Books to Read Set in Ireland in Celebration of St. Patrick's Day
Get ready to immerse yourself in the lush landscapes, rich history, and captivating stories of the Emerald Isle as we celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a curated list of books set in Ireland. From the bustling streets of Dublin to the serene countryside of County Cork, Ireland's literary heritage is as diverse as its breathtaking scenery. Whether you're drawn to tales of love and loss, political intrigue, or the magic of Irish folklore, there's something for every reader to discover in these pages. So pour yourself a pint of Guinness, grab a cozy blanket, and let these Irish authors transport you to a world of charm and enchantment this St. Patrick's Day.
Books to Read Set in Ireland in Celebration of St. Patrick's Day
1 - Too Close to Breathe by Olivia Kiernan
Books to Read Set in Ireland in Celebration of St. Patrick's Day
About Too Close to Breathe:
In a quiet Dublin suburb, within her pristine home, Eleanor Costello is found hanging from a rope.
Detective Chief Superintendent Frankie Sheehan would be more than happy to declare it a suicide. Four months earlier, Frankie's pursuit of a killer almost ended her life and she isn't keen on investigating another homicide. But the autopsy reveals poorly healed bones and old stab wounds, absent from medical records. A new cut is carefully, deliberately covered in paint. Eleanor's husband, Peter, is unreachable, missing. A search of the couple's home reveals only two signs of personality: a much-loved book on art and a laptop with access to the Dark Web.
With the suspect pool growing, the carefully crafted profile of the victim crumbling with each new lead, and mysterious calls to Frankie's phone implying that the killer is closer than anyone would like, all Frankie knows is that Eleanor guarded her secrets as closely in life as she does in death.
As the investigation grows more challenging, Frankie can't help but feel that something doesn't fit. And when another woman is found murdered, the same paint on her corpse, Frankie knows that unraveling Eleanor's life is the only way to find the murderer before he claims another victim...or finishes the fate Frankie only just managed to escape.
Engrossing, complex, and atmospheric, Olivia Kiernan's debut novel will leave you breathless.
2 - The Princes of Ireland by Edward Rutherfurd
This is just one of several books by Edward Rutherfurd set in Ireland.
Books to Read Set in Ireland in Celebration of St. Patrick's Day
About The Princes of Ireland:
Edward Rutherfurd has introduced millions of readers to the human dramas that are the lifeblood of history. From his first bestseller, Sarum, to the international sensation London, he has captivated audiences with gripping narratives that follow the fortunes of several fictional families down through the ages. The Princes of Ireland, a sweeping panorama steeped in the tragedy and glory that is Ireland, epitomizes the power and richness of Rutherfurd's storytelling magic.
The saga begins in tribal, pre-Christian Ireland during the reign of the fierce and mighty High Kings at Tara, with the tale of two lovers, the princely Conall and the ravishing Deirdre, whose travails cleverly echo the ancient Celtic legend of Cuchulainn. From that stirring beginning, Rutherfurd takes the reader on a powerfully-imagined journey through the centuries. Through the interlocking stories of a memorable cast of characters--druids and chieftains, monks and smugglers, noblewomen and farmwives, merchants and mercenaries, rebels and cowards--we see Ireland through the lens of its greatest city.
While vividly and movingly conveying the passions and struggles that shaped the character of Dublin, Rutherfurd portrays the major events in Irish history: The tribal culture of pagan Ireland; the mission of St. Patrick; the coming of the Vikings and the founding of Dublin; the glories of the great nearby monastery of Glendalough and the making of treasures like the Book of Kells; the extraordinary career of Brian Boru; the trickery of Henry II, which gave England its first foothold in Medieval Ireland. The stage is then set for the great conflict between the English kings and the princes of Ireland, and the disastrous Irish invasion of England, which incurred the wrath of Henry VIII and where this book, the first of the two part Dublin Saga, draws to a close, as the path of Irish history takes a dramatic and irrevocable turn.
3 - The Country Girls by Edna O'Brien
I heard that when this book first came out in the 80s, it was banned in the author’s home town due to sexual content.
Books to Read Set in Ireland in Celebration of St. Patrick's Day
About The Country Girls:
The country girls are Caithleen "Kate" Brady and Bridget "Baba" Brennan, and their story begins in the repressive atmosphere of a small village in the west of Ireland in the years following World War II. Kate is a romantic, looking for love; Baba is a survivor. Setting out to conquer the bright lights of Dublin, they are rewarded with comical miscommunications, furtive liaisons, bad faith, bad luck, bad sex, and compromise; marrying for the wrong reasons, betraying for the wrong reasons, fighting in their separate ways against the overwhelming wave of expectations forced upon "girls" of every era.
