Fans pick 76 books like The Whereabouts of Eneas Mcnulty

By Sebastian Barry,

Here are 76 books that The Whereabouts of Eneas Mcnulty fans have personally recommended if you like The Whereabouts of Eneas Mcnulty. 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 Someone Like You

Helen McKenna Author Of The Beach House

From my list on an ensemble cast of characters.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a lifelong bookworm, I have always loved curling up with a book, especially one that takes me on an emotional journey through the characters within. I especially love stories with an ensemble cast of characters linked through one common thread and always knew my first novel would be of this format. A fascination with the stories that lie beneath the surface of everyday life keeps me constantly inspired to create new characters that can bring comfort and familiarity to readers but still explore important life lessons in a gentle way.

Helen's book list on an ensemble cast of characters

Helen McKenna Why did Helen love this book?

I love the way this book captures holiday friendships. It taught me that holidaying alone does not have to be a negative experience and, indeed, can make you much more open to forming connections with people you may otherwise not interact with. Someone Like You is not all sunshine and roses but left me feeling content and with a real connection to the three-dimensional characters within.

By Cathy Kelly,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Someone Like You as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Cathy Kelly has enjoyed unprecedented success in the UK and her native Ireland. Building on the popularity of her "Dear Cathy" advice column, Kelly brings to her fiction a warmth and humor that speaks to women everywhere.

Hannah, Emma, and Leonie, three women at critical turning points in their lives, meet on holiday and find themselves changing in unexpected ways. Hannah, young, beautiful and reeling from the betrayal of a lover, decides to throw herself into her career and embrace the single life. Emma, married for two years and hoping to start a family, constantly questions her ability to be…


Book cover of The Dream of the Celt

Shane Joseph Author Of Empire in the Sand

From my list on exposing corporate, political, and personal corruption.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been a writer for more than twenty years and have favored pursuing “truth in fiction” rather than “money in formula.” I also spent over thirty years in the corporate world and was exposed to many situations reminiscent of those described in my fiction and in these recommended books. While I support enterprise, “enlightened capitalism” is preferable to the bare-knuckle type we have today, and which seems to resurface whenever regulation weakens. I also find writing novels closer to my lived experience connects me intimately with readers who are looking for socio-political, realist literature.

Shane's book list on exposing corporate, political, and personal corruption

Shane Joseph Why did Shane love this book?

Although a fictionalized autobiography of Sir Roger Casement, martyr of the Irish Revolution, two periods of his life, embedded in this tale, shed light on the evils of capitalism in colonial empires: King Leopold of Belgium’s abuse of the locals in the Congo to profit from their rubber crops, and a similar one in the Peruvian Amazon with a rubber company incorporated in Britain. Casement’s investigations and revelations on these cases lead to his knighthood. However, his belief that colonial nations can only be free if they resist their occupiers with violence, leads him to align with Germany in Ireland’s bid for independence in 1916, following 800 years of colonization. Unfortunately, his secret sexual past is exploited by enemies, and Ireland is liberated in 1922 without its beloved knight. 

By Mario Vargas Llosa, Edith Grossman (translator),

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

As The Dream of the Celt opens, it is the summer of 1916 and Roger Casement awaits the hangman in London's Pentonville Prison. Dublin lies in ruins after the disastrous Easter Rising led by his comrades of the Irish Volunteers. He has been caught after landing from a German submarine. For the past year he has attempted to raise an Irish brigade from prisoners of war to fight alongside the Germans against the British Empire that awarded him a knighthood only a few years before. And now his petition for clemency is threatened by the leaking of his private diary…


Book cover of Ellis Island

Cindy Thomson Author Of Grace's Pictures (Ellis Island)

From my list on Irish immigrant historical fiction.

Why am I passionate about this?

I love exploring the theme of family legacies and learning the stories, even if fictionalized, of our ancestors who helped build America for future generations. I explored this theme with my Ellis Island series, but truly it influences everything I write. It began with my interest in my own genealogy and my love of research. Along with writing my own books, I host a blog on historical fiction called Novel PASTimes and am co-founder of the Faith & Fellowship Book Festival with the aim of connecting readers with really good books.

Cindy's book list on Irish immigrant historical fiction

Cindy Thomson Why did Cindy love this book?

