Advertisement

Notable: Irish books for St. Patrick's Day

 
Published March 9, 2016

Notable

When everyone is Irish

With St. Patrick's Day coming up, here are books, fictional and factual, with Irish settings.

Even the Dead (Henry Holt) by Benjamin Black (a pen name of novelist John Banville) is the seventh in the superb series about Dublin pathologist Quirke, in which the mysteries the character grapples with include his own perhaps failing mind.

The Immortal Irishman: The Irish Revolutionary Who Became an American Hero (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) by Timothy Egan is the New York Times columnist's fascinating biography of Thomas Francis Meagher, Irish revolutionary leader turned prisoner turned U.S. Civil War hero and Montana governor.

The Last Days of Magic (Viking) by Mark L. Tompkins is a sweeping debut novel drawing on Celtic legend, fairy tales and Biblical mysteries, all set in medieval Ireland, where magical beings live beside humans.

Colette Bancroft, Times book editor