Strangers come together to run. Angela and Brendan are racing towards a wedding day that is increasingly tainted by doubts. Yana runs to free herself from the darkness of the past and to remember her missing brother. Cathy thinks about the secret she has been unable to share. Running takes Maurice past his daughter's house, the place he is not allowed to enter. Over the nine weeks unexpected friendships are forged, challenges faced and by the time of their final run together all will grasp a new commitment to life itself.

A bold and unsettling parable about guilt, atonement and redemption from the winner of the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award'It is seldom that one can say a book is perfect, but this is as close as I've seen in a very long time' SUNDAY INDEPENDENT'A bold and unsettling parable about guilt, atonement and redemption' IRISH TIMESMichael has travelled a long way from his boyhood under the endless skies of the Midwest. His retirement is peaceful, if solitary. But one day there is a visitation: a mysterious car on the seafront, and a package delivered. From its contents, Michael understands that he has been commissioned to undertake a final journey. As Michael makes his way deep into a distant desert – a strange and liminal landscape that lies between hell and redemption – he undertakes another journey, into long-suppressed memories: of Vietnam and the dying days of war, and to face a final accounting for what was...

What does it mean to be a poet's wife, his muse and lover, there for the heights of inspiration and the quotidian of the day-to-day, and often times, too, the drudgery of being in a supporting role to "the great man." In this exquisite and sensitive new novel, David Park explores this complicated relationship, through three well-crafted characters, two based on actual women: Catherine Blake, wife of William Blake, 19th-century poet, painter, and engraver, and Nadezhda Mandelstam, wife of Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, who died in a transit camp en route to Siberia during Stalin's rule. Park has also fashioned a fictional contemporary poet, whose wife looks back on her husband's life during the days just after his death. All three women deal with their husband's fame or notoriety. All three stick by their mates, taking seriously their commitment to the men they married, but also to assisting with and preserving their work. And this despite infidelities, despite a...

Returning to rural Northern Ireland for a fresh start, John Cameron takes on the role of headmaster at his old primary school. But as dark memories are disturbed and his marriage falters, Cameron is left feeling powerless in this fractured community. Driven by unresolved grief and tormented by his waking dreams, he is forced to confront his past as he struggles to prevent history from repeating itself.

It is December; Christmas is approaching and the magic of one of Europe's most beautiful cities beckons. A father looks for himself in the past, struggling to deal with a recent divorce, his teenage son in tow. A single, selfless mother accompanies her only daughter and friends for a weekend-long bachelorette party. And a husband treats his wife to a birthday weekend away, somehow heightening her anxieties and insecurities about age, desire, and motherhood. During their brief stay in the city, the confusions and contradictions inherent in their relationships assert themselves in unexpected ways, forcing each couple into a sometimes painful reassessment and a new awareness of the price that love demands. As these people brush against each other in the squares, museums, and parks of Amsterdam, their lives are transfigured in the winter light as they encounter the complexities of love in a city that challenges what has gone before. Tender and humane, elevating the ordinary to...

Northern Ireland, 1963. This is the story of a time muffled and made claustrophobic by unprecedented snow falls, and of people caught in the slow dance of this frozen land. In a house with windows flung defiantly wide, a wife dies before her husband can make his confession. Her coffin is pulled to the church on a sledge by Peter, a young man engulfed by his first feelings of love for an unattainable woman. Elsewhere, an old woman searches desperately for a wedding dress in her dream of love. When the electricity fails, a lonely headmaster is forced to close his school and in shadowy candlelight he is tempted into indiscretion. Meanwhile, in the very heart of the city, the purity of snow is tainted by the murder of a young woman and as one man begins to unravel the dark secrets of the city, he knows he is in race against time to find the murderer before the snow melts. David Park peers into the souls of his characters with an insight and compassion that makes this flawed slice of humanity somehow glorious. He is a writer of rare dignity and talent.From Publishers WeeklyThe central conceit of this acclaimed Irish author's poignant and compelling American debut is a snowstorm that shuts down Northern Ireland. A series of interlocking short stories about various smalltown characters precedes a taut, riveting urban murder-mystery involving a prostitute and a city councilman. The book starts on a wistful note as schoolteacher Martin Stevenson prepares for the death of his wife from a terminal illness that is wicking away her beauty and energy. From there, Park moves to a precocious young man's attraction to an older woman when the storm forces him and his father to help her husband after a minor auto accident. Other short interludes include a woman's efforts to buy a wedding dress for her daughter, and an encounter involving a prudish principal who winds up sleeping with one of his teachers. Park saves the best for last, when the mysterious death of a prostitute sparks a young detective named Swift to defy his boss and pursue a prominent councilman in the title novella. Park is a superb writer who focuses on interiority in the early stories, briefly but sharply bringing his characters to life with compassion and verve as they grapple with their passions and shortcomings. The impeccable plotting in the murder mystery is just as noteworthy, as Park focuses on Swift's head butting with his boss to increase the tension for the final pursuit. Structurally, the story line poses challenges, but the author incorporates a stunning beauty and a sense of mystery into his prose that makes it smooth and seamless.Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. From BooklistFour short stories and a novella, set during the 1960s in the north of Ireland in the midst of a blinding blizzard, are linked by the theme of love. In "The Light of the World," a husband is haunted by his memories of infidelity as his wife lays dying; "Snow Trails" follows a student's infatuation with a wealthy woman and her rarefied world; an old woman buys a wedding dress and slips into madness in "The Wedding Dress"; and a deeply lonely schoolmaster forges an unexpected connection in "Against the Cold." In the moving title story, a new detective doggedly searches for the murderer of a beautiful woman, somehow convinced that his investigation will lead him to love. In setting these explorations of passionate human emotions against the austerely beautiful, snow-covered landscape, Park throws his themes into sharp relief. Skillfully depicting how the snow has transformed the neighborhood into something only partly recognizable and temporarily released people from the predictable, Park uses the imagery of his setting in every conceivable fashion and to powerful effect. Masterful fiction. Joanne WilkinsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

