95 books like Eureka Street

By Robert McLiam Wilson,

Here are 95 books that Eureka Street fans have personally recommended if you like Eureka Street. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Divorcing Jack

Jason Johnson Author Of Did She See You?

From my list on Northern Ireland since the end of the Troubles.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in this place, born here when the Troubles began. In one form or another, the conflict was everywhere. It was built into the infrastructure, into attitudes. It infested conversations, hurt friendships, killed old folks, children, friends, and family. Fiction from and about Northern Ireland was inevitably hamstrung by that dominant, terrible story. Since the 1994 ceasefires, our fiction has come charging forward. It’s analytical, bullish, enlightening, funny as hell, and it moves us forward by taking honest stock of what came before. I love this emerging place and its new voices. And I love to read and write stories about it. It’s a stubborn home, often maddening, truly kind, forever breath-taking.

Jason's book list on Northern Ireland since the end of the Troubles

Jason Johnson Why did Jason love this book?

I was twenty-five and enraged at the self-pity and posturing dominating the Irish peace process. I was dying to write yet terrified of even attempting to say anything in print. And then, like a rogue rocket, Divorcing Jack arrived. A hilarious assault on Northern Irish sacred cows right at the bitter end of the bloody Troubles. A timely, wisecracking strike back at a place where being a self-important Muppet had become a job description. So… Dan Starkey, suspected of murdering a lover, stumbles through local fiefdoms to solve the crime himself. He was in places I knew, bars I drank in, saying things that needed to be said. Divorcing Jack started a train of thought that still runs in my mind, one that insists rules are for rulers, not writers. 

By Colin Bateman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Divorcing Jack as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Fast, funny, scary. A truly up-to-the-minute novel set in Belfast from a brilliant new writer. Now a major BBC/Scala film starring David Thewlis and Robert Lindsay. Dan Starkey is a young journalist in Belfast, who shares with his wife, Patricia, a prodigious appetite for drinking and dancing. Then Dan meets Margaret, a beautiful and apparently impoverished student, and things begin to get out of hand. And then, terrifyingly, Margaret is murdered. Is it because of her liaison with Dan? Is it because she was not exactly who she claimed to be? Is it the IRA? A Protestant extremist group? A…


Book cover of Murder Memoir Murder

Jason Johnson Author Of Did She See You?

From my list on Northern Ireland since the end of the Troubles.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in this place, born here when the Troubles began. In one form or another, the conflict was everywhere. It was built into the infrastructure, into attitudes. It infested conversations, hurt friendships, killed old folks, children, friends, and family. Fiction from and about Northern Ireland was inevitably hamstrung by that dominant, terrible story. Since the 1994 ceasefires, our fiction has come charging forward. It’s analytical, bullish, enlightening, funny as hell, and it moves us forward by taking honest stock of what came before. I love this emerging place and its new voices. And I love to read and write stories about it. It’s a stubborn home, often maddening, truly kind, forever breath-taking.

Jason's book list on Northern Ireland since the end of the Troubles

Jason Johnson Why did Jason love this book?

A masked IRA gunman presses a bullet into a small hand. He warns the boy he’ll put the same bullet into his father if instructions are disobeyed. It’s a pointed detail because it happened. The author was that boy. This story glides between fiction and nonfiction in search of truths about two rural murders and a vanished informer. But, as we have been learning here, dissecting darkness reveals only darkness. At heart this is a tale of a family’s composure, of a faithful bond to land, of being at odds with truths and lies. And that omnipresent terrain, with its moving shadows and thorny wilds, played witness to it all. This story takes place near where I grew up. It has stayed with me longer than I’m used to.

By Anthony J. Quinn,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Murder Memoir Murder as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?


