100 books like Nothing But Blue Sky

By Kathleen MacMahon,

Here are 100 books that Nothing But Blue Sky fans have personally recommended if you like Nothing But Blue Sky. 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 Milkman

Richard Risemberg Author Of Family Ties

From my list on family beyond blood ties.

Why am I passionate about this?

As the photographer Stieglitz once wrote, “Everything is relative except relatives, and they are absolute.” I was born into what was considered a mixed marriage in Argentina, then moved to LA, where I became a foreigner on top of being a mongrel. My family life was turbulent, but I found surrogate parents through my circle of school friends and, eventually, a close-knit community in the local motorcycle world. As I had no roots in my new culture, I spoke freely to anyone, and found family in all sorts of extravagant situations. I’ve continued to explore the permutations of family in my writing for decades now.

Richard's book list on family beyond blood ties

Richard Risemberg Why did Richard love this book?

This was my favorite book the year I read it, and I will read it again, with no doubt the same result. The narrator is an anonymous 18-year-old woman navigating family, community, and romantic relationships in the midst of the Irish Troubles.

Almost every character is identified by a local nickname, part town culture and part a way to keep both authorities and rebels off track. I loved the strong writing and the surprising but always plausible twists. I’ve recommended it to every reader I know.

By Anna Burns,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked Milkman as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Liberty fabric covered editions bring classics from the Faber backlist together with important modern titles, putting them in conversation and celebrating both the history and the future of Faber & Faber.

In this unnamed city, to be interesting is dangerous. Middle sister, our protagonist, is busy attempting to keep her mother from discovering her maybe-boyfriend and to keep everyone in the dark about her encounter with Milkman. But when first brother-in-law sniffs out her struggle, and rumours start to swell, middle sister becomes 'interesting'. The last thing she ever wanted to be. To be interesting is to be noticed and…


Book cover of The Pull of the Stars

Dianne Scott Author Of Final Look: A Christine Lane Mystery

From my list on Canadian novels with intriguing female characters.

Why am I passionate about this?

All of my recommended books feature female protagonists with complex lives. They are layered with friends, families, work, and romantic challenges. They are not superheroes. Yet they are. They all find a way to do the hard thing in difficult circumstances and at great personal peril. And that’s what bravery is. It’s not Captain Marvel coming in to save the world. It’s a woman with responsibilities and problems who digs deep to act with integrity. And she may not get accolades. Her act may be unseen. But she does it. And I love reading about these everyday women with grit.

Dianne's book list on Canadian novels with intriguing female characters

Dianne Scott Why did Dianne love this book?

This book sticks the reader in the middle of a maternity ward in poverty and flu-stricken Dublin circa 1918. I was totally rooting for nurse Julia Powers, an experienced maternity nurse who works long, thankless shifts trying to keep women and their babies alive.

The lack of medicine, staffing, and money is appalling as women enter the hospital to give birth. Yet through empathy, determinism, and quick thinking, Julia, her trainee, and her patients find ways to help each other. It’s a tour de force in female friendship, intelligence, and problem-solving and an indictment of the medical incompetency of male physicians.

It illuminates a cross-section of Dublin citizens struggling with poverty, the Great Flu, and the aftermath of a horrendous war. I found the story moving, gripping, and somehow hopeful.

By Emma Donoghue,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked The Pull of the Stars as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In Dublin, 1918, a maternity ward at the height of the Great Flu is a small world of work, risk, death, and unlooked-for love, in "Donoghue's best novel since Room" (Kirkus Reviews).

In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city center, where expectant mothers who have come down with the terrible new Flu are quarantined together. Into Julia's regimented world step two outsiders—Doctor Kathleen Lynn, a rumoured Rebel on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney.

In the darkness and intensity of this…


Book cover of Strange Flowers

Anne Griffin Author Of Listening Still

From my list on Irish books by Irish authors I like to rave about.

Why am I passionate about this?

I love great writing and great storytelling too. As a child I liked nothing more than when my father made up bedtime stories for me. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate how writers work exceptionally hard not just at getting the plot of a story right but in the words they chose. Being Irish, I love to support the wealth of enviably good writers that seem to spill out from these shores. In each of these books you will find love and loss and laughter. It never fails to make me smile when abroad to see one of these guys on the shelves of the bookshops I visit. 

Anne's book list on Irish books by Irish authors I like to rave about

Anne Griffin Why did Anne love this book?

I love Donal Ryan’s work and thankfully he is a prolific writer. Really, I could have chosen any of his books, but this one is his most recent and had me rereading sentence after sentence because his prose is so full of beauty. Paddy and Kit Gladney’s daughter disappears in 1973. They know nothing of where she has gone and if she is alive at all. Five years later she returns, with a son, changing the course of her family’s life forever. This a beautiful and devastating exploration of loss, alienation, and the redemptive power of love and affirms Ryan as one of the best storytellers Ireland has ever known. 