The Country Girls Trilogy and Epilogue charts unflinchingly the pattern of women's lives, from the high spirits of youth to the chill of middle age, from hope to despair, in remarkable prose swinging from blunt and brutal to whimsical and lyrical. It is a saga both painful and hilarious, and remains one of the major accomplishments of Edna O'Brien's extraordinary career.
4 - TransAtlantic by Colum McCann
I absolutely loved Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin. I wish I had time to read this one.
Books to Read Set in Ireland in Celebration of St. Patrick's Day
About TransAtlantic:
In the National Book Award-winning Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann thrilled readers with a marvelous high-wire act of fiction that The New York Times Book Review called "an emotional tour de force." Now McCann demonstrates once again why he is one of the most acclaimed and essential authors of his generation with a soaring novel that spans continents, leaps centuries, and unites a cast of deftly rendered characters, both real and imagined.
Newfoundland, 1919. Two aviators--Jack Alcock and Arthur Brown--set course for Ireland as they attempt the first nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean, placing their trust in a modified bomber to heal the wounds of the Great War.
Dublin, 1845 and '46. On an international lecture tour in support of his subversive autobiography, Frederick Douglass finds the Irish people sympathetic to the abolitionist cause--despite the fact that, as famine ravages the countryside, the poor suffer from hardships that are astonishing even to an American slave.
New York, 1998. Leaving behind a young wife and newborn child, Senator George Mitchell departs for Belfast, where it has fallen to him, the son of an Irish-American father and a Lebanese mother, to shepherd Northern Ireland's notoriously bitter and volatile peace talks to an uncertain conclusion.
These three iconic crossings are connected by a series of remarkable women whose personal stories are caught up in the swells of history. Beginning with Irish housemaid Lily Duggan, who crosses paths with Frederick Douglass, the novel follows her daughter and granddaughter, Emily and Lottie, and culminates in the present-day story of Hannah Carson, in whom all the hopes and failures of previous generations live on. From the loughs of Ireland to the flatlands of Missouri and the windswept coast of Newfoundland, their journeys mirror the progress and shape of history. They each learn that even the most unassuming moments of grace have a way of rippling through time, space, and memory.
The most mature work yet from an incomparable storyteller, TransAtlantic is a profound meditation on identity and history in a wide world that grows somehow smaller and more wondrous with each passing year.
5 - The Likeness (Dublin Murder Squad, Book 2) by Tana French
In last year’s St. Patrick’s Day post, I included the Dublin Murder Squad, Book 1: In the Woods by Tana French
Books to Read Set in Ireland in Celebration of St. Patrick's Day
About The Likeness:
In the “compellingˮ (The Boston Globe) and “pitch perfectˮ (Entertainment Weekly) follow-up to Tana French’s runaway bestseller In the Woods, Cassie Maddox has transferred out of the Dublin Murder Squad—until an urgent telephone call brings her back to an eerie crime scene.
The victim looks exactly like Cassie and carries ID identifying herself as Alexandra Madison, an alias Cassie once used as an undercover cop. Suddenly, Cassie is back undercover, to find out not only who killed this young woman, but, more importantly, who she was.
6 - Sisters of Belfast by Melanie Maure
Books to Read Set in Ireland in Celebration of St. Patrick's Day
About Sisters of Belfast by Melanie Maure:
Orphaned during the Second World War, Aelish and Isabel McGuire—known as the twins of Belfast—are given over to the austere care of the Sisters of Bethlehem. Though they are each all the other has, the girls are propelled in opposite directions as they grow up. Rebellious Isabel turns her back on the church and Ireland, traveling to Newfoundland where she pursues a perilous yet independent life. Devout Aelish chooses to remain in Northern Ireland and takes the veil, burying painful truths beneath years of silence. For decades the two are separated, each unaware of the other’s life. But after years of isolation Aelish is unexpectedly summoned to Newfoundland, where she and her estranged sister begin to bridge the chasm between them.
Reunion brings to light the painful secrets and seismic deceptions that have kept these sisters apart, leaving the McGuire twins to begin reconstructing their understanding about themselves as women and as family–what they know of love, hope, and above all, forgiveness.