"The result is a breathtakingly brutal piece of crime writing that is relentless in its pursuit of the truth"
Declan Burke in the Irish Times

"Among many other things, Murder Memoir Murder is a brilliant evocation of Ireland's border culture, its contentions and unwritten protocols" Garrett Carr, author of The Rule of the Land

"Hugely evocative, deeply felt and beautifully written, Murder Memoir Murder is a brave, brutal exploration of our shared past, his family’s own personal history and the act of storytelling itself." Brian McGilloway

Murder Memoir Murder is both a memoir and a crime fiction story involving a…


Book cover of The Midnight Killing

Jason Johnson Author Of Did She See You?

From my list on Northern Ireland since the end of the Troubles.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in this place, born here when the Troubles began. In one form or another, the conflict was everywhere. It was built into the infrastructure, into attitudes. It infested conversations, hurt friendships, killed old folks, children, friends, and family. Fiction from and about Northern Ireland was inevitably hamstrung by that dominant, terrible story. Since the 1994 ceasefires, our fiction has come charging forward. It’s analytical, bullish, enlightening, funny as hell, and it moves us forward by taking honest stock of what came before. I love this emerging place and its new voices. And I love to read and write stories about it. It’s a stubborn home, often maddening, truly kind, forever breath-taking.

Jason's book list on Northern Ireland since the end of the Troubles

Jason Johnson Why did Jason love this book?

A man found hanging sparks suspicion so, just to check all is okay, the cops hang him again. Well, not him. A stand-in. But it’s a fine little detail that sums up this shrewd book – cold, hard, well-researched, loaded with bold ideas. This is Northern Ireland crime fiction as it should be, the procedural narrative we once struggled to host. Policing took place when cops were pretty much soldiers. Nowadays it’s different. And Dempsey’s crime fiction is second to none. The aftermath of the Troubles – and its socio-political complexity – is sewn in here, used to both enhance tension and amplify relationships. So, a forensic shrink and a cop explore the creepy case of a missing girl after the aforementioned hanging. Get your seat belt on – this thing twists.

By Sharon Dempsey,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Midnight Killing as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

She'd cycled this way hundreds of times before, every twist and turn familiar. She didn't know this would be the last.

When the body of architect James McCallum is found hanging in the grounds of his former school one cold night, DI Danny Stowe and forensic psychologist Rose Lainey suspect foul play behind his apparent suicide.

To their astonishment, the trail leads to a 20-year-old cold case of a missing girl, and a teenage party. But what was James' fascination with the case and how is it linked to his death?

Secrets don't stay buried forever - but the real…


Book cover of The Bones of It

Jason Johnson Author Of Did She See You?

From my list on Northern Ireland since the end of the Troubles.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in this place, born here when the Troubles began. In one form or another, the conflict was everywhere. It was built into the infrastructure, into attitudes. It infested conversations, hurt friendships, killed old folks, children, friends, and family. Fiction from and about Northern Ireland was inevitably hamstrung by that dominant, terrible story. Since the 1994 ceasefires, our fiction has come charging forward. It’s analytical, bullish, enlightening, funny as hell, and it moves us forward by taking honest stock of what came before. I love this emerging place and its new voices. And I love to read and write stories about it. It’s a stubborn home, often maddening, truly kind, forever breath-taking.

Jason's book list on Northern Ireland since the end of the Troubles

Jason Johnson Why did Jason love this book?

How to address the bloody past is constantly debated in Northern Ireland. The lawyers can’t get it right, nor the politicians or police. Yet this writer does. The book strips everything away and leaves, well, the bones. It’s a father-and-son story. The former, an ex-paramilitary, takes in the troubled latter. The prison veteran father has been trying to be better. The lovesick son is trying to be normal. Both remain curiously opaque, their stories not quite gelling. These are precision-hewn Troubles characters, murderer and son, never as disappointed in each other as they are with themselves. Theirs is a small house filled with history and filling up with paranoia and mistrust. And we learn it all via a prison diary. A mighty debut novel.

By Kelly Creighton,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Bones of It as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Thrown out of university, green-tea-drinking, meditation-loving Scott McAuley has no place to go but home: County Down, Northern Ireland. The only problem is, his father is there now too.

