Narrator

Alan Smyth

Alan Smyth
  • A wildly comic send-up of Irish literature and culture, At Swim-Two-Birds is the story of a young, lazy, and frequently drunk Irish college student who lives with his curmudgeonly uncle in Dublin. When not in bed (where he seems to spend most of his time) or reading, he is composing a mischief-filled novel about Dermot Trellis, a second-rate author whose characters ultimately rebel against him and seek vengeance. From drugging him as he sleeps to dropping the ceiling on his head, these figures of Irish myth make Trellis pay dearly for his bad writing. Hilariously funny and inventive, At Swim-Two-Birds has influenced generations of writers, opening up new possibilities for what can be done in fiction. It is a true masterpiece of Irish literature.

  • Miss Ada Quicksilver, a student of London’s Lovelace Academy for Promising Young Women, is spending her holiday in Ireland to pursue her anthropological study of fairies. She visits Dublin’s absinthe bars to investigate a supposed association between the bittersweet spirit and fairy sightings.

    One night a handsome Irishman approaches her, introducing himself as Edward Donoghue. Edward takes absinthe to relieve his sleepwalking, and she is eager to hear whether he has experience with fairies. Instead, she discovers that he’s the earl of Meath, and that he will soon visit a mysterious ruin at Newgrange on the orders of his cousin, the beautiful, half-mad Queen Isolde. On learning about Ada’s area of study, he invites her to accompany him.

    Ada is torn between a sensible fear of becoming entangled with the clearly troubled gentleman and her compelling desire to ease his suffering. Finally she accepts his invitation, and they arrive in time for the winter solstice. That night, the secret of Edward’s affliction is revealed: he is, in fact, a lord in two worlds and can no longer suppress his shadow self.

    Little does either of them realize that their blossoming friendship—and slowly kindling passion—will lead to discoveries that wrench open a door sealed for centuries, throwing them into a war that will change Ireland forever.

  • “Readers of Paula Hawkins, Tana French, and Ruth Ware will love this exceptionally well-crafted thriller.”—Library Journal (starred review)

    “A very satisfying and twisty tale.”—Charlaine Harris, #1 New York Times bestselling author

    Edgar Award nominee for Best Novel

    Her first love confessed to five murders … but the truth was so much worse.

    Will Hurley was an attractive, charming, and impressive student at Dublin’s elite St. John’s College—and Ireland’s most prolific serial killer. Having stalked his five young victims, he drowned them in the muddy waters of the Grand Canal. Sentenced to life imprisonment when he was just nineteen, Will is locked away in the city’s Central Psychiatric Hospital.

    Freshman Alison Smith moved to the Big Smoke to enroll in St. John’s and soon fell hard for Will Hurley. Her world bloomed … and then imploded when Liz, her best friend, became the latest victim of the Canal Killer—and the Canal Killer turned out to be the boy who’d been sleeping in her bed. Alison fled to the Netherlands and, in ten years, has never once looked back.

    When a young woman’s body is found in the Grand Canal, Garda detectives visit Will to see if he can assist them in solving what looks like a copycat killing. Instead, Will tells them he has something new to confess—but there’s only one person he’s prepared to confess it to.

    The last thing Alison wants is to be pulled back into the past she’s worked so hard to leave behind. Reluctantly, she returns to the city she hasn’t set foot in for more than a decade to face the man who murdered the woman she was supposed to become.

    Only to discover that, until now, Will has left out the worst part of all …

  • Now the director of the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security, Brooke Fairfax has one objective: stay on top of all threats to the people and property of the Commonwealth. The position is thankless and never-ending. It even pulls her out of Declan O’Roark’s bed in the middle of the night.

    A power grid failure has struck Kentucky’s largest city, and Brooke assumes the role of lead coordinator for the investigation. The power outage pushes the city to the brink of chaos. Police, fire, and rescue workers are overwhelmed—their efforts crippled by failed communication systems, looters ransacking businesses, hospitals running on emergency generators, and people desperate to find safety in a city quickly eroding into lawlessness.