7 - Castles and Ruins by Rue Matthiessen
About Castles and Ruins by Rue Matthiessen:
Castles & Ruins is inspired by a summer Rue Matthiessen spent in Galway, with her husband and son.
She had lived in Galway when she was approximately her son’s age (6), with her mother, poet Deborah Love, and her father, writer Peter Matthiessen. Their house was on a small island in a huge lake called Lough Corrib. Her mother died six years later, when Rue was thirteen. A year before that, Deborah Love had published a book called Annaghkeen, (1970, named for the castle on the shore across from the island).
Rue had always wanted to return to Ireland, to try to find the island where she had lived. Finally, she was able to make a plan, and set out with her husband and son. As soon she arrives, she finds that Ireland is much more than a vacation with an end point, it is a trove of memories—a Pandora’s box.
Though her mother had left Annaghkeen, events had been left hanging in time, along with multiple unanswered questions. Rue’s feelings about having lost her rise to the surface afresh, as well as memories of her moody, intense father, who was just then on the cusp of a major literary career. The sixties, and her parents' passionate, always crumbling marriage become vivid, like a film reel before her eyes.
Each chapter begins with a quote from her mother’s book, which further illuminates the trip as it unfolds. They drive the circumference of the island, from church to ruin, from charming village to dramatic seaside cliff. Rue finds ancient, wild Ireland unchanged, and deeply familiar. After all, the seeds of her life were sown here. Ireland is where she remembers it all, and discovers her own beginnings. By following coordinates from Annaghkeen, she finds the island and castle at the end, just as she had left them.
8 - Last Call at the Local by Sarah Grunder Ruiz
About Last Call at the Local by Sarah Grunder Ruiz:
Raine Hart is used to the challenges of living with ADHD. It’s why she ditched her life in Boston to busk around Europe as a traveling musician. No boss. No schedule. No one to disappoint but herself. But when a careless mistake in Ireland leaves her unable to perform, she sees no other option but to give up her nomadic life.
Since inheriting the Local, Jack Dunne has wanted to make the pub his own. But the baggage of running a family business and the intrusive thoughts that stem from his OCD make changing things a challenge.
Over a pint with handsome, tattooed Jack, Raine accidentally insults him and the pub. Instead of taking offense, Jack is impressed by her vision of what the pub could be and offers her a job bringing it to life.
But when Raine and Jack develop feelings for one another their opposite lifestyles won’t accommodate, it becomes clear the pub isn’t the only thing that needs reinventing. As the end of their business collaboration draws near, they’ll have to find a way past the limits they’ve placed on themselves or let go of a love that could last a lifetime.
9 - The Fairytale Life of Dorothy Gale by Virginia Kantra
About The Fairytale Life of Dorothy Gale by Virginia Kantra:
A woman learns to follow her own road in this heartwarming novel inspired by The Wizard of Oz by New York Times bestselling author Virginia Kantra.
Dorothy “Dee” Gale is searching for a place to belong. After their globe-trotting mother’s death, Dee and her sister Toni settled with Uncle Henry and Aunt Em in Kansas, where Dee attends graduate school. But when Dee’s relationship with a faculty member, a bestselling novelist, ends in heartbreak and humiliation, she’s caught in a tornado of negative publicity. Unable to face her colleagues—or her former lover—Dee applies to the writing program at Trinity College Dublin.
Dee’s journey to Ireland leads her to new companions: seemingly brainless Sam Clery—who dropped out of college and now runs a newsagent’s shop—is charming and hot, in a dissolute, Irish poet kind of way; allegedly heartless Tim Woodman—who stiffly refused to take back his ex-fiancée—seems stuck in his past; and fiercely loyal Reeti Kaur, who longs for the courage to tell her parents she wants to teach underprivileged girls rather than work in the family business.
In a year of opportunities and changes, love and loss, Dee is mentored by powerful women in the writing program, challenging her to see herself and her work with new eyes. With her friends, Dee finds the confidence to confront her biggest fears—including her intimidating graduate advisor, who may not be so wicked after all.
Faced with a choice with far-reaching consequences, Dee must apply the lessons she’s learned along the way about making a family, finding a home...and recognizing the power that’s been inside her all along.
