As early as 2016 I knew I wanted to write the next stage of Nella’s story, continuing where I left off from the last scene in The Miniaturist, but I couldn’t find my way. I was pushing myself, and Nella, too hard, too soon, and was not ready to engage with that world which had changed my life. Even so, the fantastical place of seventeenth-century Amsterdam, and the fate of Nella Brandt, often played on my mind. I focused on …
Blog Posts
Here at Dubray we have been spending Pride month celebrating all the LGBTQ+ authors whose books we carry, and all the books we have with queer characters. We believe it …
My fiction debut, The Amusements, is a novel of interconnected stories set in the seaside town of Tramore – a place I know well because my family are from Waterford. With the …
The strange thing about summer jobs is that we often take them at a time in our lives when we are waiting for ‘real life’ to begin. When I was …
Short stories are the subject of so much myth and mysticism that for a long time, I was afraid to try writing them. So when I was struck with a …
Be they scholars or enthusiasts, millions have bowed at the feet of Joyce, to be confounded or delighted, in equal measure. In celebration of the enduring fascination with this book, …
It’s quite difficult to believe a quarter of a century has passed since the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (published in the U.S. as The Sorcerer’s Stone). …
I’m not alone in being hugely excited by news that we can expect yet another Lucy Barton book. Coming late to My Name is Lucy Barton, I remember being immediately …
It has taken the world by storm. Whether you are a long-time ‘before-the-Heartstopper-Netflix-adaptation’ fan or a newbie to the world of Alice Oseman, her writing is bringing joy to so …
About ten years ago I was touring my stand-up comedy show in England. Doing my due diligenceon the town I was performing in one night, I stumbled upon a chilling, …
The Murder Rule grew from the smallest of seeds. I came across an article in a newspaper about a young Irish law student who had spent a summer volunteering in …
The Trial of Lotta Rae is the tale of a woman who believes in justice. Who becomes notorious as she seeks that justice at an Old Bailey trial. It is set against …
Give yourself good things. Why is it that you so readily chat shit to yourself, about yourself? You run on empty. You expect so much and give little in return. …
“Can’t you see that it just goes on, over and over? The gods demand their justice, but we suffer for it, every time.” – Jennifer Saint, Elektra. The House of …
We are over half way through the Read Irish Women Challenge 2022 and it has been wonderful to behold the enthusiasm and response on social media. Thank you to everyone …
The irony is not lost on me that I was on the tube to the National Archives in London, of all places, the first time I read the name Edith …
For me, writing brings together my interests and hobbies into something unique and pleasurable. I love to paint – I enjoy historical research – and I like writing stories. I …
The idea of becoming a writer was given to me in a forest. There had been hints before but I’d ignored all the signs. Motherhood changed that. A group of …
‘The New Normal’ is a phrase we’ve all had to come to terms with over the last two years. Things that we thought would always be there, or always be …
Each of the novels I have written tell the story of an era of my life through the medium of fiction – details are exaggerated, places conflated, time compressed or …
Imagine you were the last person on earth. Imagine everyone else suddenly disappeared and you were left living solo, inhabiting a world suddenly emptied, a la I Am Legend, a la Wittgenstein’s …
#ReadIrishWomenChallenge22 #RIWC22 It’s April so I’m back once again with the Read Irish Women Challenge – the month where we celebrate outstanding books by Irish women. Starting on April 1st, …
As a journalist, sometimes you find a story and sometimes one comes to you. The latter was what I experienced in August 2018, when I was first contacted through Facebook …
They say actions speak louder than words. As a bookseller I should disagree, but for one night a year I will concur with this statement. Since 2007, on the last …
Shortly before the lockdown began in March 2020, we spent a weekend on the west coast of Clare, arriving into a storm that lasted the entire trip. Rain lashed the …
For over 100 years, International Women’s Day (IWD) has been a global celebration of women’s achievements held annually on March 8th. To mark the occasion this year, the Dubray Liffey …
As a toddler, my son was obsessed with Janet & Alan Ahlberg’s Peepo! It’s a day in the life of a baby, but in the background is the London Blitz: …
There were two major influences that led to me writing my latest novel, Nine Lives, and book in which nine strangers each receive a letter that has marked them for …
How different are we from the people who lived a thousand years ago or more? We all experience certain fundamental, universal emotions: grief, love, joy, despair. Sometimes we have to …
There’s something powerful, almost magical about rivers, the fast flow of water, the stories they contain within. I always think there’s something particularly special about places that have a river …
In my debut novel, 28 Questions, the narrator is a wannabe opera singer who tells a stranger on the tube, “I need to marry a writer”. I can attest to …
I finished the first draft of We Were Young on a July afternoon in the countryside. Nah, I thought at once. It’s tepid. It was, at this point, the story …