Duke wasn't around when Scott was growing up. He was in prison for stabbing two Catholic kids in an alley. But thanks to the Good Friday Agreement, big Duke is out now, reformed, a counselor.

Squeezed together into a small house, with too little work and too much time to think about what happened to Scott's dead mother, the tension grows between these two men, who seem to have so little…


Book cover of The Bulkies: Police and Crime in Belfast, 1800-1865

Anastasia Dukova Author Of A History of the Dublin Metropolitan Police and Its Colonial Legacy

From my list on policing, crime, and society in Ireland.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an historian of urban crime and policing. I specialise in metropolitan forces, for example the Dublin Metropolitan Police, London Police, and their colonial counterparts. I am particularly interested in the transnational exchange of concepts and personnel. The latter decades of the nineteenth century saw a lively and consistent movement of police across countries and continents, cross-pollinating ideas and experiences, shaping the future of organised policing. I have traced Australian policing roots to the streets of Dublin and London, which are explored in To Preserve and Protect: Policing Colonial Brisbane (2020) through personal life stories of policemen and criminals alike.

Anastasia's book list on policing, crime, and society in Ireland

Anastasia Dukova Why did Anastasia love this book?

It is not widely known that, like Dublin, Derry and Belfast were policed by their own municipal forces. The Belfast Police was responsible for preserving peace and order in the parts of the city which paid their rates. It looked after lighting, paving, and scavenging. Following sectarian violence and alleged police partisanship peaking in the riots of 1864 and 1869, Derry and Belfast forces were deemed inadequate in the face of rising public distrust.  In contrast to the Royal Irish Constabulary or the Dublin Metropolitan Police, which were headed by Commissioners, the Belfast police were under a single authority, the police board, until 1844, and a police committee thereafter – whose members, as Griffin aptly shows, gave ample reason for ongoing allegations of partisanship and corruption.

By Brian Griffin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Bulkies as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In Ireland, the story of nineteenth-century policing has been dominated mainly by studies of the Royal Irish Constabulary and, to a lesser extent, of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. This book tells the story of the Ã?Â?Ã?«forgotten forceÃ?Â?Ã?Â- of Irish police history, the Belfast Borough Police or Ã?Â?Ã?«BulkiesÃ?Â?Ã?Â-.


Book cover of The Cold Cold Ground

J. Woollcott Author Of A Nice Place to Die: A DS Ryan McBride Novel

From my list on Irish murder mysteries with great settings.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a Canadian writer born in Northern Ireland. My first book, A Nice Place to Die, introduced Northern Ireland detective DS Ryan McBride. In 2019, A Nice Place to Die won the RWA Daphne du Maurier Award for Mainstream Mystery and Suspense, was shortlisted in the Crime Writers of Canada Awards in 2021, and was a 2023 Silver Falchion Award finalist. As for my choices, each of these fabulous, atmospheric mysteries has richly drawn settings inhabited by characters the reader comes to care deeply about. This brings a book alive for me — each has a wonderful, compelling cast of characters and a clever, complex plot.

J.'s book list on Irish murder mysteries with great settings

J. Woollcott Why did J. love this book?

McKinty takes you right to the streets of a city in chaos. An excellent, edgy, police procedural with a great sense of place––and McKinty doesn’t spare the language or violence in DS Sean Duffy’s first appearance.

In 1981 Belfast, it seems a serial killer is targeting homosexuals––an anomaly in Ulster during the troubles when most murders are sectarian. Just as Duffy starts to doubt this angle, a young woman, ex-wife of a hunger striker, commits suicide, or was she murdered––and was she connected somehow to the killings?

We’re immediately caught up in Duffy’s dysfunctional world, he’s a Catholic detective in the predominantly Protestant RUC. A hard drinker, too smart for his own good, but with a strong moral compass. 

By Adrian McKinty,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked The Cold Cold Ground as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Fast-paced, evocative, and brutal, The Cold Cold Ground is a brilliant depiction of Belfast at the height of the Troubles -- and of a cop treading a thin, thin line.

