brien's birth in a grand but deteriorating house in Ireland, her story moves through convent school to elopement, divorce, single-motherhood, the wild parties of the '60s in London, and encounters with Hollywood giants, pop stars, and literary titans. There is love and unrequited love, and the glamour of trips to America as a celebrated writer and the guest of Jackie Onassis and Hillary Clinton. Country Girl is a rich and heady accounting of the events, people, emotions, and landscape that have imprinted upon and enhanced one lifetime.

Shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize "A hypnotic and electrifying Irish tale that transcends country, transcends time." —Lily King, New York Times bestselling author of Writers & Lovers Small Things Like These is award-winning author Claire Keegan's landmark new novel, a tale of one man's courage and a remarkable portrait of love and family It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church. An international bestseller, Small Things Like These is a deeply affecting story of hope, quiet heroism, and empathy from one of our most critically lauded and iconic writers.

This study pairs selected Irish and British women novelists of three periods, relating their voices to the women's movements in their respective nations. In the first wave, nationalist and militant ideologies competed with the suffrage fight in Ireland. Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September illustrates the melancholy of gender performance and confusion of ethnic identity in the dying Anglo-Irish Ascendancy class. In England, suffrage ideologies clashed with socialism and patriotism. Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway contains a political unconscious that links its characters across class and gender. In the second wave, heterosexual romantic relationships come under scrutiny. Edna O'Brien's Country Girls trilogy reveals ways in which Irish Catholic ideologies abject femaleness; her characters internalize this abjection to the point of self-destruction. Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook pits the protagonist's aspirations to write novels against the Communist Party's prohibitions on bourgeois values. In the third wave, Irish writers express the frustrations of their cultural identity. Nuala O'Faolain's My Dream of You takes her protagonist back to Ireland to heal her psychic wounds. In England, Thatcherism had created a materialistic culture that eroded many feminists' socialist values. Fay Weldon's Big Woman satirizes the demise of second-wave idealism, asking where feminism can go from here.

Taking the literary world by storm, Eimear McBride’s internationally praised debut is one of the most acclaimed novels in recent years; it is “subversive, passionate, and darkly alchemical. Read it and be changed” (Eleanor Catton). Eimear McBride’s debut tells, with astonishing insight and in riveting detail, the story of a young woman’s relationship with her brother, the long shadow cast by his childhood brain tumour, and her harrowing sexual awakening. Not so much a stream-of-consciousness, as an unconscious railing against a life that makes little sense, and a shocking and intimate insight into the thoughts, feelings and chaotic sexuality of a vulnerable and isolated protagonist, A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing plunges inside its narrator’s head, exposing her world firsthand. This isn’t always comfortable—but it is always a revelation. Touching on everything from family violence to religion to addiction, and the personal struggle to remain intact in times of intense trauma, McBride writes with singular intensity, acute sensitivity, and mordant wit. A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing is moving, funny, and alarming. It is a book you will never forget.

“[An] irresistible invitation to share the lives of people who believe in enduring values.”—Detroit Free Press It began with Benny Hogan and Eve Malone, growing up, inseparable, in the village of Knockglen. Benny—the only child, yearning to break free from her adoring parents. . . . Eve—the orphaned offspring of a convent handyman and a rebellious blueblood, abandoned by her mother's wealthy family to be raised by nuns. Eve and Benny—they knew the sins and secrets behind every villager's lace curtains . . . except their own. It widened at Dublin, at the university where Benny and Eve met beautiful Nan Mahlon and Jack Foley, a doctor's handsome son. But heartbreak and betrayal would bring the worlds of Knockglen and Dublin into explosive collision. Long-hidden lies would emerge to test the meaning of love and the strength of ties held within the fragile gold bands of a. . . Circle Of Friends. Praise for Circle of Friends “A rare pleasure . . . at terrific tale, told by a master storyteller.”—Susan Isaacs, The New York Times Book Review “Circle of Friends welcomes you in.”—The Washington Post