Multiple award-winning Mark O'Halloran is one of Ireland's most celebrated writers. Two play spanning 12 years of work come together in one published edition to coincide with the New York premiere in January 2023. CONVERSATIONS AFTER SEX You remind me of someone though. I mean you're not like him. Not physically like him. Nowhere near. But there's something there. Your voice or how you hold yourself. Your hands. In a series of unexpected and unguarded conversations after anonymous sexual encounters, a woman discovered men with the same deep need to communicate and connect in the lonely, atomised city. 'A portrayal of grief that is unforgettable in its rawness' - The Guardian TRADE “This is just this. It isn't real. It's money.” In a guesthouse in Dublin's north inner city, a vulnerable and confused young rent-boy sits with a middle-aged client. It's not the first time they've met but today the older man has blood on his shirt. A lot has happened since they last met. 'It closes around your heart like a fist' - The Irish Times

Irish Theatre in the Twenty-First Century is the first in-depth study of the subject. It analyses the ways in which theatre in Ireland has developed since the 1990s when emerging playwrights Martin McDonagh, Conor McPherson, and Enda Walsh turned against the tradition of lyrical eloquence with a harsh and broken dramatic language. Companies such as Blue Raincoat, the Corn Exchange, and Pan Pan pioneered an avant-garde dramaturgy that no longer privileged the playwright. This led to new styles of production of classic Irish works, including the plays of Synge, mounted in their entirety by Druid. The changed environment led to a re-imagining of past Irish history in the work of Rough Magic and ANU, plays by Owen McCafferty, Stacey Gregg, and David Ireland, dramatizing the legacy of the Troubles, and adaptations of Greek tragedy by Marina Carr and others reflecting the conditions of modern Ireland. From 2015, the movement #WakingTheFeminists led to a sharpened awareness of gender. While male playwrights showed a toxic masculinity on the stage, a generation of female dramatists including Carr, Gregg, and Nancy Harris gave voice to the experiences of women long suppressed in conservative Ireland. For three separate periods, 2006, 2016, 2020-2, the author served as one of the judges for the Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards, attending all new productions across the island of Ireland. This allowed him to provide the detailed overview of the 'state of play' of Irish theatre in each of those times which punctuate the book as one of its most innovative features. Drawing also on interviews with Ireland's leading theatre makers, Grene provides readers with a close-up understanding of Irish theatre in a period when Ireland became for the first time a fully modernized, secular, and multi-ethnic society.

For those at the high end of the trafficking chain, the sex trade is an alluring and lucrative business: the supply of girls is constant, the costs of operations are low, and interference from law enforcement is weak to non-existent. Anti-trafficking organizations and governments commonly appropriate such market metaphors of supply and demand as they struggle with the moral-political dimensions of a business involving trade, labor, prostitution, migration, and national borders. But how apt are they? Is the sex trade really the perfect business? This provocative new book examines the social worlds and interrelationships of traffickers, victims, and trafficking activists along the Thai-Lao border. It explores local efforts to reconcile international legal concepts, the bureaucratic prescriptions of aid organizations, and global development ideologies with on-the-ground realities of sexual commerce. Author Sverre Molland provides an insider’s view of recruitment and sex commerce gleaned from countless conversations and interviews in bars and brothels—a view that complicates popular stereotypes of women forced or duped into prostitution by organized crime. Molland’s fine-grained ethnography shows a much more varied picture of friends recruiting friends, and families helping relatives. A recruiter rationalizes her act as a benefit or favor to a village friend; relationships between prostitutes and bar owners are cloaked in kin terms and familial metaphors. Sex work in the Mekong region follows patron-client cultural scripts about mutual help and obligation, which makes distinguishing the victims from the traffickers difficult. Molland’s research illuminates the methods and motivations of recruiters as well as the economic incentives and predicaments of victims. The Perfect Business? is the first book to go beyond the usual focus on migrants and sex commerce to explore the institutional context of anti-trafficking. Its author, himself a former advisor for a United Nations anti-trafficking project, raises crucial questions about how an increasingly globalized development aid sector responds to what might more accurately be described as an extraterritorial development challenge of human mobility. His book will offer insights to students and scholars in anthropology, gender studies, and human geography, as well as anyone interested in one of the most controversial issues of development policy.

