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Donal Ryan

Biography

Donal Ryan

Donal Ryan is a novelist and short story writer from Nenagh, Co. Tipperary. He has won several national and international awards for his fiction, and has twice been nominated for the Booker Prize. His work has been adapted for stage and screen and translated into over 20 languages. Donal is a lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick, where he lives with his wife Anne Marie and their two children. THE QUEEN OF DIRT ISLAND is his seventh book and was an instant #1 bestseller in Ireland.

Donal Ryan

Books by Donal Ryan

by Donal Ryan - Fiction, Women's Fiction

The Aylward women of Nenagh, Tipperary, are mad about each other, but you wouldn’t always think it. You’d have to know them to know that --- in spite of what the neighbors might say about raised voices and dramatic scenes --- their house is a place of peace, filled with love, a refuge from the sadness and cruelty of the world. Their story begins at an end and ends at a beginning. It involves wives and widows, gunrunners and gougers, sinners and saints. It’s a story of terrible betrayals and fierce loyalties, of isolation and togetherness, of transgression, forgiveness, desire and love. Of all the things family can be and all the things it sometimes isn’t.

by Donal Ryan - Fiction

In 1973, 20-year-old Moll Gladney takes a morning bus from her rural home in Ireland and disappears. Bewildered and distraught, Paddy and Kit must confront an unbearable prospect: that they will never see their daughter again. Five years later, Moll returns from London. What --- and who --- she brings with her will change the course of her family's life forever.

by Donal Ryan - Fiction

Farouk has tried to protect his wife and daughter from the war and hatred that has torn Syria apart. If they stay, they will lose their freedom. If they flee, they will lose all they have known of home. Lampy has too much going on in his small town life in Ireland. He has the city girl for a bit of fun, but she's not Chloe, and Chloe took his heart away when she left him. There's also the secret his mother will never tell him. The game --- manipulating people --- was always the lifeblood coursing through John's veins. But the ghost of his beloved brother and the bitter disappointment of his father have shadowed him all his life. These three men are searching for some version of home, and their lives are moving inexorably towards a reckoning that will draw them all together.

by Donal Ryan - Fiction

Melody Shee is alone and in trouble. At 33 years old, she finds herself pregnant with the child of a 17-year-old Traveller boy, Martin Toppy, and not by her husband Pat. Melody was teaching Martin to read, but now he’s gone, and Pat also leaves, full of rage. She’s trying to stay in the moment, but the future is looming, while the past won’t let her go. It’s a good thing that she meets Mary Crothery when she does. Mary is a bold young Traveller woman, and she knows more about Melody than she lets on. She might just save Melody’s life.