Showing results by narrator "Gerry O'Brien" in All Categories

Winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award 2025 A Sunday Times Best Book of 2025 A Guardian Best Sports Book 2025 A unique memoir from British cycling’s most fascinating competitor. In the summer of 2020, sportswriter David Walsh invited Pippa York began a series of journeys...

Still stinging from his unceremonious ouster from the Garda Siochana, and staring at the world through the smoky bottom of his beer mug, Jack Taylor is stuck in Galway with nothing to look forward to. He is teetering on the brink of his life's sharpest edges, his memories of the past cutting deep into his soul and his prospects for the future non-existent.

Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. They form a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century. The initial stories in the collection are narrated by child protagonists, and as the stories continue, they deal with the lives and concerns of progressively older people. This is in line with Joyce's tripartite division of the collection into childhood, adolescence, and maturity.

From The Murder of Roger Ackroyd to Magpie Murders, and related diversions including cryptic crosswords and Cain’s Jawbone, The Murder Game examines the games authors played with their readers and the importance of puzzles in Golden Age whodunits. With books flourishing in the 1920s and ’30s...

Bolivar and Hector go to sea before a catastrophic storm. Needing cash, Bolivar convinces his boss to let him fish despite the weather. His fishing partner is nowhere to be found, so he brings Hector, a sullen and inexperienced teenager. The storm arrives, and though the two men survive, they’ve been blown hundreds of miles out in the Pacific Ocean with little hope for rescue. Coming to terms with their new reality, they are forced to accept their separation from the modern world, their sudden and inescapable intimacy, and the possibilities and limits of faith, hope, and survival.

One of the great novels in the Irish comic tradition, The Crock of Gold (1912) consists of six parts. Bringing together pagan gods, policemen, prisoners, leprechauns and animals, the narrative concerns a philosopher and his quest to find the most beautiful woman in the world, Cáitilin Ni Murrachu, who has been abducted by the god Pan. His journey takes him from dark forests to the spectacular heights of pagan gods, as he experiences encounters that will change him forever.

America - the land of opportunity, a place where economic prosperity beckons: - but not for PI Jack Taylor, who's just been refused entry.Disappointed and bitter, he thinks that an encounter with an over-friendly stranger in an airport bar is the least of his problems. Except that this stranger seems to know rather more than he should about Jack.Jack thinks no more of their meeting and resumes his old life in Galway.

Jack Taylor, a disgraced ex-cop in Galway, has slid further down the slope of despair. After a year in London he returns to his home town of Galway with a leather coat and a coke habit. Someone is systematically slaughtering young travellers and dumping their bodies in the city centre. Even in the state he's in, Jack Taylor has an uncanny ability to know where to look, what questions to ask, and with the aid of an English policeman, apparently solves the case.

A group of young Irish migrants leave a man called Hopper for dead on an outback road in Australia. They barely know him; no-one will miss him in their world of hostels, wild nights on cheap wine and grinding work on isolated farms. In this powerful audiobook about the discovery of responsibility, three young people - Fiona, Murph and Hopper - flee the collapse of their country's economy. In the heat and endless spaces of Australia they try to escape their past, but impulsive cruelty, shame and guilt drag them down, and it is easy to make terrible choices.

The accidental deaths of two students appear random, tragic events, except that in each case a copy of a book by John Millington Synge is found beneath the body. Jack begins to believe that "The Dramatist", a calculating killer, is out there, enticing him to play. As the case twists and turns Jack's refuge, the city of Galway, now demands he sacrifice the only love he's maintained, and while Iraq burns, he seems a step away from the abyss.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of The Blue Guitar by John Banville, read by Gerry O'Brien. Adultery is always put in terms of thieving. But we were happy together, simply happy. Oliver Orme is a painter who has abandoned his art. His days are now haunted by loss...

Ireland is no longer the land of saints and scholars. Now, in an era of prosperity, the sexual scandals surrounding the church have caused its people to lose faith in the one institution that seemed invulnerable. But the decapitation of Father Joyce in a Galway church brings a gasp to the most hardened cynics. Not to Jack Taylor. Emotionally bruised, battered, and still struggling with the demon drink, he’s back in town, trying to get his life on course after the traumatic trauma of personal loss.

Someone is scraping the scum off the streets of Galway, and they want Jack Taylor to get involved. A drug pusher, a rapist, a loan shark, all targeted in what look like vigilante attacks. And the killer is writing to Jack, signing their name: C-33. Jack has had enough. He doesn’t need the...

A House of Pomegranates is a collection of fairy tales, written by Oscar Wilde, which was published in 1891 as a second collection for The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888). Wilde once said that this collection was "intended neither for the British child nor the British public."

Saint Patrick was, by his own admission, a controversial figure. Convicted in a trial by his elders in Britain and hounded by rumors that he settled in Ireland for financial gain, the man who was to become Ireland’s patron saint battled against great odds before succeeding as a missionary. Saint Patrick Retold draws on recent research to offer a fresh assessment of Patrick’s travails and achievements. This is the first biography in nearly 50 years to explore Patrick’s career against the background of historical events in late antique Britain and Ireland.

The Happy Prince and Other Tales (sometimes called The Happy Prince and Other Stories) is a collection of stories for children by Oscar Wilde first published in May 1888. It contains five stories: "The Happy Prince", "The Nightingale and the Rose", "The Selfish Giant", "The Devoted Friend", and "The Remarkable Rocket".

Delve into the heart of religious history, where the enduring legacy of the Abrahamic faiths converge with tales of war and theology, revealing their profound impact on contemporary society. In this compelling narrative, religious historian Frank Kenny navigates the complex evolution of a warlike deity from the early scriptures of Jerusalem to the verses of the Bible and Qur’an they inspired. Challenging the one-dimensional portrayal of a benevolent God, The God of War offers a multifaceted view that spans the history of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

A collection of 11 new short stories and six new poems by Ireland's top children's writers, edited by Laureate na nOg Eoin Colfer. Each of the stories and poems is based around the theme of place, being set or inspired by a particular location within Ireland.

Introducing George Markham, lately of the 65th Regiment of Foot, now Lieutenant of Marines on His Britannic Majesty’s frigate Hebe. Irishman, papist, reputed coward; he is a man with something to prove. As the winter of 1793 comes to the Mediterranean coast of France, so too does the chill wind of the Revolutionary terror. When the Hebe is sent to help the Bourbon city of Toulon, Markham will have to prove he is a worthy officer of Marines…or die in the attempt.

These are 20 new crime mysteries together in one large collection, taken from a string of short stories set in the late 19th century. No fictional characters are more renowned for their powers of thought and observation than Sherlock Holmes and his faithful companion, Dr. John Watson.