Лучшие книги Билли О'Кэллахана

Мэгги, талантливая и уязвимая художница, хочет укрыться от мира и переезжает в заброшенный дом на юге Ирландии. Серые скалы, грохот океана, бескрайние поля – всё здесь обещает ей покой и вдохновение. Однако этот дом пустовал со времен великого ирландского голода, и про него рассказывают пугающие легенды. На дворе двадцать первый век, но здесь все словно как прежде, все находится во власти мифа. Майкл – успешный арт-дилер, закоренелый холостяк, человек практических взглядов. Он приезжает в гости к своей протеже, Мэгги, чтобы отпраздновать её новоселье. Ради забавы собравшиеся устраивают спиритический сеанс, надеясь установить связь с…

1980s Cork. Jack Shine discovers a shoe box full of love letters in his mother's belongings. Rebekah came to Cork alone as a young Jewish refugee from Vienna when the Second World War broke out. She died soon after, and Jack never learned of his father's identity. Why did she keep newspaper clippings about a famous footballer player? Who was 'The Paper Man'?
As Jack uncovers his mother's life, he is transported to 1930s Vienna, a bustling city on the brink of war. At the heart of the action is Matthias Sindelar, one of the most famous footballers in the world, known as 'The Paper Man' because of his effortless weave across the pitch. When Sindelar unexpectedly meets Rebekah, both of their lives are changed forever. As war looms, they must accept that their survival will tear them apart.
Based on true events, The Paper Man is the story of twentieth-century Europe and love against the odds. It is a story that will take Jack far from Cork and all the way back to Vienna, and towards The Paper Man.

The breathtaking short story collection from the Costa-shortlisted Irish writer
Three gunshots on the Irish border define the course of a young man's life; a writer clings fast to a star-crossed affair with a woman who has never been fully in his reach; a fisherman accustomed to hard labour rolls up his sleeves to dig a grave for his child; a pair of newly-weds embark on their first adventure, living wild on the deserted Beginish Island.
Spanning a century and two continents - from the muddy fields of Ireland to a hotel room in Paris, a dingy bar in Segovia to an aeroplane bound for Taipei - these densely layered tales reveal the quiet heroism and gentle dignity of ordinary life. Ranging from the elegiac to the brutally confrontational, Billy O'Callaghan's stories explore the resilience of the human heart and its ability to keep beating even in the wake of grief, trauma and lost love.

Three generations. More than a century of famine, war, violence and love.
At sixteen Nancy, the only member of her family to survive the Great Famine, leaves her small island for the mainland. Finding work in a grand house on the edge of Cork City, she feels irrepressibly drawn to the charismatic gardener Michael Egan, sparking a love affair that soon throws her into a fight for her life.
In 1920, Nancy's son Jer has lived through battles of his own as a soldier in the Great War. Now drunk in a jail cell, he struggles to piece together where he has come from, and who he wants to be.
And in the early 1980s, Jer's youngest child Nellie is nearing the end of her life in a council house, moments away from her childhood home; remembering the night when she and her family stole back something that was rightfully theirs, she imagines what lies in store for those who will survive her.

This is a new collection of short stories from the pen of one of Ireland's most-talented emerging writers, Billy O'Callaghan. "I read and re-read, on and on until the darkness settled thick enough around me that I could no longer see the large-printed words on the gaudily illustrated pages, and then I clambered from the attic and threw myself into the story again while seated beside the fire. The wind carved elegiac plunder in the chimney and every banshee wail exploded awake a freshly forgotten colour in my mind. Children see the world in different lights, the brilliance of which is far too easily given up. This time, discovering them anew, I held fast and determined that I'd never again let go." With its stories of lost love and shared secrets, tender moments and little victories, "In Too Deep" is a wonderful follow-up to Billy's first collection "In Exile".