Martina Devlin Bücher

Leaders. Rebels. Pioneers. Short stories about some of Ireland's trailblazing women by award-winning writer Martina Devlin. In this collection we encounter Countess Markievicz back from the dead to cast a disapproving eye over modern Ireland, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington on hunger strike in prison, and Somerville and Ross discussing book business with their London agent Mr Pinker. Others we meet include a range of activists Anna Parnell in a pawnshop, Belfast's Mary Ann McCracken walking her brother to the scaffold, and Dr Kathleen Lynn locking horns with an archbishop. Authentic and poignant, witty and revealing, Truth & Dare draws on true events to breathe life into an extraordinary cast of women. Their times were out of step with them now their time has come

Martina Devlin, an award-winning columnist for the Irish Independent and podcaster for Dublin City of Literature #CityofBooks, has delivered a new novel based on the life of Edith Somerville of 'Somerville and Ross' fame - authors of The Irish R.M.

Devlin describes the physical and emotional demands of going through fertility treatment and the shattering fall-out when it failed. She also explains how her despair eventually faded, and how she learned to take pleasure in her extended family of nephews and nieces and to count her blessings.

“There is no shame in being adopted. It means you were wanted. And chosen.”Venus Macken is back in Ireland after more than a decade in London, but she has mixed feelings about the move. Except … her return to the wilds of Roancarrick to care for her elderly father offers the chance to find answers. Answers to a question that has haunted Venus all her life.Venus is tired of feeling like an outsider. Who was her birth mother? Why was she abandoned? Surely the people who love her and reared her can help unlock the riddle of who she is.Meanwhile there are distractions, among them arrogant artist Conor Landers, who helps rekindle Venus’s love for her childhood home.As the sketchy details of what happened on a stormy night 32 years ago are drawn out, Venus begins to realise that knowing who she is matters less than understanding who she wants to be.“Martina Devlin has pulled off a feat unusual in popular fiction, a page-turner which also has the ring of psychological truth” – Irish Times