A collection of stories set in Ireland. In one, a man and a woman switch suitcases by accident at an airport, then meet again, having read each other's most intimate thoughts.

A collection of twelve tales includes stories about a waiter who reveals his shocking life of crime to his ex-wife, the disintegration of a marriage following a terrible tragedy, and a middle-aged accountant who ends a love affair.

Set in contemporary Dublin and the surrounding countryside, Ghosts and Lightning is a picaresque account of Denny Cullen's life after he is called back home to attend his mother's funeral. Denny-a sweet-natured but disillusioned young man who feels powerless in the face of death, dope, and the dole queue-is the steadiest in a cast of unstable characters. Denny and his lads fill their empty days with hooliganism, raucous parties, violence, and even...

The short fiction of Colum McCann documents a dizzying cast of characters in exile, loss, love, and displacement. There is the worn boxing champion who steals clothes from a New Orleans laundromat, the rumored survivor of Hiroshima who emigrates to the tranquil coast of Western Ireland, the Irishwoman who journeys through America in search of silence and solitude. But what is found in these stories, and discovered by these characters, is the astonishing...

Happiness and Other Stories is perhaps the most cherished of all the acclaimed collections by Mary Lavin, who was not just one of Ireland's major writers, but ranked among the greatest short-story writers of the twentieth century in the English language. The stories in this classic collection explore the relationships and intimate emotions of her characters that are from a vanished Ireland but still resonate today. Last published over four decades...

Set in Northern Ireland in 1963, this is the story of a time muffled and made claustrophobic by unprecedented snowfalls. A series of characters fall in love, commit indiscretions and one of them, a young woman, is murdered in the pure white snow.

A dozen stories from an Irish writer. In Gilbert's Mother, a woman discovers her son rapes and kills, but decides not to denounce him because it's partly her fault, she brought him into this world, while The Potato Dealer is on a man's reaction to his wife's confession that a baby is not his.

Fate is on its way to the tenants of 66 Star Street, bringing with it love and tragedy, friendship and heartbreak, and the power to change lives ... One of them is falling in love; another is torn between two lovers. For some, secrets they want to stay buried will come to light and for others the unveiling of those secrets will have tragic consequences.

A collection of stories with unusual plots. One is on a gun duel, fought between a father and son, in a second a doctor cuts off a dead artist's head for use in an art exhibit, and in a third, a lady librarian becomes a glass eater.

The thirty-one stories collected in this volume provide, among other things, a cumulative portrait of Ireland, seen from within and without. Coming of age, the impact of class, and familial and romantic love are the prevalent motifs, along with the instinct toward escape and subsequent nostalgia for home. Some of the stories are linked and some carry O'Brien's distinct sense of the comical. In "A Rose in the Heart of New York," the single-mindedness...