By Donal Ryan,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

AN POST IRISH BOOK AWARD NOVEL OF THE YEAR

Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Awards

"Mr. Ryan writes conspicuously beautiful prose... The fleeting happiness and abiding melancholy of the asymmetry, heightened by the intimately rendered surroundings, brings out Mr. Ryan's most sensuous and emotive writing." -The Wall Street Journal

From the Booker nominated author of From a Low and Quiet Sea, Donal Ryan's new novel follows the Gladney family across three generations seeking the true meaning of what it is to find home and love.

In 1973, twenty-year-old Moll Gladney takes a morning bus from her rural home in Ireland…


Book cover of Life Sentences

Anne Griffin Author Of Listening Still

From my list on Irish books by Irish authors I like to rave about.

Why am I passionate about this?

I love great writing and great storytelling too. As a child I liked nothing more than when my father made up bedtime stories for me. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate how writers work exceptionally hard not just at getting the plot of a story right but in the words they chose. Being Irish, I love to support the wealth of enviably good writers that seem to spill out from these shores. In each of these books you will find love and loss and laughter. It never fails to make me smile when abroad to see one of these guys on the shelves of the bookshops I visit. 

Anne's book list on Irish books by Irish authors I like to rave about

Anne Griffin Why did Anne love this book?

Set over three generations of the one family, this is the story of their fight for survival. What I love here is not just the prose, because there is no one finer than O’Callaghan, but also because it touches on the depopulation of Ireland’s small islands during the famine and the small island to which he refers has a very significant family connection for me. Partly based on O’Callaghan’s own family, Life Sentences tells an epic story of working-class life in Ireland from famine right through to modern-day. It is an unforgettable tale of love, abandonment, and reconciliation.

By Billy O'Callaghan,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

*THE #3 IRISH BESTSELLER*
*A SINEAD & RICK 'MUST READS' PICK*

An unforgettable tale of love, abandonment, hunger and redemption, from a rising star of Irish fiction

'O'Callaghan is one of our finest writers . . . and this is his best work yet' JOHN BANVILLE

*****

At just sixteen, Nancy leaves the small island of Cape Clear for the mainland, the only member of her family to survive the effects of the Great Famine. Finding work in a grand house on the edge of Cork City, she is irrepressibly drawn to the charismatic gardener Michael Egan, sparking a love…


Book cover of Redemption in Irish History

Chris Lawlor Author Of An Irish Village: Dunlavin, County Wicklow

From my list on lesser-known aspects of Irish history.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m an Irish writer and historian. I always enjoyed history, even in school, and I went on to study it at Maynooth University, receiving a BA. I became a history teacher and eventually head of the history department in Méanscoil Iognáid Rís. I began writing local history articles for the Dunlavin arts festival and the parish magazine. I went back to university and got a first-class honours MA from Maynooth, before being awarded a PhD from DCU. I’ve won the Lord Walter Fitzgerald prize and the Irish Chiefs’ Prize, and my students were winners in the Decade of Centenaries competition. Now retired, I continue to write and lecture about history!

Chris' book list on lesser-known aspects of Irish history

Chris Lawlor Why did Chris love this book?

This is an unusual, ambitious, and relevant book, focusing on the Christian values contained within Irish political thought over a period of approximately three hundred years (from the late eighteenth century to approximately the year 2000). Many Irish politicians and patriots included a Christian element in their visions of and for an independent or a self-governed Ireland. Beginning with Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen of the 1790s, this Christian element is traced through Emmet, O’Connell, the Young Irelanders, the Fenians, the Home Rulers, and the leaders of the 1916 rising. The book goes on to trace the Christian vision through the periods of the Irish Revolution, independent Ireland, and the northern troubles of the late twentieth century. Engrossing and insightful, this excellent book provides much food for thought!