The main character Ellie is strong and resilient. I loved that she went to America to make money for her injured husband’s sake, was flung into a world in New York City that was so unlike rural Ireland, met with temptations, and found her way out. Ultimately, it’s a love story (not romance per se) and I found myself rooting for Ellie throughout the whole book.

By Kate Kerrigan,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Rural Irish girl Ellie loves living in New York, working as a lady's maid for a wealthy socialite. She tries to persuade her husband, John, to join her but he is embroiled in his affairs in Ireland, and caught up in the civil war. Nevertheless Ellie is extremely happy and fully embraces her sophisticated new life. When her father dies she must return home, but she intends to sort her affairs quickly and then return to her beloved America.

But once home her sense of duty kicks in and she decides, painfully, that she must stay to look after her…


Book cover of Brooklyn

Janet Constantino Author Of Becoming Mariella

From my list on embody the spirit of finding autonomy.

Why am I passionate about this?

A writer friend asked me, "If you could write about anything you wanted, what would that be?"  I thought immediately of Sicily and then of women (and men) trying to break free from cultural definitions that have historically kept us in traditional roles of housewife, cook, and mother, or breadwinner and protector. Having choice and being able to carve one's path is paramount, a deeply held value for me, both as an individual woman and as a psychotherapist. The courage of some of my clients who have dared to follow their own paths, along with my challenge to steer my own path, were also inspirations for the books I chose. 

Janet's book list on embody the spirit of finding autonomy

Janet Constantino Why did Janet love this book?

Ellis Lacey, the protagonist of this book, embodies the spirit of both autonomy and connection that I hold as a core value. 

Even as Ellis discovers herself and her sexuality in America, she doesn't lose her connection to family and Ireland. Besides, I love Colm Toibin's writing. I get the sense he understands women.

By Colm Toίbίn,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Colm Toibin's Brooklyn is a devastating story of love, loss and one woman's terrible choice between duty and personal freedom. The book that inspired the major motion picture starring Saoirse Ronan.

It is Ireland in the early 1950s and for Eilis Lacey, as for so many young Irish girls, opportunities are scarce. So when her sister arranges for her to emigrate to New York, Eilis knows she must go, leaving behind her family and her home for the first time.

Arriving in a crowded lodging house in Brooklyn, Eilis can only be reminded of what she has sacrificed. She is…


Book cover of Atlas of the Great Irish Famine

Frank Parker Author Of A Purgatory of Misery: How Victorian Liberals Turned a Crisis into a Disaster

From my list on helping you understand the Irish potato famine.

Why am I passionate about this?

A friend with Parkinson's Disease requested my help in his attempts to understand the famine and its impact on his ancestors in County Clare. Once I began reading the material he brought me I was impelled to discover more. I had already researched and written about an earlier period in Irish history - the Anglo-Norman invasion - and it seemed that everything that happened on both sides of the Irish Sea in the centuries that followed was instrumental in making the famine such a disaster. Our book is the result.

Frank's book list on helping you understand the Irish potato famine

Frank Parker Why did Frank love this book?

This product of intensive research by members of the Department of Geography at Cork University covers every aspect of the famine as experienced by the people who lived and died through it.

Lavishly illustrated with maps and facsimiles of actual documents it details everything from the design and administration of workhouses to the treatment of migrants upon arrival in Canada, the USA, and Australia. No other book provides such an eloquent and devastating narrative of the suffering experienced by Irish people during the period 1845-52.

Devoid of rhetoric, it displays the facts in easy-to-understand text and statistical analysis, enhanced with first-hand eye-witness accounts from letters and journal extracts.

By John Crowley (editor), William J. Smyth (editor), Mike Murphy (editor)

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Best Reference Books of 2012 presented by Library Journal

The Great Irish Famine is the most pivotal event in modern Irish history, with implications that cannot be underestimated. Over a million people perished between 1845-1852, and well over a million others fled to other locales within Europe and America. By 1850, the Irish made up a quarter of the population in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. The 2000 US census had 41 million people claim Irish ancestry, or one in five white Americans. Atlas of the Great Irish Famine (1845-52) considers how such a near total decimation of…


Book cover of The Graves Are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People

Tyler Mcmahon Author Of One Potato

From my list on the science of food.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a novelist and a teacher of writing. My books are fueled by curiosity above all else. I have no expertise in science, so I stand in wonder at complicated systems that remain mostly hidden to me. My interest in food is similarly recreational. I’m married to a great chef and cookbook author, so I’ve learned a lot by osmosis. But when I think back on the process of writing One Potato, I have to give a lot of credit to my students. They seem to be part of a generation that’s genuinely passionate about eating in healthy, equitable, and sustainable ways. Much of my book was sparked by conversations in the classroom.

