Showing results by narrator "Gerard Doyle" in All Categories

The New York Times bestselling author of Starting Over and An Ocean Apart returns with his strongest work to date—a heartwarming story of love, compassion, and redemption After the dot-com bubble burst, Dan Porter is laid off from his job and must decide what is truly important. His wife of 20...

As 1995 dawns in the North of Ireland, Belfast is a city of army patrols, bombed-out buildings, and “peace walls” segregating one community from the other. But the IRA has called a ceasefire. So, it’s as good a time as any for Monty Collins and Father Brennan Burke to visit the city: Monty to do a short gig in a law firm, and Brennan to reconnect with family. And it’s a good time for Brennan’s cousin Ronan to lay down arms and campaign for election in a future peacetime government. But then a man goes off a bridge on a dark, lonely road; a rogue IRA enforcer is shot; and a series of car bombs remains an unsolved crime.

Nine-year-old Louis Drax lies in a coma in a hospital bed, re-living the events that led to his near-fatal fall into a ravine. Despite being attracted to the boy's mother Natalie Drax, Louis' doctor, Pascal Dannachet, begins reluctantly to question her version of Louis' accident and the apparent culpability of her missing husband. As the boy struggles to communicate from within his coma, the chilling truth emerges....

An urban antidote to A Year in Provence, Stephen Clarke's book is a laugh-out-loud account of a year in the life of an expat in Paris- for Francophiles and Francophobes alike A YEAR IN THE MERDE is the almost-true account of the author's adventures as an expat in Paris. Based loosely on his own...

Birdie, a young woman born into wealth, has a deep passion for art and science which leads her to a position painting landscape habitats at the new Museum of Natural History. Her mother sees this pursuit as a distraction from her daughter’s obligatory society functions and tries to forbid her from the museum, but Birdie’s dedication only grows once she meets Jay, an intelligent Irishman who’s yanked himself up by his bootstraps to join the Museum’s elite team of researchers. Captivated by each other despite their differences, Birdie and Jay steal away to Central Park each day.

It’s taken Matthew Dunne almost three months to get home. Never more than a few meters from the Haters at any time, every single step has been fraught with danger. But he’s made it. During his time in the wilderness, Matt developed a skill that is in high demand: the ability to anticipate and predict Hater behavior. It’s these skills that will thrust him into a web of subterfuge and danger. As the pressure mounts inside the camp, he finds himself under scrutiny from all sides. He’s always done his best to avoid trouble, but sometimes it can’t be helped.

In 1938, Hitler visits Italy. An expatriate Irish art historian is obliged to guide Mussolini and his guest around the galleries. Half fascinated, half repelled, he watches the tyrants, wrestling with the uneasy conviction that he ought to use the opportunity to "do something" about them yet lacking the zeal that might transform misgivings into action. Thirty years later, his daughter comes across a compromising clipping showing her father with the dictators.

After a shocking accident, one family gathers for an unforgettable Christmas overflowing with secrets and revelations in this deeply felt novel by one of Ireland’s foremost modern writers. Henry has been estranged from his children since his divorce with their mother, Stephanie. But when a car accident claims the life of his second wife and leaves him with partial amnesia, Henry embarks on the fraught journey of making amends.

The slave Alexi, now free of his Greek captors, infiltrates the Greek strongholds of the Bronze Age in search of his sister. In so doing he participates in the stories of Orestes, son of Agamemnon, as he seeks revenge for his father's murder, and of Telemachus, son of Odysseus, who lands on Ithaca, the home island of Odysseus, just in time to witness the arrival of a mysterious stranger. As Alexi comes to understand the damage that the Trojan War has visited upon its victors, both he and the listener are forced to confront an unpleasant truth, while Alexi must decide where his allegiance really lies.

Dubliners is a collection of short stories by James Joyce that was first published in 1914. The 15 stories were meant to be a naturalistic depiction of the Irish middle-class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century. The stories were written at a time when Irish nationalism was at its peak and a search for a national identity and purpose was raging; at a crossroads of history and culture, Ireland was jolted by various converging ideas and influences.