    While experts scramble to restore the grid before thousands lose their lives, Declan receives word from an intelligence contact that an Eastern European cell of cyber terrorists is looking to take down the power grid for the entire Eastern Seaboard. Brooke and Declan must combine their efforts before the next attack. But just as they get close to the truth, the attackers turn their attention on stopping their greatest threat—Brooke and Declan.

  • In 2008, Simon Fitzmaurice was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease. He was given four years to live. In 2010, in a state of lung-function collapse, Simon knew with crystal clarity that now was not his time to die. Against all prevailing medical opinion, he chose life. Despite the loss of almost all motor function, thanks to miraculous technology he has continued to work, help raise his children, and write this astonishing, life-affirming memoir.

    Fitzmaurice, a husband and father of five, draws us deeply into his inner world. Told in simply expressed and beautifully stark prose, it is a journey into a life that, though brutally compromised, is lived more fully than most, revealing the potent power of love, of art, and of the human spirit.

    Written using an eye-gaze computer, It’s Not Yet Dark is an unforgettable book about relationships and family, about what connects and separates us as people, and, ultimately, about what it means to be alive.

  • It’s Bridget Jones with vampires in this fresh and funny paranormal romance from debut author Juliet Lyons

    When Silver Harris kisses sexy Irish vampire Logan Byrne on New Year’s Eve, she knows other humans just won’t suffice. Convinced she’ll never see him again, she joins the uber-popular vampire dating site, V-Date.com.

    What Silver doesn’t know is that the site is more dangerous than she could have ever imagined, and soon she’s in over her head. When Logan returns, sparks fly and attraction sizzles, but they’ll have to escape some very real demons if they have any chance of lasting forever.

  • After dozens of Lexington, Kentucky’s forgotten—mostly prostitutes and the homeless—swamp local hospitals from apparent overdoses over the 4th of July weekend, Kentucky cops soon discover a new synthetic form of heroin is infecting their communities, and that gangs—namely the outlaw motorcycle gang Samael’s Army—are responsible for using a “disposable” population to test the new drug.

    Soon after, the deadly new drug claims the daughter of a US senator, and FBI Director Jack Waller assigns Brooke Fairfax to the case. Because the synthetic opioid was created in a lab, the feds turn to the expertise of billionaire chemist Declan O’Roark, who is all too happy to lend a hand if it will bring him closer to Brooke.

    As Brooke and Declan are forced to work together, Declan attempts to tear down the barriers around Brooke’s heart. But when Brooke gets drawn into the depths of the outlaw motorcycle gang she’s investigating, she and Declan both fear for her life.

  • The acclaimed debut thriller from the internationally bestselling author of The Liar’s Girl and 56 Days

    The day Adam Dunne’s girlfriend, Sarah, fails to return from a Barcelona business trip, his perfect life begins to fall apart. Days later, the arrival of her passport and a note that reads “I’m sorry—S” sets off real alarm bells. He vows to do whatever it takes to find her.

    Adam is puzzled when he connects Sarah to a cruise ship called the Celebrate—and to a woman, Estelle, who disappeared from the same ship in eerily similar circumstances almost exactly a year before.

    To get answers, Adam must confront some difficult truths about his relationship with Sarah. He must do things of which he never thought himself capable. And he must try to outwit a predator who seems to have found the perfect hunting ground.

  • Just days before the running of the biggest Thoroughbred horse race in the world, an act of bioterrorism kills Kentucky’s lieutenant governor, and former FBI Special Agent Brooke Fairfax receives a video of the murder from her longtime anonymous source. When Brooke discovers domestic terrorists are actually after the governor—her late husband’s brother—and that the radicals are eyeing more targets, she heads to Kentucky to stop the threat.

    Shortly after the political assassination, the FBI zeroes in on one person: international mogul Declan O’Roark. Though Brooke has been out of the game since her husband was murdered, her former boss thinks she is the perfect candidate to connect Declan to the crime.

    Despite the FBI clearly establishing means and opportunity, Declan remains unfazed; his motives have nothing to do with murder, but with getting closer to Brooke Fairfax. And Brooke finds the case becoming even more unclear as she falls for the FBI’s number one suspect.