Tyler's book list on the science of food

Tyler Mcmahon Why did Tyler love this book?

There’s a minor thread in my novel about the Irish Potato Famine, and this book was a major resource. It was sobering to learn that there was enough food to feed the Irish peasantry, but it was not distributed according to need. (Much of it was exported.) Worse still, it was a cultural moment in which the wealthy found ways to absolve themselves of the poverty of their neighbors. But I was most shocked to learn about the scientific implications. Essentially, the potato variety that failed was a monoculture. And the solution to the blight involved returning to the Andes, with its vast genetic diversity, and finding a resistant strain. 

By John Kelly,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

It started in 1845 and lasted six years. Before it was over, more than one million men, women, and children starved to death and another million fled the country. Measured in terms of mortality, the Great Irish Potato Famine was one of the worst disasters in the nineteenth century - it claimed twice as many lives as the American Civil War. A perfect storm of bacterial infection, political greed, and religious intolerance sparked this catastrophe. But even more extraordinary than its scope were its political underpinnings, and "The Graves Are Walking" provides fresh material and analysis on the role that…


Book cover of A Grand Old Time

Jaq D Hawkins Author Of Dance of the Goblins

From my list on non-fantasy books for fantasy readers.

Why am I passionate about this?

I've been an avid reader across many genres since I learned to read as a child and have wandered into all sorts of categories to find literature I love. Fantasy became my first love, but that didn't mean I had to abandon everything else. I like finding great books that don't make the big publisher lists with their generic output. Since the rise of indie publishing, I've developed a habit of sampling anything that sounds like it might be interesting and have found some amazing and very original stories!

Jaq's book list on non-fantasy books for fantasy readers

Jaq D Hawkins Why did Jaq love this book?

Fantasy readers often enjoy a good quest. While this would be classed as a feel-good book that takes place in the real world, there are fantastical elements in the adventures of the protagonist, an elderly lady who decides care home life is too dull for her.

A rocky start followed by an interesting series of decisions and taking chances makes for an uplifting adventure story as fulfilling as a typical Fantasy quest.

By Judy Leigh,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked A Grand Old Time as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'Brilliantly funny, emotional and uplifting' Miranda Dickinson

Heartwarming, hilarious and fun - the perfect read for anyone who loved Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, A Man Called Ove, Ruth Jones and JoJo Moyes.

Evie Gallagher is regretting her hasty move into a care home. She may be seventy-five and recently widowed, but she's absolutely not dead yet. And so, one morning, Evie walks out of Sheldon Lodge and sets off on a Great Adventure across Europe.

But not everyone thinks Great Adventures are appropriate for women of Evie's age, least of all her son Brendan and his wife Maura, who…


Book cover of Irish Nationalists in America: The Politics of Exile, 1798-1998

Kevin Kenny Author Of Making Sense of the Molly Maguires

From my list on Irish immigration to the United States.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am interested in immigration for both personal and professional reasons. A native of Dublin, Ireland, I did my undergraduate work in Edinburgh, Scotland, completed my graduate degree in New York City, moved to Austin, Texas for my first academic job and to Boston for my second job, and then returned to New City York to take up my current position at NYU, where I teach US immigration history and run Glucksman Ireland House, an interdisciplinary center devoted to the study of Irish history and culture. The key themes in my work—migration and diaspora—have been as central to my life journey as to my research and teaching.

Kevin's book list on Irish immigration to the United States

Kevin Kenny Why did Kevin love this book?

Irish men and women in the United States launched a movement to liberate their homeland from British rule.

David Brundage’s Irish Nationalists in America, the first history of this movement as a whole, ranges across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, covering the full range of ideological positions—from peaceful constitutional change to an Irish republic achieved through violent means—and exploring how Irish-American nationalism intersected with movements for labor reform, racial equality, and women’s rights in the United States.