10 - Something About Her by Clementine Taylor
About Something About Her by Clementine Taylor:
Aisling and Maya’s connection is unexpected. Maya has recently returned to the University of Edinburgh for her second year, confident in her place there and in her first proper relationship with her childhood best friend, Ethan. Finally, she is one of them, those happy couples, self-satisfied in the knowledge that they are one half of something solid.
Aisling is a first-year student from Ireland, ready to leave her controlling family behind. But despite the distance, she still feels claustrophobic, still feels watched. Reeling from her break-up with her ex-girlfriend, she struggles to make friends and finds herself isolated. That is, until Aisling joins the Poetry Society. That’s where she meets Maya, and everything changes.
Set over the course of a single academic year, Something About Her is a taut and propulsive story of love and coming-of-age that will immediately recall novels of sexual awakening like Call Me By Your Name and Real Life.
11 - Trouble the Living by Francesca McDonnell Capossela
About Trouble the Living by Francesca McDonnell Capossela:
It’s the final years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and Bríd and her sister, Ina, try to maintain a stable life in a divided country. Pushed by her mother’s fanaticism and a family tragedy, Bríd joins the IRA and makes a devastating choice. Frightened and guilt ridden, she flees, leaving behind Ireland and her family for America.
Years later, her guilt and tragic history still buried, Bríd is an overprotective mother raising her sensitive daughter, Bernie, in Southern California. Growing up amid a different kind of social unrest, Bernie’s need for independence and her exploration of her sexuality drive a wedge into their already-fragile relationship. When mother and daughter are forced to return to Northern Ireland, they both must confront the past, the present, and the women they’ve become.
As they navigate their troubled legacies, mother and daughter untangle the threads of love, violence, and secrets that formed them―and that will stubbornly, beautifully, bind them forever.
12 - Out of Ireland: A Novel by Marian O’Shea Wernicke
About Out of Ireland: A Novel by Marian O’Shea Wernicke:
In the late 1860s in Bantry, Ireland, sixteen-year-old Eileen O’Donovan is forced by her family to marry an older widower whom she barely knows and does not love. Her brother Michael, at age nineteen, becomes involved with the outlawed Irish Republican Brotherhood, a secret organization dedicated to the violent overthrow of British rule in Ireland. Their fates intertwine when they each decide to emigrate to America, where both tragedy and happiness await them. An exciting coming-of-age story of a brother and sister in an Ireland still under the harsh rule of the British, Out of Ireland brings alive the story of our ancestors who braved the dangers of immigration in order to find a better life for themselves and their families.
13 - The Choice by Nora Roberts
About The Choice by Nora Roberts:
The conclusion of the epic trilogy from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Awakening and The Becoming.
Talamh is a land of green hills, high mountains, deep forests, and seas, where magicks thrive. But portals allow for passage in and out—and ultimately, each must choose their place, and choose between good and evil, war and peace, life and death…
Breen Siobhan Kelly grew up in the world of Man and was once unaware of her true nature. Now she is in Talamh, trying to heal after a terrible battle and heartbreaking losses. Her grandfather, the dark god Odran, has been defeated in his attempt to rule over Talamh, and over Breen—for now.
With the enemy cast out and the portal sealed, this is a time to rest and to prepare. Breen spreads her wings and realizes a power she’s never experienced before. It’s also a time for celebrations—of her first Christmas in both Talamh and Ireland, of solstice and weddings and births—and daring to find joy again in the wake of sorrow. She rededicates herself to writing her stories, and when his duties as taoiseach permit, she is together with Keegan, who has trained her as a warrior and whom she has grown to love.
It’s Keegan who’s at her side when the enemy’s witches, traitorous and power-mad, appear to her in her sleep, practicing black magick, sacrificing the innocent, and plotting a brutal destruction for Breen. And soon, united with him and with all of Talamh, she will seek out those in desperate need of rescue, and confront the darkness with every weapon she has: her sword, her magicks—and her courage…
14 - The Invincible Miss Cust by Penny Haw
About The Invincible Miss Cust by Penny Haw:
Aleen Cust has big dreams. And no one―not her family, society, or the law―will stop her.
Born in Ireland in 1868 to an aristocratic English family, Aleen knows she is destined to work with animals, even if her family is appalled by the idea of a woman pursuing a veterinary career. Going against their wishes but with the encouragement of the guardian assigned to her upon her father's death, Aleen attends the New Veterinary College in Edinburgh, enrolling as A. I. Custance to spare her family the humiliation they fear. At last, she is on her way to becoming a veterinary surgeon! Little does she know her biggest obstacles lie ahead.