4 STARS For Fans Of: Carmen Maria Machado, Emma Donoghue, Deirdre Sullivan Highlights: “the skellington dance” / “red market” / “lemons” / “instinct” How To Gut A Fish is the …
As I contemplate the publication of my first book, Any Girl, a book I spent years writing and re-writing, I think back on the books that I’ve read and loved …
We love books. We fall in love with characters. We celebrate LGBTQ+ romance. We hope that love won’t go unrequited. We route for the underdog. We get involved in love …
Imagine you are ten years old. Tired of rereading Enid Blyton mystery books for the umpteenth time, you pick up one of the books by Agatha Christie you see your …
The Winter Guest is set in early 1921, at the height of The War of Independence- a messy, brutal war with no front lines, that often placed Irishman against Irishman. …
I grew up in the very beautiful Adelaide Hills in South Australia. It is a place of sweeping slopes of native bushland, pastoral valleys and vineyards; a place where kangaroos, …
What is the lure of an island? What draws us to stand, to sleep on a rock surrounded by water? And why in particular are artists attracted to islands? For …
Would you help out an old friend in their time of need? It’s usually a pretty easy thing to do. To loan them something they’ve run short of, to look …
It all started, as many stories do, when I was looking for something else. While writing a previous book, I consulted the genealogy section of Clare County Library’s website for …
Two households, both alike in dignity,In 1920s Shanghai, where we lay our scene,From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. There is little that intrigues …
Unlike naming a baby, characters in fiction can be given names that might prompt school yard bullying or put them at a disadvantage professionally. Writers can name a character Sylvester …
My husband tested positive for covid on Christmas Eve. Needing to keep my distance from him and without visitors, I plunged into a large, tricky jigsaw puzzle and was left …
It’s a question that all writers are asked, especially those who write fiction. Now, as I prepare to launch my debut novel, The Maid, a mystery about a hotel maid …
If you are like me, you may turn to a cup of coffee whenever you find your concentration fading. But have you ever considered that its brain-charging benefits are largely …
It All Started With A Phone Call… ‘If she’d turned off her phone, instead of listening in, perhaps no one would have died..’ Remember My Name started life when someone …
It would be easy for anyone to assume that Dubray staff get so used to seeing our monthly recommended reads that they slowly but surely start to blend into the …
Oh William by Elizabeth Strout. The welcome return of Lucy Barton. Recently widowed, she reconnects with her first husband, William, the father of her two grown daughters. Having forgiven past …
Serendipity is a wonderful thing. Without it, I would never have written A Little History of the Future of Dublin. Trevor White, director of the wonderful Little Museum of Dublin, …
Today, November 20th, is Transgender Day of Remembrance. This is a day acknowledged worldwide, when we remember our trans brothers and sisters who have lost their lives in some way …
I fondly recall walking around Waterford City circa October 2019 with a wheelie-suitcase full of my first children’s book, But Really…Adventures With a Difference, batches of blank order sheets, coffee …
It was my better half Jennie who looked at me during the creation of Shadow Voices – at the precise stage when it seemed as though the whole project, all …
Tabitha Plimtock and the Edge of the World was the most fun I’ve ever had writing a book. I’m not one to plot a story in advance, but I’d usually …
Jo Kerrigan tells us how her latest book came about. Over the past twenty years or so, Richard and I have been exploring Ireland’s scenery and history for our books. …
Meet The Leaflings… It was Niamh who discovered the leaflings. When we came up with the notion of working together, we would go to a coffee shop here in Skerries …
When I got married in the 1990s, it was common in my country for newlyweds to spend their honeymoons in the Caribbean where they’d have to wear all-inclusive resort bracelets …
Unconsecrated Ground If you want to find a cillín, you have to know what you are looking for. There will, in all likelihood, be no signpost or gate. It’s best …
Nothing sets high expectations quite like one of your favourite authors saying they’ll release the book that’s haunted them for the past decade, waiting for the right time to be …
“It is a common saying that women are delicate creatures, flowers, eggs, anything that may be crushed in a moment’s carelessness. If I had ever believed it, I no longer …
Nobody tells stories quite like the Irish. From anecdotes to allegories, folktales to epic poems, the Irish have an innate talent for spinning words. So, it’s no surprise that Irish …
I believe in the power of empathy. It is a powerful, vitally important and, unfortunately, oftentimes uncommon thing. The Transgender Issue, Shon Faye’s debut nonfiction book, has no shortage of …
Thomas Mann was born into a mercantile family in Lübeck in Northern Germany in 1875 and died in Switzerland in 1955. In his early teens, when his father died, the …
September brings a sense of change with it. The summer light begins to fade, the leaves turn brown and crisp, and students flock back to school and college. Along with …