Northern Ireland, spring 1981. Hunger strikes, riots, power cuts, a homophobic serial killer with a penchant for opera, and a young woman’s suicide that may yet turn out to be murder: on the surface, the events are unconnected, but then things -- and people -- aren’t always what they seem. Detective Sergeant Duffy is the man tasked with trying to get to the bottom of it all. It’s no easy…


Book cover of Police at the Station and They Don't Look Friendly

Natalie Conyer Author Of Present Tense: A Schalk Lourens Mystery

From my list on crime featuring flawed detectives.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve always read and loved crime fiction – so much so I did a doctorate in it. I believe good crime fiction has the capacity to explore particular societies, places, and times in interesting and enjoyable ways. I also like crime fiction’s focus on character, and particularly in crime series which show a character evolving over time. That’s why I chose the theme of ‘flawed detective’ and that’s what I’m trying to do in my Schalk Lourens series, of which Present Tense is the first. I hope you enjoy it, and also the other books I’ve recommended here.

Natalie's book list on crime featuring flawed detectives

Natalie Conyer Why did Natalie love this book?

Ireland again, this time in the 80s, and right in the middle of the Troubles. Adrian McKinty’s cop, Sean Duffy, is an outsider, a Catholic in a Protestant police force. He’s irreverent, sarcastic, bitter, and a more than occasional drug user. In Police at the Station (6th in the series) Duffy investigates the murder of a small-time heroin dealer, who’s been shot by a crossbow. Meanwhile his posh girlfriend wants to move…the Sean Duffy novels are tough, funny, exciting, and extremely well done. Enjoy!

By Adrian McKinty,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Police at the Station and They Don't Look Friendly as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

New York Times Bestselling author

Another thrilling mystery featuring Detective Sean Duffy and his most dangerous investigation yet

Belfast, 1988. A man is found dead, killed with a bolt from a crossbow in front of his house. This is no hunting accident. But uncovering who is responsible for the murder will take Detective Sean Duffy down his most dangerous road yet, a road that leads to a lonely clearing on a high bog where three masked gunmen will force Duffy to dig his own grave.

Hunted by forces unknown, threatened by Internal Affairs, and with his relationship on the rocks,…


Book cover of Northern Spy

Lynn Kanter Author Of Her Own Vietnam

From my list on when the political turns personal.

Why am I passionate about this?

Many of us were taught as children that life isn’t fair. I never accepted this; shouldn’t we do all we can to make life fair? I grew up to be a lifelong activist and a writer for social justice organizations. As a reader and writer, I love books about women’s lives, especially women who realize that the world around them shapes their own experiences. Sometimes history is happening right here, right now—and you know it. Those transformative moments spark the best stories, illuminating each book I’ve recommended. 

Lynn's book list on when the political turns personal

Lynn Kanter Why did Lynn love this book?

With its taut, beautiful writing and ever-rising tension, this novel kept me reading late into the night. In 2008 Belfast, “the Troubles” are very much alive, and sisters Tessa and Marian have grown into adulthood in a combustible atmosphere of menace.

When Tessa discovers that her sister has been involved in the IRA and has now become an informer against it, she plunges into the world of spies to help Marian end the ceaseless cycle of violence and retribution. The novel is more than a hold-your-breath thriller. I loved its exploration of what “terrorism” means when the terrorists are your neighbors and family and how much two women are willing to risk for peace—and each other. 

