Ivy Rose Murphy has come up in the world. She still begs for discards from the homes of the wealthy which lie only a stone's throw from The Lane, the poverty-ridden tenements where she lives. These discards she repairs and sells around the Dublin markets. But she is fast turning herself into 'Miss Ivy Rose', successful businesswoman. With her talent for needlework, she has begun to supply an upmarket shop in Grafton Street with beautifully-dressed dolls. Then Ivy's wealthy friend with her beloved camera spends a day at the airport photographing planes. Little does she know that her visit can destroy all Ivy's hopes for the future.

In 1949, eight years after the "Peace with Honor" was negotiated between Great Britain and Nazi Germany by the Farthing Set, England has completed its slide into fascist dicatorship. Then a bomb explodes in a London suburb. The brilliant but politically compromised Inspector Carmichael of Scotland Yard is assigned the case. What he finds leads him to a conspiracy of peers and communists, of staunch King-and- Country patriots and hardened IRA gunmen, to murder Britain's Prime Minister and his new ally, Adolf Hitler. Against a background of increasing domestic espionage and the suppression of Jews and homosexuals, an ad-hoc band of idealists and conservatives blackmail the one person they need to complete their plot, an actress who lives for her art and holds the key to the Fuhrer's death. From the ha'penny seats in the theatre to the ha'pennies that cover dead men's eyes, the conspiracy and the investigation swirl around one another, spinning beyond anyone's control. In this brilliant companion to Farthing, Welsh-born World Fantasy Award winner Jo Walton continues her alternate history of an England that could have been, with a novel that is both an homage of the classic detective novels of the thirties and forties, and an allegory of the world we live in today. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A brand-new 'Brewer's' dedicated to the 'phrase and fable' of the emerald isle.

Ivy Rose Murphy dreams of a better future. For years she has set out daily from the tenements known as 'The Lane' to beg for discards from the homes of the wealthy. Her fortunes take a turn for the better, but there are eyes on Ivy and she is vulnerable as she carries her earnings through the dark winter streets. Jem Ryan, who owns the local livery, longs to make Ivy his wife, but she is reluctant to give up her fierce independence. Then a sudden astonishing event turns Ivy's world upside down. A dazzling future beckons and she must decide where her loyalties lie.

"For more than half a century, the extraordinary range of vocabularies and styles in Joyce's Ulysses has been an object of critical and scholarly attention. For the better part of a decade, R. W. Dent has been gathering documentation on a single aspect of this work, what may loosely be called the "colloquial language." The result of this research, Colloquial Language in Ulysses, as its subtitle implies, is essentially a reference tool. It uses "colloquial" in the ordinary sense, "characteristic of or appropriate to the spoken language or to writing that seeks the effect of speech; informal." Taking heart in the fact that the Oxford English Dictionary and Eric Partridge's Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English frequently disagree on the matter, Dent includes as colloquial a great deal that purists might question or disallow." "For the most part, this work provides raw, useful data for Ulysses critics and scholars, but it rarely attempts to perform the work of literary critics. It will make users aware both of new information and of information already available in such reference works as the recently revised OED, for many users not readily accessible. Like the OED itself it is necessarily a work-in-progress, especially in its efforts to provide pre-Ulysses evidence, but it is abundantly useful in its present state." "Most entries supplement - and many correct - entries in its principal predecessor, Don Gifford's Ulysses Annotated. Colloquial Language in Ulysses attempts to include all colloquial expressions on which Gifford is seriously inadequate, questionable, or demonstrably mistaken, and all on which the 1988 edition differs substantially from the earlier edition of 1974."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

An influential family’s weekend party is the stage for murder in this alternative history trilogy opener set in a post-WWII England where the Nazis won. Eight years have passed since the upper-crust “Farthing Set” overthrew Winston Churchill and led Britain into a separate peace with Hitler. Now those families have gathered for a weekend retreat. Among them is estranged scion Lucy Kahn, who can’t understand why she and her husband, David, were so enthusiastically invited. But all becomes clear when the eminent Sir James Thirkie is found murdered—with a yellow Star of David pinned to his chest. Lucy realizes that her Jewish husband is about to be framed for the crime, an outcome that would be altogether too politically convenient, given the machinations underway in Parliament in the coming week. The Farthing Set are determined to pass laws further restricting the right to vote, and a new outcry against Jews and foreigners would suit them fine. But whoever’s behind the murder and the frame-up didn’t count on the principal investigator from Scotland Yard being so prone to look beyond the obvious—or his being a man with his own private reasons for sympathizing with outcasts and underdogs . . . Praise for Farthing “If le Carré scares you, try Jo Walton. Of course her brilliant story of a democracy selling itself out to fascism sixty years ago is just a mystery, just a thriller, just a fantasy—of course we know nothing like that could happen now. Don’t we?” —Ursula K. Le Guin “Walton . . . crosses genres without missing a beat with this stunningly powerful alternative history set in 1949. . . . While the whodunit plot is compelling, it’s the convincing portrait of a country’s incremental slide into fascism that makes this novel a standout. Mainstream readers should be enthralled as well.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

On the first day of 1925, Ivy Rose Murphy awakes to find her world changed forever - her irresponsible Da is dead. When Ivy's mother deserted the family, Ivy found herself the sole financial support of her Da and 3 brothers. A chance meeting at the city morgue introduces Ivy to a new world, a world of money and privilege.

When a group of powerful Irish Protestants and Catholics gather at a country house to discuss Irish home rule, contention is to be expected. But when the meeting’s moderator, government bigwig Ainsley Greville, is found murdered in his bath, negotiations seem doomed. Unless Superintendent Thomas Pitt and his wife, Charlotte, can root out the truth, simmering hatreds and passions may again explode in murder.

Forget the boring stuff you learned in school. Here's the REAL skinny on Irish history.

Are you a holy terror? Are you a go-boy? Could you live on the skin of a rasher? Or are you so hungry that you eat a farmer's arse through a hedge? When you're on the razz, do you get so buckled, crippled and scuttered that you can't get your back outa the scratcher in the morning? Never mind the answers: if you understand the questions you are in Slanguage country. If you don't, you need to be. This is the dictionary that glosses the words that real Irish people use in the streets each day, every day. Slang is elusive. Some words and phrases are always there. Others slip in and out of usage according to the whims of fashion. This expanded edition of the standard dictionary of Irish slang includes many entries not in the 1997 edition. It has dropped a few that have fallen out of favour and has revised others. In all, this edition is 25 per cent longer than its predecessor. It will confirm Bernard Share's invaluable book in its position as the major work of its kind, combining scholarship and a keen sense of fun. "Slanguage" does justice to it by taking it seriously, but not too seriously.