Before openhearted was published I had written reams in minute detail about my life growing up, about my husband Peter, about how he became ill and his subsequent suicide. I …
Harp Maiden had a somewhat unexpected element to its creation. My initial plan was to write a tale about magical music, and I chose the flute. But after speaking in …
At each stage of life, your sense of self and personal identity finds expression in the story you tell about yourself and the story significant others tell about you. That …
For a long while, my novel Dinner Party: A Tragedy was a short story that wasn’t quite right. It had an interesting premise – a woman with an eating disorder …
If I were to give aspiring fantasy writers any piece of advice it would be to include some form of magical transportation. This is especially relevant when you need to …
My name, Easkey, has its origins in ancient Gaelic for fish. I’m named after an important salmon river in Ireland that creates a wave where it flows into the sea; …
The annual Women’s Prize for Fiction is a celebration of a year of bestselling and unforgettable novels by women. It has been won by great writers from Ann Patchett for …
Some books are easier to write than others. I’ve written one or two in a matter of weeks; others have taken several years. The House of Ashes was the latter. …
1. May we start with the title of the book? (Your notes to the text tell us that it’s a translation of a phrase from a poem by Schiller, later …
I didn’t actually set out to write a book for general consumption. I was writing for myself. A career in medicine is anchored by various milestones as you progress through …
Wallis Simpson has always fascinated me, so to write a novel about her was an act of supreme self-indulgence! However, the Wallis I present in The Duchess is very different …
I wrote the first draft of All Her Fault at a corner of my dad’s dining room table – writing furiously to get the words down while my kids were …
When I started working on You & Me on Vacation, I didn’t set out to write an homage to When Harry Met Sally, but looking back, it’s obvious how much …
About Us is about three couples, at very different stages in their lives, struggling to connect. I think relationships are fascinating. They ebb and flow and at different stages people …
A couple of years ago, I was lucky enough to be asked to talk to a classroom of children about my route to publication. “I wrote my first book by …
I remember how the light felt on my face, the smell of the grass, the rough ‘skin’ of the oak tree, bluebells everywhere and out of nowhere, a cuckoo called. …
At the center of The Paper Palace is a woman who has to make an impossible and life-changing decision in a single summer day. 24 hours during which she has …
During the last recession, I once came upon a small ghost estate in the middle of the countryside. It was completely uninhabited; eerie and quiet, you could see right through …
When my novel, I Know I Saw Her, came out on 1st July, it was a kind of second time around for me. I’d been published before, about fifteen years …
Every Sunday morning, I go for a leisurely scroll. Not a stroll you understand, a scroll, walking my eyes down through the weekly long reads list collated by the news …
When I was writing my new novel, Yours Cheerfully, because it is a sequel (to my debut Dear Mrs Bird) and I know my characters and where they are in …
I had all sorts of notions about how I would write my first book. I’d craft my painfully wrought prose, I told myself, at the mahogany roll-top writing desk that …
I began writing Holding Her Breath when I was working at Dubray Books in Grafton Street. I loved the job – it was a joy to be around books all …
When the first lockdown hit I was excited to crack into my neverending-continuously-growing pile of books I wanted to read. I thought about how much time I would have to …
As the son of a carpenter from North Cork, I spent most of my childhood falling out of trees, wading through streams, and running through muddy cornfields in the Blackwater …
It all began with a reporter’s notebook and a murder, but by the time I’d finished, the story had expanded to encompass Irish land wars, adulterous love, a trans-Atlantic assassination …
‘Write what you know’. It’s the writing advice that most people have heard, and it’s advice I’ve never followed. In fifteen books, including the Maeve Kerrigan series and my latest …
I began writing The Seven Sisters series in 2013, and 1.2 million words later, I suddenly found myself about to write Book 7. The characters have been with me for …
This year marks my tenth anniversary as a full-time writer. And I’ve been reflecting on how much my writing life has changed over the years. One of these changes is …
I was conducting some background research for my novel Stranger when I came across an old article in The New Yorker about diagnosing mental illness. At one point, it referred …
How could it possibly be that a book which starts with a brutal murder in Arizona in 1915, before settling into an account of three more killings that took place …
My new novel The Beauty of Impossible Things is set in a small seaside town during a heatwave – a place of “novelties and souvenirs” to quote one of the …
I have always been interested in forgotten pieces of history, particularly where lives have been barely recorded, distorted by mis-telling, or eroded over time. It is the fragment that excites …
There is an urban myth I heard as a child that has always fascinated me. It goes along the lines of: Only two people know the recipe to the world’s …