The Invincible Miss Cust is based on the real life of Aleen Isabel Cust, who defied her family and society to become Britain and Ireland's first woman veterinary surgeon. Through Penny Haw's meticulous research, riveting storytelling, and elegant prose, Aleen's story of ambition, determination, family, friendship, and passion comes to life. It is a story that, even today, women will recognize, of battling patriarchy and an unequal society to realize one's dreams and pave the way for other women in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
15 - 56 DAYS by Catherine Ryan Howard
About 56 DAYS by Catherine Ryan Howard:
Oliver and Ciara meet in a grocery line in Dublin the same week that COVID-19 reaches the shores of Ireland, and as the country goes into lockdown, Oliver suggests that they move in together. Ciara, excited that she may have found “the one,” has no idea the secrets Oliver has kept about his identity – and Oliver can’t seem to find a good time to tell her. That is, until the police show up at Oliver's doorstep 56 days into lockdown and uncover a dead body in the house. Will the truth be revealed, or has quarantine provided the opportunity for the perfect crime? It’s twisty, it’s smart, and it’s perfectly revealed.
16 - Normal People by Sally Rooney
About Normal People by Sally Rooney:
Connell and Marianne grew up in the same small town, but the similarities end there. At school, Connell is popular and well liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation—awkward but electrifying—something life changing begins.
A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.
Normal People is the story of mutual fascination, friendship and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find that they can’t.
17 - Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
About Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt:
So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy -- exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling-- does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies. Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors--yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness.
18 - Dubliners by James Joyce
About Dubliners by James Joyce:
James Joyce’s Dubliners is a vivid and unflinching portrait of “dear dirty Dublin” at the turn of the twentieth century. These fifteen stories, including such unforgettable ones as “Araby,” “Grace,” and “The Dead,” delve into the heart of the city of Joyce’s birth, capturing the cadences of Dubliners’ speech and portraying with an almost brute realism their outer and inner lives. Dubliners is Joyce at his most accessible and most profound, and this edition is the definitive text, authorized by the Joyce estate and collated from all known proofs, manuscripts, and impressions to reflect the author’s original wishes.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
19 - Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín
About Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín:
“One of the most unforgettable characters in contemporary literature” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette), Eilis Lacey has come of age in small-town Ireland in the hard years following World War Two. When an Irish priest from Brooklyn offers to sponsor Eilis in America, she decides she must go, leaving her fragile mother and her charismatic sister behind.
Eilis finds work in a department store on Fulton Street, and when she least expects it, finds love. Tony, who loves the Dodgers and his big Italian family, slowly wins her over with patient charm. But just as Eilis begins to fall in love, devastating news from Ireland threatens the promise of her future.
Colm Toibin is an author short-listed for The Booker Prize.
20 - Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland by William Butler Yeats
About Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland by William Butler Yeats:
One of the greatest Irish authors, the Nobel-prize winner W. B. Yeats, was fascinated by the myths and folklore of his native country. Compiled by Yeats in 1892, these stories were collected around the country by a variety of historians, including Lady Wilde, the mother of Oscar Wilde.
Within these pages, you'll discover tales of greedy sons who get their comeuppance, canny priests, evil witches and demons alongside legends of heroic kings, giants and, of course, the good folk themselves - the fairies, the leprechauns and the cluricauns. These are yarns that have passed down through generations and which are still as entertaining and magical as when they were first recalled.
This gorgeous foil-stamped edition includes enchanting illustrations and is presented in a handsome slipcase.
Written between 500 BCE and 700 CE, these seven texts have inspired generals for millennia, both in China and the wider world. Featuring Sun Tzu's The Art of War, this new translation brings to light the military masterpieces of ancient China. These seven texts display an understanding of strategy and warfare still relevant more than 2,000 years after they were originally written. Together, they present a uniquely eastern tradition of warfare that emphasizes speed, stealth, and cunning.
This collection includes seven of the most famous military texts of ancient China: The Art of War, Wuzi, Wei Liaozi, Taigong's Six Secret Teachings, The Methods of the Sima, Three Strategies of Huang Shigong, and Questions and Replies Between Emperor Taizong of Tang and General Li Jing.
These new translations bring to light several texts that display an understanding of strategy and warfare that still has relevance millennia after their original publication. From the 11th-century AD onward, these texts became required reading for Chinese military officers.