By John Marsden,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Redemption in Irish History as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Marsden, John. Redemption in Irish History. Dublin, Dominican Publications, 2005. 14 x 21cm. 219 pages. Original softcover. Excellent condition, as new other than inscription to previous owner on half-title page. Redemption in Irish History comes at a critical historical juncture for Irish society and Irish Christianity. Through bringing theology, politics, history and economics into creative dialogue, Redemption in Irish History offers an integrative vision of how Irish society might be nourished from the best of its diverse traditions and thereby truly flourish in our increasingly inter-dependent world. Topics including Pearse and Connolly, history, theology, politics, economics come together in creative…


Book cover of This Happy

Siobhán Parkinson Author Of All Shining in the Spring: The Story of a Baby Who Died

From my list on Irish women writers on what it is like to live.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve chosen to recommend fiction by Irish women, because I’m a female Irish writer myself. My own books are mostly for children, but, hey, I’m an adult. As well as a writer I am a retired publisher, a not-quite-retired editor, and an occasional translator, so I tend to engage very closely – OK, obsessively – with text. I have a pretty serious visual impairment, so most of my ‘reading’ is through the medium of audiobooks. I’m never sure if that influences my taste in reading. Anyway, these are the books I’ve liked recently, and hope you do too.

Siobhán's book list on Irish women writers on what it is like to live

Siobhán Parkinson Why did Siobhán love this book?

Let’s be clear: the title is ironic. This is a love story, told mostly in retrospect. Well, it’s not love exactly. It’s sex. Or a kind of twisted idea of romance. It’s attraction anyway, not quite obsessive, but close.  And it’s mysterious. Who are these people? How do they connect to each other? How do they know each other? Do they even like each other? Why/why not?

The answers, if readers can identify them, are not reassuring. And yet... I loved this book, read it twice, straight off. It’s partly the descriptions of the physical world – natural and constructed – always partial, never conclusive, that are so attractive to read. 

And it’s a very young book. Exhilarating. 

By Niamh Campbell,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

'A beautiful, wry love story' David Nicholls, author of ONE DAY

'I love this woman's writing. Golden sentences' Diana Evans, author of ORDINARY PEOPLE

'One of the year's most beautifully written books, THIS HAPPY traces the path to womanhood of Alannah from disastrous affair to no-less-comfortable marriage and beyond' The i, Best Books of 2020 So Far

'If you loved Sally Rooney's NORMAL PEOPLE, read this novel ... Darkly romantic ... Reminiscent of Eimear McBride's lyrical Joycean sentences' Vogue

'The best novel I have read all year' Sunday Business Post

I have taken apart every panel of this, like an…


Book cover of Eyewitness to Irish History

Boni Thompson Author Of While Dragging Our Hearts Behind Us: Cork, 1916-1923

From my list on the mind of a 20th century Irish Rebel.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was a teenager when I discovered that my grandfather was an Irish rebel during the War of Independence. As a Canadian, I was astounded by the stories he told me when we were alone during my first visit to Dublin. At 16, I promised him I would write a book about him. Alas, he was long gone when I got started. Researching, I would think of him, whispering anecdotes to me he never told his children. I discovered the stories were much worse than he let on. I could not stop until I got the whole story down on paper. I think he is smiling.

Boni's book list on the mind of a 20th century Irish Rebel

Boni Thompson Why did Boni love this book?

I love this book because it is a compilation of first-person accounts of major events throughout the history of Ireland. From St. Patrick to the raids of the Vikings, the rebellions of former rebels, and all the way to the civil war of 1923-24. Each selection is from extant works located in libraries and institutions around the country.

We hear the wild stories told with awe and wonder, with shock and abhorrence, as if we are sitting in a pub listening to the author whisper his witness in astonishment or regret. Suddenly, we understand the Irish rebels, the generations of rebels through the centuries, and we find ourselves full of admiration for those men and women who endured and fought and finally found freedom for their countrymen.  

By Peter Berresford Ellis,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Eyewitness to Irish History as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The history of Ireland told through the words of the people who lived it

Eyewitness to Irish History draws upon original source materials to capture the tumultuous events and rich texture of Irish history like no other book. Comparing the readings compiled here to snapshots, the renowned Celtic scholar Peter Berresford Ellis offers what is, in essence, a family album of Ireland and the Irish people—beginning with Golamh, the legendary leader of the band of Iberian Celts who settled the island more than three thousand years ago, and concluding with gripping firsthand accounts by those on both sides of the…


Book cover of Autobiography of a Child

Patrick Doherty Author Of I Am Patrick: A Donegal Childhood Remembered

From my list on Irish childhood.

Why am I passionate about this?

As an experienced teacher I was fascinated by how writing personal stories helped to develop confidence as well as oral and written self-expression at different levels of complexity in children across the primary school age range. This encouraged me to embark on a MA in creative writing where I wrote an extended autobiographical piece that focused on how the relationship between my father and myself affected my childhood.  I continued this research into my doctoral studies in Irish autobiography. I explored the history of Irish autobiography, memory, and identity formation. This research provided the context to write my own childhood memoir I Am Patrick

Patrick's book list on Irish childhood

Patrick Doherty Why did Patrick love this book?