A skilled social and political historian, Brundage tells a vivid story about how ordinary immigrants built an extraordinary movement.

By David Brundage,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

In this important work of deep learning and insight, David Brundage gives us the first full-scale history of Irish nationalists in the United States. Beginning with the brief exile of Theobald Wolfe Tone, founder of Irish republican nationalism, in Philadelphia on the eve of the bloody 1798 Irish rebellion, and concluding with the role of Bill Clinton's White House in the historic 1998 Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, Brundage tells a story of more than two
hundred years of Irish American (and American) activism in the cause of Ireland.

The book, though, is far more than a narrative history…


Book cover of The Tide Between Us

Joy V. Sheridan Author Of The Lamorna Reach: A Cornish Saga

From my list on a sense of history, oppression and exploitation.

Why am I passionate about this?

The collection Little Musings, available on Amazon, covers several decades of Joy's work as poet and painter. It touches on many aspects of her life, including the loss of her mother, in Do Not Mourn Her and Loss - Double Rainbow. Her childhood was spent in Plymouth, and in A Plymouth Girl Reflects, she recalls the aftermath of the air raids. Being in close proximity to Cornwall, that area also a major theme here, especially in Newquay, Cornwall, and On Air, By Melancholy. Four of the poems, "Absent Friends," "Isle of Thanet," "At Jim's Cafe," and "Captain Ahab of Thanet" are focused on the Thanet area of East Kent, where Joy now lives.

Joy's book list on a sense of history, oppression and exploitation

Joy V. Sheridan Why did Joy love this book?

The Tide Between Us is similarly typical of many Cornish novels which involve travel to the West Indies. The maritime links between those areas were extremely strong at those times. It therefore relates to the Transatlantic factor in my own novels which involves the West Indies and the slave trade.   

By Olive Collins,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

1821: Among the thousands of Irish deportees to the Caribbean British Colonies is a 10 year old Irish boy, Art O’Neill. As an Indentured Servant on a sugar plantation in Jamaica, Art gradually acclimatises to the exotic country and the unfamiliar customs of the African slaves.When the new heirs to the plantation arrive from Ireland they resurrect the ghosts of brutal injustices against Art. He bides his time and hides his abhorrence from his new master by channelling his energy into his work. During those years he prospers, he acquires land, he sees his coloured children freed after emancipation as…


Book cover of Wildflower Girl

Elaine Farrell Author Of Bad Bridget: Crime, Mayhem and the Lives of Irish Emigrant Women

From my list on nineteenth and twentieth century irish women.

Why am I passionate about this?

There is still so much to know about Irish girls’ and women’s lives, and I think that’s why I’ve always been drawn to books that explore these themes, whether in fiction or nonfiction. I work as a historian and professor of Irish History at Queen’s University Belfast. I love archival research and often find it really exciting to order a file or box in the archives or pull up a newspaper, not knowing what story it is going to tell or what insight I am going to get of an individual’s world in the written records left behind. I hope that you like my choices!

Elaine's book list on nineteenth and twentieth century irish women

Elaine Farrell Why did Elaine love this book?

I don’t know how much I knew of nineteenth-century Ireland when I first read this book as a child, but I certainly wanted to know a whole lot more after reading it. And after years of researching and teaching nineteenth-century Irish history, I still love this book!

This is a wonderfully written and extremely moving account of Irish emigration to the US in the nineteenth century, as told by (fictional) teenager Peggy O’Driscoll. It is the second in a trilogy, which includes the more well-known Under the Hawthorn Tree about the Great Irish Famine. I love them all, but this one was always my favorite, following the challenges and adventures that Peggy had in the ‘new world.’

By Marita Conlon-McKenna, Donald Teskey (illustrator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Wildflower Girl as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 10, 11, and 12.

What is this book about?

The second book in the famine trilogy

At seven, Peggy made a terrifying journey through famine-stricken Ireland. Now thirteen, and determined to make a new life for herself, she sets off alone across the Atlantic to America. Will she ever see her family again?

An extraordinary story of courage, independence and adventure

The other books in the Famine trilogy are Under the Hawthorn Tree and Fields of Home.


Book cover of Someone Like You
Book cover of The Dream of the Celt
Book cover of Ellis Island

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