Drawing on the author’s personal experiences with both tame and wild moose, this handbook contains a wealth of information about this unique animal from all corners of the world. An overview of moose biology is featured, including their specialized diet and the relationship between sex and antlers, where size really does matter. Covering the history of moose on earth and the marked fluctuations in populations that have occurred over time, this guide also contains accessible chapters exploring moose diseases, moose and traffic, moose as a resource, and the uses of live moose in several ways, ranging from transport and clothing to dairy animals and pets.

This latest plunge in to the psyche of the lone American male by author Lysa Williams brings us three men struggling in the war against dysfunction: a high-school student who rides the NYC subway each night in search of that perfect moment of beauty; a narcoleptic painter, the erotic Vermeer, who falls asleep on contact; and a psychic male prostitute who spends his off hours creating miniature models of the seven wonders of the world.

Two and a half millennia after it was created, Homer's Odyssey remains one of humanity's most memorable adventure stories. In this re-creation of Homer's classic as a young adult novel, we see the aftermath of the Trojan War through the eyes of Alexi, a fifteen-year-old Trojan boy. Orphaned by the war and enslaved by Odysseus himself, Alexi has a very different view of the conquering heroes of legend.

It is 1958, and as Laika, the Sputnik dog, is launched into space, Golly Murray, the Cullymore barber's wife, finds herself oddly obsessing about the canine cosmonaut. Meanwhile, Fonsey "Teddy" O'Neill is returning, like the prodigal son, from overseas, with Brylcreem in his hair and a Cuban-heeled swagger to his step, having experienced his coming-of-age in Skegness, England. Father Augustus Hand is working on a bold new theatrical production for Easter, which he, for one, knows will put Cullymore on the map.

The second volume in the trilogy that re-envisions Homer's Odyssey is once again told from the viewpoint of Alexi, the young Trojan boy. Captured by Odysseus after the fall of Troy, Alexi is forced to accompany the Greeks on their sea journey home to Ithaca. Cursed by the Sea God contains many of the iconic adventures of the homeward journey, including the encounter with the keeper of the winds, the descent into Hades, the fateful visit to the cannibal Laestrygonians and many more.

Father Brennan Burke is struggling, and he’s been coping the only way he knows how: self-medicating with drink. He’s barely managing, but his troubles intensify when the body of one of his parishioners washes up on the coast of Halifax. Meika Keller came to Canada after escaping past a checkpoint in the Berlin Wall. An army colonel is charged with her murder, and defense lawyer Monty argues that Meika’s death was a suicide, which is the last thing Father Burke wants to hear.

A series of nuclear strikes has left huge swathes of the country uninhabitable. It’s a level playing field now: both Hater and Unchanged alike have to fight to stay alive. Both have retreated to their camps to regroup, less than 20 miles away from each other. It’s here that the last major battle of the final war will inevitably be fought, but neither side has any idea what’s waiting for them just around the corner.

All sixteen-year-old Tommin wants is to make beautiful shoes and care for his beloved grandmother, but his insatiable need to steal threatens to destroy everything. Driven by a curse that demands more and more gold, he's sure to get caught eventually.

An audacious tale of murder, privilege, and servitude — of both humans and nature. A stunning work of imaginative fiction, Last Hummingbird West of Chile spins a tale of adventure that is in turn comedic, violent, poignant and thoughtful. Through the exploits of a young sailor born in questionable circumstance and a pair of murderous servants, as well as an assortment of other 19th century regulars, the vital subjects of today—race, religion, sexuality, environment—are framed in history and human culture.

This star-studded anniversary anthology features over twenty-five unforgettable stories from internationally bestselling authors and literary legends. From the Nordic noir of Jo Nesbø and the lyricism of Tennessee Williams to the timeless imagination of Ray Bradbury and the courtroom wit of John Mortimer, these vivid tales reflect the range and tone that have defined The Strand Magazine for a quarter century.