From The Republic of Conscience

To the National Library last night for the launch of FROM THE REPUBLIC OF CONSCIENCE, a collection of 30 short stories by leading Irish writers, each one exploring a different article in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. The stories, which were commissioned by Amnesty Ireland, ran on a weekly basis in the Irish Times last year but this is the first time they’ve been collected together in book format and the book was launched by former Irish President Mary Robinson.

The collection features new work by – amongst others – Maeve Binchy, Dermot Bolger, Eoin Colfer, John Connolly, Roddy Doyle, Anne Enright, Carlo Gebler, Hugo Hamilton, Seamus Heaney, Jennifer Johnston, Neil Jordan, Claire Kilroy, Colum McCann, Frank McCourt, Ross O’Carroll-Kelly, Joseph O’Connor, Glenn Patterson, Colm Toibin and myself. I wrote THE ROUND HALL, based on Article 10, which states that everyone is entitled to a fair trial.

It’s available now in bookshops, also from Liberties Press itself and on Amazon.

Dutch House

The Dutch edition of THE HOUSE OF SPECIAL PURPOSE has just been published in Holland by Arena with the title HET WINTERPALEIS.

Italian Bounty

The Italian edition of MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY is published this week by my Italian publisher Rizzoli. It’s called IL RAGAZZO DEL BOUNTY.

Spanish Bounty

The Spanish language edition of MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY has just been published by Salamandra, with this very striking cover – Paul Gauguin’s Matameo (Landscape With Peacocks).

The Dare audio edition

A two-CD edition of THE DARE, the novella I published earlier this year as one of the Quick Reads series on World Book Day is now available. Read by John Hasler, it’s published by WF Howes Audio Books and available from their website.

New Novel Published Today

My seventh novel, THE HOUSE OF SPECIAL PURPOSE, is published today. Here’s what it’s about:

Russia, 1915: At the age of 16, Georgy Jachmenev steps in front of an assassin’s bullet intended for the heart of a senior member of the Russian Imperial Family and is instantly proclaimed a hero. Before the week is out, his life as the son of a peasant farmer is changed forever when he is escorted to St Petersburg to take up his new position – as bodyguard to Alexei Romanov, the only son of Tsar Nicholas II.

Sixty-five years later, visiting his wife Zoya as she lies dying in a London hospital, memories of the life they have lived together flood his mind. Their marriage, while tender, has been marked by tragedy, the loss of loved ones, and experiences of exile that neither can forget.

“The House of Special Purpose” is a novel about a young man ripped from an impoverished home and thrust into the heart of a dying empire. Privy to the secrets of Nicholas and Alexandra, the machinations of Rasputin and the events which led to the final collapse of the autocracy, Georgy is a witness and participant in a drama which will echo down the century, both publicly and privtaely. For his story is also one of a marriage riven by a husband finds it impossible to live in the present and a wife unable to reconcile herself with the past. Part love story, part historical epic, part tragedy, the novel moves from revolutionary St Petersburg to Paris after the First World War, and from London during the Blitz to the eastern coast of Finland during the 1980s, before returning to a quiet hospital bed where Georgy and Zoya’s story must finally be resolved.

The first review of the novel, published in The Times last week, called it “absorbing and richly satisfying.”

Today also sees the publication of the paperback edition of MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY. When it was published in 2008, the novel received terrific reviews: “enthralling… storytelling at its most accomplished… stands comparison with William Golding’s Rites of Passage” (The Independent); “a remarkable and compelling piece of storytelling” (The Irish Times); “A cracking adventure story” (The Sunday Tribune). The novel has gone on to be published in Spain, Serbia, Canada, Holland, Catalan, America, and Australia and editions are forthcoming in Galicia, Brazil, Greece, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Germany, Italy, Norway and China.

THE HOUSE OF SPECIAL PURPOSE can be purchased from Amazon, Waterstone’s and Borders; MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY can also be purchased there, there and there.

The Dare

Today is World Book Day, which means that this year’s 10 Quick Reads books are published to coincide. This year, I was asked to write one of the Quick Reads and the resulting book, a short novella titled THE DARE, is my contribution.

THE DARE tells the story of Danny Delaney, a 12 year old boy who returns home from school one day to the unhappy news that his mother has knocked down a small child in her car, an accident which has left the child in hospital and his mother devastated with guit. The novella follows Danny’s life throughout that summer as he struggles to cope with a family falling apart around him.

You can buy it online from Amazon, Waterstone’s or Borders, or pick it up in your local bookstore.

You can see the full list of this year’s Quick Reads titles on their website and catch up with World Book Day activity here.

Ulster Tatler – Excerpt from new novel

If you simply cannot wait until May 7th to read my new novel THE HOUSE OF SPECIAL PURPOSE, you may want to get a copy of this month’s Ulster Tatler magazine, which contains an abridged excerpt from the opening chapter in its literary miscellany pages, edited by novelist Glenn Patterson.

The opening chapter is titled 1981 and the published excerpt contains four short scenes from that chapter: the opening paragraphs, where narrator Georgy Jachmenev considers his earliest days in Kashin, a moment in London in 1923, where he seeks employment at the British Library, an account of Georgy and Zoya’s daily routines throughout their marriage, and a meeting between Georgy and Zoya’s doctor which takes place in – as the chapter title suggests – 1981.

I’m planning on reading from the novel at the Ennis Book Club Festival on Saturday 7th March and if you read the excerpt or hear the reading and like it, you can pre-order online from Amazon, Waterstone’s or Borders.

Mutiny USA & Canada

USA

Canada

Two separate North American editions of MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY are published today in hardcover.

In the United States, the novel is published by Thomas Dunne Books under the title MUTINY: A NOVEL OF THE BOUNTY and you can order a copy from Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble, Powell’s, or just get down to your local bookstore and pick one up.

In Canada, it’s published by Doubleday. You can get a copy from Amazon too.

 The novel was originally published in the UK in May 2008 and I wrote an article on the writing of the book for Waterstone’s Books Quarterly which is available to read online.

Next of Kin

A new paperback edition of NEXT OF KIN, my fifth novel, has just been published in the USA by Thomas Dunne Books/Macmillan. A thriller of sorts, I wrote it during late 2003/early 2004, just before THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS. (In fact, I had just finished the first draft of Next of Kin and was taking a break to recharge myself when I wrote the first draft of BOY). I’m a huge fan of the work of Patricia Highsmith and it’s a sort of homage to the Tom Ripley books. I always imagined it as the first of a trilogy of novels based around the character of Owen Montignac and although I haven’t returned to him yet, I hope to do some one day.

In the States, you can order the book from Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble and it’s available in shops now.