You can paint your placards 'til the cows come home, but until you have marched through this town in five inch heels and fishnets, you will never know what it is to truly be a faggot on the front line. Told against the backdrop of Dublin's burgeoning gay rights movement of the 1980s and 1990s and the contemporary LGBTQ+ community of today, Once Before I Go charts the close friendship of Lynn, Daithí, and the luminous Bernard, and sits on the exhilarating edge between comedy, tragedy and melodrama. Exploring the fragile yet resilient bonds of Irish queer lives across three decades in Dublin, London and Paris, the play steps between the early days of the AIDS crisis and today's LGBTQ+ community, living in an era of marriage equality, gender self-determination, and untransmittable HIV. At once political, joyous and heart-breaking, Once Before I Go honours the fabulous people we lost along the way, and celebrates those who fight on. This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere at Dublin's Gate Theatre in October 2021.

In the past two decades, mutual funds have emerged as the preferred investment option for Indians. They offer liquidity, and ease of entry and exit, along with potentially higher returns. This, in turn, makes mutual funds a natural choice over traditional investment options such as gold, real estate and fixed deposits. However, while the popularity of mutual funds has increased in India, the ability to use them to our advantage has not. Investors are frozen by the choices they face with thousands of mutual fund options. Bestselling author and India's most respected financial writer Monika Halan is back! And this time she's talking mutual funds. In easy, simplified terms, Halan demystifies mutual funds and shows you how to make the most of them. From managing your cash flow and planning your children's education to getting your own house and preparing for retirement, Let's Talk Mutual Funds sets you on the path to achieving your financial goals. No tips. No tricks. Just a smart system to get mutual funds to work for you.

The habit creeps up on me out of nowhere. Like a sheep on a country road in Limerick. Sinéad Murphy can orgasm with an electric toothbrush; she's getting together with boys in car parks at church discos; and she's doing so well in exams, her teachers think she's cheating. But she's struggling to manage a big secret, and there's only one person she can talk to about it. Written and performed by Sarah Hanly, Purple Snowflakes and Titty Wanks premieres at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in June 2020. 'This year's recipient is a writer of extraordinary potential. She has a completely distinctive theatrical voice and engages with the darkness in our world in a fiercesome way.' Vicky Featherstone, Artistic Director of the Royal Court Theatre, on awarding Sarah Hanly the 2019 Pinter Commission.

New York Times bestseller • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • One of the Washington Post's 10 Best Books of the Year “It’s no exaggeration to say that Behave is one of the best nonfiction books I’ve ever read.” —David P. Barash, The Wall Street Journal "It has my vote for science book of the year.” —Parul Sehgal, The New York Times "Immensely readable, often hilarious...Hands-down one of the best books I’ve read in years. I loved it." —Dina Temple-Raston, The Washington Post From the bestselling author of A Primate's Memoir and the forthcoming Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will comes a landmark, genre-defining examination of human behavior and an answer to the question: Why do we do the things we do? Behave is one of the most dazzling tours d’horizon of the science of human behavior ever attempted. Moving across a range of disciplines, Sapolsky—a neuroscientist and primatologist—uncovers the hidden story of our actions. Undertaking some of our thorniest questions relating to tribalism and xenophobia, hierarchy and competition, and war and peace, Behave is a towering achievement—a majestic synthesis of cutting-edge research and a heroic exploration of why we ultimately do the things we do . . . for good and for ill.

A powerful, timely exploration of the art of living and dying on our own terms by one of Australia’s most respected voices Of all the experiences we share, two universal events bookend our lives: we were all born and we will all die. We don't have a choice in how we enter the world but we can have a say in how we leave it. In order to die well, we must be prepared to contemplate our mortality and to broach it with our loved ones, who are often called upon to make important decisions on our behalf. These are some of the most important conversations we can have with each other - to find peace, kindness and gratitude for what has gone before, and acceptance of what is to come. Dr Ranjana Srivastava draws on two decades of experience to share her observations and advice on leading a meaningful life and finding dignity and composure at the end. With an emphasis on advocacy, leaving a legacy and staying true to our deepest convictions, Srivastava tells stories of strength, hope and resilience in the face of grief and offers an optimistic meditation on approaching the end of life. Intelligent, warm and deeply affecting, A Better Death is a passionate exploration of the art of living and dying well. Dr Ranjana Srivastava OAM is a practising oncologist, award-winning writer, broadcaster and Fulbright scholar. See www.ranjanasrivastava.com