ORANGES FROM SPAIN is a collection of stories about of the trials of growing up in a community where tension, confusion and violence hold sway. Here, among other tales, a youthful seaside romance crosses the religious divide, a gang take turns at the wheel of a stolen car, and an exceptional student stirs the resentment of her troubled teacher. Set in Northern Ireland against the background of the troubles, these vignettes capture the spirit of adolescence in difficult times.

In the museum Martin stands watch over the past. He has travelled a long way from his brutal childhood in the Loyalist heartlands of Belfast and built a life he never imagined he would have - a devoted wife, Alison, two children, Rachel and Tom, a respectable job. But the happiness he has found feels brittle. Rachel's academic success is launching her out of her proud father's orbit. Tom, eclipsed by his sister, has withdrawn into a fantasy world. Martin's gratitude to Alison is a gulf between them. He feels unworthy of his wife, his life, his luck. Returning home one night to find police cars waiting, Martin feels his sins must have finally caught up with him. But their news is wholly unexpected, a senseless tragedy. And in the face of this devastating trauma, which tears his fragile family apart, Martin finds the violence of the past is not gone but merely dormant; its call must be answered at last.

Haunted by the troubles in Northern Ireland and trapped in a land between the mountains and the sea, Naomi dreams of another life far from the rainy shores of Donegal. When she moves from the rain swept shores of Ireland to work in a refugee camp in the burning heat of Africa, Naomi exchanges the city streets of Belfast for the arid desert. Though she leaves behind the land where she was born, escaping her past is not so easy.

Set in a frozen winter landscape, the new novel from the prize-winning, acclaimed author David Park is a psychologically astute, expertly crafted portrait of a father's inner life and a family in crisisAn Irish Times Book of 2018I am entering the frozen land, although to which country it belongs I cannot say. The world is shrouded in snow. Transport has ground to a halt. Tom must venture out into a transformed and treacherous landscape to collect his son, sick and stranded in student lodgings. But on this solitary drive from Belfast to Sunderland, Tom will be drawn into another journey, one without map or guide, and is forced to chart pathways of family history haunted by memory and clouded in regret. Written in spare, crystalline prose by one of the most important voices in contemporary Irish writing, Travelling in a Strange Land is a work of exquisite loss and transformative...

A man is shot dead before the eyes of his young son as they work together in the fields near their home - another victim of the violence in Northern Ireland. In the city, a confused and frightened old man grieves for his own loss and for the shattered world around him. When the young boy's mother moves them both from their country home to Belfast, the old man's life becomes entwined with that of the boy. Fascinated by the silent child, the old man believes he has at last found the instrument of healing.

Henry Stanfield, the newly arrived Truth Commissioner, is troubled by his estrangement from his daughter, and struggling with the consequences of his infidelities. Francis Gilroy, veteran Republican and recently appointed government minister, risks losing what feels tantalisingly close to his grasp. In America, Danny and his partner plan for the arrival of their first child, happily oblivious to what is about to pull him back to Belfast and rupture the life they have started together. Retired detective James Fenton, on his way to an orphanage in Romania with a van full of supplies, will soon be forced to confront what he has come to think of as his betrayal, years before, of a teenage boy. In a society trying to heal the scars of the past with the salve of truth and reconciliation, these four men's lives become linked in a way they could never have imagined.