By Flynn Berry,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Northern Spy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK - SOON TO BE A MAJOR NETFLIX PRODUCTION

'You'll devour Northern Spy . . . I loved this thrill ride of a book'
Reese Witherspoon

'A sharp, moving thriller: you lose your breath for adrenalin'
Abigail Dean, author of Girl A

'A chilling, gorgeously written tale'
New York Times

'Nerve-shredding suspense'
Daily Mail

'Thrillingly good... Flynn Berry shows a le Carre-like flair for making you wonder what's really going on at any given moment'
Washington Post

A producer at the Belfast bureau of the BBC, Tessa is at work…


Book cover of The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne

James Lawless Author Of Letters to Jude

From my list on understanding experimental and literary fiction.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a novelist, poet, and short story writer born in Dublin, Ireland. I have always been interested in literature particularly books which I deem as works of art and which throw light on the human condition, something which I try to do in my own work. I have broadcast my poetry and prose on radio and write book reviews for national newspapers. I divide my time now between Kildare and my little mountain abode in West Cork. 

James' book list on understanding experimental and literary fiction

James Lawless Why did James love this book?

I was so moved when I read The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne that it inspired me to write my novel with my protagonist Laurence J Benbo as a male equivalent of Judith Hearne, an innocent exploited by an uncaring world. The quotidian details of Judith’s life are delineated brilliantly by Moore in all her wretchedness reminiscent of some of the characters in Joyce’s Dubliners which Moore would have read and which possibly influenced him. The dark surroundings of Judith’s life lead her into a fantasy world aided by her one necessary weakness—alcohol. But, as Moore points out, it doesn’t have to end tragically. There is a glimmer of hope with life going on, but nothing as before.

By Brian Moore,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

One of The Guardian’s “1,000 Books to Read Before You Die”

This underrated classic of contemporary Irish literature tells the “utterly transfixing” story of a lonely, poverty-stricken spinster in 1950s Belfast (The Boston Globe)

Judith Hearne is an unmarried woman of a certain age who has come down in society. She has few skills and is full of the prejudices and pieties of her genteel Belfast upbringing. But Judith has a secret life. And she is just one heartbreak away from revealing it to the world.

Hailed by Graham Greene, Thomas Flanagan, and Harper Lee alike, The Lonely Passion of…


Book cover of Two Dozen Eggs

Kate van den Boogert Author Of The Paris Flea Market: Les Puces de Paris, Saint-Ouen

From my list on connecting with a few true Paris ‘Makers’.

Why am I passionate about this?

I love Paris. This city endlessly stimulates both my head and my heart. Always in movement, everchanging, it, like all cities, is a living organism, manifesting the spirit of all those who live here, past and present. Through a bunch of different projects and a handful of books, I’ve been trying to map its creative DNA, seeking out and championing the people and places who contribute to forging Paris’s own distinctive identity today. Makers Paris (Prestel) and Makers Paris 2 (Ofr. Éditions) evolved out of more than a decade running slow-travel pioneer Gogo City Guides, and my latest book The Paris Flea Market (Prestel) is a new stop on this journey.

Kate's book list on connecting with a few true Paris ‘Makers’

Kate van den Boogert Why did Kate love this book?

Paris has an incredibly vibrant food scene, and some of that energy is generated by a shapeshifting community of expat chefs and foodies. Hugh Corcoran, a Belfast born writer and cook, spent the most part of the last decade living and working in France, in Paris and beyond.

This lovely book is a collection of vignettes from his travels, simply and honestly written, remembering people he met along the way and the meals they shared. Each story ends with a recipe, including some French classics like roast chicken, gratin dauphinois, or carottes râpées.

If the book’s tone is gentle, it’s actually an urgent call to action, as the epigraph confirms: “Friends and neighbors, wet your mouths, for after death you won’t touch another drop.”

By Hugh Corcoran,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Two Dozen Eggs as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Two Dozen Eggs by Hugh Corcoran is a pocketbook collection of short stories and recipes.

Hugh Corcoran is a cook from Belfast who has spent the most part of the last decade living and working in the Basque Country and France.

This book contains a collection of short stories written over the period of a few months but based on the memories and experiences of those places and his childhood in Ireland.

Two Dozen Eggs features an introduction by Rachel Roddy and is illustrated by Peter Doyle.


Book cover of Divorcing Jack
Book cover of Murder Memoir Murder
Book cover of The Midnight Killing

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