Diary of a Young Naturalist follows seismic changes in your life, as the seasons turn. What do the seasons, and their transitions, symbolise to you? Do they reveal something about …
I’m sure you’re a more conscientious reader than I am, but back in late January and February I was really struggling to read. We were back in lockdown, this time …
On a February evening, just over three years ago, I was happily procrastinating on Twitter when I came across a post by a paediatric palliative care doctor. Here, he had …
It’s looking like 2021 will be another year when our yearnings for foreign shores will have to be assuaged with some vicarious travel. For me that’ll take the form of …
I began the #ReadIrishWomenChallenge back in April 2019 as a way to spotlight great work by Irish female authors, and to start a conversation about their writing. Now that it’s …
Reader, it started with Hydra. I had recently finished writing my novel, The Kindness, and was wearing my other hat, that of lyricist for my husband’s music. It was 2014, …
When I was pregnant with my first child, a woman I’d barely spoken to came over to me in the office toilets and touched my belly. It felt like such …
The southside suburbs located between the Grand Canal and the Dodder encompass the area we now know as Dublin 4. It contains some of the most expensive roads and houses …
It has been a joy to watch the progress of Leonard and Hungry Paul through our bookshops. Some books arrive like explosions, with huge fanfare and a maelstrom of sales …
The idea for this book came about during the debate around Ireland’s gay marriage referendum. I was sitting in the pub with my friend Colin, who was decrying the state …
“Too embarrassed even to try as long as everyone was looking at me, I made what was probably a fairly unique request. ‘Um, I’ll have a go. But I can’t …
I was introduced to Anna Jones by a friend whose eyes lit up as she described this one-pan lemony pasta where the cooking water becomes the sauce. The enthusiasm verged …
The Ministry of Bodies describes the final months of my long career as a hospital doctor. I left in the first week of February 2020, just before the pandemic. Although …
While I was writing my novel, my long suffering agent Harriet was subject to many anguished emails and phone calls about how long I was taking to finish. I would …
I’ve always wanted to write about the sea. When I came across the true story of the Flannan Isles vanishing – the mysterious disappearance, in 1900, of three lighthouse keepers …
Squeeeak … Thwop … Thwop… whoop … whoop … whoop … Dwooooooerp! … Dwooooooerp! Just some of the sounds that you might hear if you were deep underwater, far out …
A Good Father is a psychological suspense novel about a man who kills his family. I wanted to explore the idea that jealousy could be the driver of such an …
I first became drawn to the mountains in my early twenties, while living in the Alpine resort of Crans Montana in Switzerland. It’s a stunning place all year round, but …
When I was eight years old, I learned the word ‘wanderlust’ and though I’d never travelled very far from home, I knew it applied to me. Even then, I wasn’t …
Gardening has been a big part of my life for as long as I can remember. My dad is very passionateabout gardening and growing his own food. I learned everything …
Can you tell us about the inspiration behind Girl A? Abigail Dean: As an only child, I’ve always been interested in the relationships between siblings. I spent a long time …
They say a picture paints a thousand words and as a designer and artist I communicate visually. Having spent roughly seven years studying and learning the design process from The …
Over 30 years ago, I did a Diploma in Legal Studies at the College of Commerce, Rathmines. I rented a room in a house-share with art students from NCAD and …
This month my debut, Thin Places, flies out into the world. It’s a book I’ve been trying to write since the end of my 20’s, one I’ve felt haunted by …
Based on three generations of my own family, the seeds of Life Sentences were planted early. Until I was seven years old, I was blessed with a grandmother who …
It’s been just under a year since I began learning to play piano, something I’ve been putting off for a long time. I finally took the plunge when I spotted …
The last time I was in an Irish bookshop was Dubray in Grafton Street in March 2020. I was looking at a ‘New and Bestselling’ display that included my new …
There’s a tradition of children being told dark tales, and given an insight into the scarier side of life through our songs, stories and rhymes. The original versions of the …
I’ve had more best friends than boyfriends. With them I’ve had first cigarettes, first drinks, periods, crushes, encountered perverts, drunk too much, gone too far, got hurt, been betrayed, shamed, …
When I was a kid, there was a henna plant outside my grandmother’s apartment. It was one of my favourite things in the world, because every once in a while, …
Christmas 2020 promises to be one like no other. Most of us will be at home. There’ll be less visiting but more home fires; less cocktails in bars but more …
Who was Juanita Casey? Here at Dubray we have loads of Irish Fiction. The Horse of Selene – An Irish Fictional novel by Juanita Casey is one such that we …
About Andrea Mara We love to recommend new books and offer you a taste of the latest publications or soon to be published. One such novel is by the award-winning …
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