We live in a culture increasingly influenced by porn. Sex is used to sell everything, from household products to cars to electronics. Provocative and popular fiction like 50 Shades of Gray is encouraging people to play with a fire that could destroy their homes. We supposedly stand against sex trafficking, and then we turn around and increase the demand through our music, clothing, and movie choices. These decisions to entertain ourselves with increasing shock factor reveal that most audiences are currently numb to the publicizing and proliferation of what was once deemed private. Amidst this sex-satiated culture, I want to give a realistic view of the life of someone who once allowed herself to be sold. In sharing my own story and journey into and out of the sex industry, I want to educate others in a way that encourages us to stop buying sex in all forms and instead to honor one another as whole people. I want to encourage us to consider the woman who has been made a sex symbol so that we learn to honor both who she was before and who she might become if given an opportunity to succeed in a life outside of selling her body. I have encountered many men and women who were put into this life by their pimps and boyfriends. Others entered it while trying to escape their own trauma and trying to gain some control or dignity in their own lives. Yet others truly believe they can do nothing else. I want to offer you a glimpse of the mentality of a young girl who thought this was her best option in life. As a woman who was once purchased, I am often placed into one of two categories: I am either victimized as a survivor of human trafficking, or my trauma is dismissed since I chose to enter the commercial sex industry. This is an unhelpful and extreme distinction-especially when some of those fighting to end trafficking are also those who justify their use of pornography, brothels, strip clubs, and escort services because they believe all these women choose to be there. Choice is not always a simple matter when it is derived from decades of compounding trauma, addictions, and lack of quality guidance. For this reason, I want to show you what life looks like when a person says yes to being sold.This book is not meant to leave readers in despair but rather to depict enough of my own journey through deception to invite appreciation of the freedom possible with complete surrender. I want to show how hope gives birth to new life, when a true chance to heal and opportunities to flourish are given. No one is too far gone. However, no one can complete the journey in isolation. In this sense, I hope my story can also aid those who want to mentor other women on their journeys of healing and redemption. My desire is that the full presentation of my background-and the way it fed into my choices-can help offer understanding about the many layers of hurt that are present for women leaving the sex industry. More than the woman's body has been wounded, and many memories that stretch much further back than her start in the industry will need to be opened up and healed. Freedom does take work. But it is an infinitely good and worthwhile work. I personally engaged in my deepest healing efforts at the Refuge for Women in Kentucky. And there, I discovered a place to be truly safe for the first time in my life. I remember lying in my bed each night and saying to myself, "I am safe. I am loved. I am secure." Because of the hard work I did there, I can still say and mean those words today, many years later. If you are called to help a woman walk this road, please let my story invite you into awareness of the layers involved in both her hurt and her healing. And whether you read this story as a mentor or a mentee, let it encourage you of the good and the freedom yet in store.Ultimately, I hold to the unshakable belief that there here is hope and help for everyone. I hope my story confirms this for you.

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER In an era of safe spaces, trigger warnings, and an unprecedented election, the country's youth are in crisis. Senator Ben Sasse warns the nation about the existential threat to America's future. Raised by well-meaning but overprotective parents and coddled by well-meaning but misbegotten government programs, America's youth are ill-equipped to survive in our highly-competitive global economy. Many of the coming-of-age rituals that have defined the American experience since the Founding: learning the value of working with your hands, leaving home to start a family, becoming economically self-reliant—are being delayed or skipped altogether. The statistics are daunting: 30% of college students drop out after the first year, and only 4 in 10 graduate. One in three 18-to-34 year-olds live with their parents. From these disparate phenomena: Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse who as president of a Midwestern college observed the trials of this generation up close, sees an existential threat to the American way of life. In The Vanishing American Adult, Sasse diagnoses the causes of a generation that can't grow up and offers a path for raising children to become active and engaged citizens. He identifies core formative experiences that all young people should pursue: hard work to appreciate the benefits of labor, travel to understand deprivation and want, the power of reading, the importance of nurturing your body—and explains how parents can encourage them. Our democracy depends on responsible, contributing adults to function properly—without them America falls prey to populist demagogues. A call to arms, The Vanishing American Adult will ignite a much-needed debate about the link between the way we're raising our children and the future of our country.