In 1899, the Irish novelist, Hannah Lynch wrote her memoir Autobiography of a Child. She caused controversy in Ireland and abroad by attempting to represent her childhood up to the age of twelve narrated through the child’s voice, a strategy I adopted but from the ageing child’s point of view where the language and thought process become more complex as I grow older. Her use of adult reflection upon the child’s unstable memory demonstrates an original understanding of the child’s point of view and its representation. Hannah uncovered the inescapable cycle of harsh treatment by her parents within a large family and the physical abuse by nuns at school. Her book reinforces the unreliability of memory for autobiography and helped me to accept that total veracity is not possible.

By Hannah Lynch,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Autobiography of a Child as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

It is a powerful first-person narrative follows the story of a young Irish girl from her earliest memory to around twelve years of age, tracing the shaping of "the Dublin Angela" into "the English Angela" and ultimately Angela of Lysterby, "the Irish rebel." This tale is told from the perspective of her older self, now "a hopeless wanderer" with youth and optimism behind her.
The narrative opens with a startling sketch of Angela's mother, "a handsome, cold-eyed woman, who did not love me," before relating fragmented memories of an idyllic time spent in rural Kildare while "put out to nurse"…


Book cover of Where I End

Amanda Cassidy Author Of The Returned

From my list on nightmare thrillers that unfold in dreamy Irish settings.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a bright bubbly person with a dark, sinister imagination. As an Irish journalist turned fiction writer, the thrillers I write reflect some of the challenging crime scenes I’ve reported from. While the whodunnit element in crime-writing is extremely important, equally, I prefer to have my readers fascinated with the whydoneit. I love writing about dark pasts, buried secrets, simmering resentments, and how they shape my characters in such a way that creates delicious unease and urgency. I like to use settings like tiny Irish villages to enhance the often insular nature of locals protecting their own. The picturesque settings in my books create mood and tension and which include the landscape as character. 

Amanda's book list on nightmare thrillers that unfold in dreamy Irish settings

Amanda Cassidy Why did Amanda love this book?

Ideas of neglect and abandonment as well as isolation run throughout Where I End, a tense shocking literary debut from the Irish writer and journalist. This story is about an incapacitated mother being cared for by her teenage daughter.

I loved the desolation White created on the remote island inspired by Inis Meáin. With cliffs on one end, a sandy beach on the other, White describes how she was walking one day with her husband when she felt an explicable sense of dread.

“It wasn’t just wild and windswept and any of those clichés, it was actually more the stillness and the strangeness of it. And I noticed it was really getting to my husband as well, this kind of dread seeping up into us from the rocks and the sky and the ocean.”

This feeling is translated directly into the centre of the book, where the borders between landscape…

By Sophie White,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Where I End as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'My mother. At night, my mother creaks. The house creaks along with her ...'
Aoileann has never left the island. Her silent, bed-bound mother is the survivor of a private disaster no one will speak about. Aoileann desperately wants a family, and when artist Rachel and her baby move to the island, Aoileann finds a focus for
her relentless love.


Book cover of The Irish: A Character Study

James Charles Roy Author Of The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland

From my list on Irish history and different aspects of it.

Why am I passionate about this?

My first introduction to Ireland was in 1953 when my parents took the entire family over for two months. We stayed mostly in Dublin as "paying guests" with a threadbare, though incredibly proud, Anglo-Irish mother and her adult daughter in their decrepit apartment. What a learning experience for a seven-year-old boy! My fascination with the country's culture and history has never dampened, climaxed by my purchase of a 16th-century ruin, Moyode Castle, in County Galway, now finally restored. Over the years I have written seven books, six of them on Irish themes, plus innumerable articles in scholarly journals. The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland is my magnum opus as an Irish historian.

James' book list on Irish history and different aspects of it

James Charles Roy Why did James love this book?

This fine introduction to both the Irish themselves, and their tortured history, was first published in 1947 by this respected commentator. The only way to really understand Ireland is to dissect the many distinctive population groups -- their peculiarities of religion, social outlook, political ambitions, and allegiances --  and then to see how the mixture of these complex streams determined the country's history, with positive but also calamitous results over many centuries. O'Faolain deals with the indigenous Celts, the interloping Normans, the increasingly acquisitive English, and how the tumultuous interactions between them produced the core of Irish society: its peasantry, the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, the clergy, politicians, rebels, writers, and dreamers. The only thing O'Faolain missed, because he didn't live to see it, was the emergent, and now dominant, middle class of the Celtic Tiger. A beautifully written book. 

By Sean O'Faolain,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Explores the formation of the Irish racial mind through important political and cultural events from 300 B.C. to the present


Book cover of Milkman
Book cover of The Pull of the Stars
Book cover of Strange Flowers

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