Our Favourites

The first recorded game of ladies’ Gaelic football was played in St James’ Park, Dublin, in 1920. Players competed in ankle-length skirts, watched by a sizeable crowd. But the game was not authorised by the GAA and, in the decades…

Quinn is furious when her mum announces they are moving in with Grandad because her doctor dad is away working abroad again. New school, new town, new everything. She manages to make one good friend, Charlie, the goalie on her foo…

By 1588, relations between the superpower of the time, Catholic Spain and the relatively small Protestant England had deteriorated to a new low. Philip II had decided that the best way to deal with English piracy and its support f…

No boys, no girls, not a single person I had ever met. What did that mean? Georgia has never been in love, never kissed anyone, never even had a crush – but as a fanfic-obsessed romantic she’s sure she’ll find her person one day. …

A heart-stopping duology finale, in which three young semidioses travel through a dark monster-infested world, facing down chaotic Obsidian gods, in a quest to save their friends and return the sun to the sky. Celestial Monsters i…

Inspired by the tales of Homer and his own ambitions of empire, Alexander the Great sketched the idea of a city onto the sparsely populated Egyptian coastline. He did not live to see Alexandria built, but his vision of a sparkling…

Its name means 'centre of the world', and since the dawn of history the Mediterranean Sea has formed the shared horizon of innumerable cultures. Here, history has blurred with legend. The glittering surface of the sea conceals the…

Lenin is a colossal figure whose influence on twentieth-century history cannot be underestimated. Robert Service has written a calmly authoritative biography on this seemingly unknowable figure. Making use of recently opened archi…

Revolutionary practitioner, theorist, factional chief, sparkling writer, ‘ladies’ man’ (e.g., his affair with Frieda Kahlo), icon of the Revolution, anti-Jewish Jew, philosopher of everyday life, grand seigneur of his household, f…

April 1944. Nineteen-year-old Rudolf Vrba and fellow inmate Fred Wetzler became two of the very first Jews to successfully escape Auschwitz. Evading the thousands of SS men hunting them, Vrba and Wetzler made the perilous journey …

From the author of Fake History, Otto English, comes a shocking yet hilarious look at ten of the greatest liars from our past, examining these previously unquestioned idols and exposing what they were trying to hide. Whether it's …

When X - an iconoclastic artist, writer and polarizing shape-shifter - dies suddenly, her widow, wild with grief, hurls herself into writing a biography of the woman she deified. Though X was recognised as a crucial creative force…

Adventures Unlimited: The Land of Lost Things is the first book in the fun and exciting adventure series from the author behind the multi-million bestselling Treehouse series, Andy Griffiths. Highly illustrated throughout by Bill …

Emily Wilde is a genius scholar of faerie folklore, and has catalogued many secrets of the Hidden Folk in her encyclopaedia with her infuriatingly charming fellow scholar, Wendell Bambleby, by her side. But Bambleby is more than j…

Now in gorgeous special-edition hardback: with an extra never-before-in-print mini-comic The Ethics of Infatuation Dynamics, beautiful endpapers and an exquisite foiled cover, this is an unmissable edition. Boy meets boy. Boys bec…

Ireland is a strikingly different country now to the one it was in the mid-1990s. Dramatic economic, social and cultural changes, including the Celtic Tiger boom and increasingly secular debate about abortion, the status of women …

They are hunting those who shine . . .Don't be deceived by Northaven's prettiness, by its white-wash houses and sea views. Many of its townsfolk are ruthless hunters. They revile those who have developed songlight, the ability to …

A clear, concise and detailed historical analysis of the eclectic and arcane visual and material culture of the occult. Focusing on a carefully curated selection of esoteric art and artefacts, this book explains the meaning and my…

This is a book about how to optimise your mental health. Written with kindness and sympathy, it is a practical guide to emotional well-being, calm and psychological maturity. Alain de Botton explores how we can cope with a variety…

Rita Ann Higgins’ poetry became a national salve during the pandemic, uniquely capturing the mood of the country as read live on radio from RTÉ’s Brendan O’Connor Show. This collection of poetry, containing the bank holiday poems …

At her death in 2020, Eavan Boland left a formidable body of work – poems and prose. Together they transformed Irish poetry and had a considerable influence throughout the English-speaking world. She was also a major essayist, who…

How do you feel about embracing Ireland's native tongue? At odds after a tricky relationship at school? Maybe you've given up, or don't know where to start? Well, is fada an bóthar nach mbíonn casadh ann - long is th…

Make a recipe a few times and it becomes habit. Make it enough and it becomes home. In his much-anticipated new book, Yotam Ottolenghi brings his inspiring, flavour-forward approach to comfort cooking, delivering new classics that…

Want to keep your brain active and your wits trim? Challenge your mind with The Penguin Book of Puzzles and find out if you've got what it takes to beat the Penguin. These challenges will require all the reader's wits to solve, bu…

Mia feels alone; so alone that it's as if she lives on a small island, far out to sea. But then one day, Mia is given a book - the first she has ever been able to call her own.As Mia reads the book, bridges appear and her island f…

A rugged mountain town seemed like the perfect escape from a life in shambles. But on day one, she ran full tilt into the world's hottest single dad, and now all her plans are ruined.As a chart-topping country singer with a recent…

The year is 1588. Ships of the Spanish Armada, one of the most magnificent fleets ever to set sail, are wrecked off the west coast of Ireland. Maximo, a young Spanish sailor, hides from English soldiers in an ancient portal tomb, …

In June 1940, the fall of France prompted General Charles de Gaulle to make an impassioned rallying call to his fellow citizens to fight back against the Germans. His famous radio speech, broadcast from the BBC in London, was late…

The Roswell crash site. The Phoenix Lights. Area 51.Sightings, conspiracies, glimpses of the unexplained. Decades of questions unanswered. Forget what you think you know about Unidentified Flying Objects.On 25 June 2021, the Penta…

From the ‘10,000 hours rule’ to the power of tiger parenting, we have been taught that success in any field requires early specialization and many hours of deliberate practice.If you only dabble or delay, you'll never catch up wit…