Fans pick 100 books like Lion of Ireland

The story of two mystical creatures stuck in 1899 New York who have to make their own way in the world.  Despite their different natures, they become unlikely friends and have to work together to survive. 

While I enjoyed the perspective of both supernatural beings in this book, I found the golem especially engaging. Through her eyes, the reader gets an amazingly detailed view of turn-of-the-century New York as well as the intricacies of human behavior. 

The jinni faces different challenges—he’s lost a chunk of his memory—but he also has to adapt to life among people. Wrapped in a rich tapestry of historical details, the story walks us through their processes of acclimating to human society and facing the dangers of their pasts.

This story is a retelling of a fairy tale of six brothers who transform into swans due to an evil enchantment. Their sister Sorcha, the Daughter of the Forest, painfully weaves shirts from starwort nettle to break the spell and save them. Filled with romance, otherworldly elements of medieval Celtic legends such as fairy folk and magic spells, this novel is a powerful testament to love and loyalty.

I have always loved legends and fairy tales and felt totally immersed in this magic world of Marillier’s Celtic forest.

When a story gives me a character so real I feel like I know them, someone I can invest in, then I’ll go through anything with them—mistakes, victories, heartbreaks, joy. Connie Goodwin brings us into her life as she clears out her grandmother’s estate and then takes us with her as she discovers the remarkable life of Deliverance Dane, a midwife during the time of the Salem Witch Trials. The book swirls with mystery and romance and the power of women in any age. 

I love a good story told well—where the plot has me eager to flip the page, but the writing is so gorgeous I want to linger. Bellewether entwines the story of present-day Charley with Lydia, a woman living in the midst of war between the British and French American colonies in 1759. It’s a story of ghosts, figurative and real, of love, forbidden and lost, and it’s about discovering the truths that matter the most. 

As someone who loves history, particularly Celtic history, this one hit me in a really special place in my heart. This little-known history of the Celtic Saints, and particularly Saint Patrick really opened my eyes. It details how Celtic monks quietly saved the written word while barbarians and Vikings burnt Roman literature—which would have made all western thought—even the bible on the threat of extinction. It dazzled me to be given a much bigger perspective on the infamous Book of Kells, and even how schools throughout the western world originated because of these men that hid behind the chaos of the times. All this history by itself was amazing to learn, but even more, the author wrote with wit and charm that made it a fun read.

Lots of men write women in middle and older age well – Jim Harrison’s short story called "The Woman Lit by Fireflies" is incredible, and of course, there’s Shakespeare. I’d like to point you to the Irish writer William Trevor, though. His collected stories begin with one called "A Meeting in Middle Age" in which the character of Mrs. da Tanka (who is seeking grounds for her second husband to divorce her by paying a man to spend a sexless night with her in a hotel bed) crackles with dissatisfaction. Trevor writes aging people with a tenderness that isn’t always immediately evident. You learn to wait for it, if you can stand the tension while you do and the heartache when it arrives.

Any book by Robert Bartlett is worth reading (check out The Hanged Man and Trial by Fire and Water as well), but I love this one because it examines one of the most interesting and entertaining historians of the twelfth century, Gerald of Wales.

Gerald was famously opinionated, prejudiced (mainly against the Irish – check out his History of Ireland), and gossipy. Bartlett explores Gerald’s attitudes, experiences, and works to paint a compelling picture of the wider world around him. Much like Chibnall’s book on Orderic, this is a fascinating portrait of an important historian and the complicated world he lived in.

‘Viking’ really refers more to an activity than an ethnicity, and has developed an unhelpful amount of baggage in modern times. This book, however, is about vikings red in tooth and claw who fought, raided, and conquered across Britain, but did so as conscious and coherent historical figures rather than an aggressive force of nature. Through delicate source-work that traverses several linguistic and cultural divides, Downham traces the activities of a powerful Scandinavian dynasty that played a formative role in the history of Britain and Ireland across the ninth and tenth centuries.

This is a fantastic introduction to what was going on in the British Isles during the medieval period. The scholarship is up-to-the-minute, the writing is witty and engaging, and it is teeming with original ideas. It’s not a political history, plodding predictably from one reign to the next, but a sweeping overview, covering diverse topics such as the decline of slavery, the rise of parliament, kingship and queenship, religion, education, leisure, crime, and chivalry.

I loved this book. If I had to describe this novel in one word it would be intelligent. Set in Celtic Ireland in the Iron Age, the language is rich and expressive and Merrigan takes you into his world until you feel you belong there. You are drawn into a time where everything is governed by the gods. The story takes you through the training of the young warriors and druids. With the ongoing conflict over land, and with the people’s lives steeped in superstitious beliefs, we come to care that the outcome falls well with our tribe.

Fionn is born into a simple rural tribe. His life is sweet as he grows to double figures playing with his sisters in the fields. At the age of ten, he is called to serve, and the boys of fighting age are gathered from across the land, taken from their families, and… show more.