Blackstaff imprint: 69 books

It’s the biggest thing to hit Ulster since the recession, and now the Facebook sensation is in print for the first time. Pure Derry brings you local and world satire from Derry – the self-appointed centre of the universe. Featuring the best bits from the Facebook page...

‘My mother would have been very proud of me if had I been a secretary in the Northern Ireland Assembly, working in the majestic Parliament Buildings at Stormont; she would have been ecstatic to see me elected as the first ever China-born legislator in Europe.’ Anna Lo...

‘Four girls sit on rocks in the middle of the stream: a dark plump girl; a girl whose hair burgeons from her head in a mane of light; another with long white legs and short black shorts, clipped jet hair; a willowy branch of a girl, blonde. The sun shines though green leaves, glancing off chestnut...

When Kate O’Hanlon started work at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, the people brought in to the casualty department were suffering from acute medical conditions or were victims of road traffic accidents. So when the telephone rang one evening in June 1966 with the news that there had...

‘A wonderful book’ David Park, Irish Times In 1949, when Marianne Elliott was just a baby, her parents moved into the White City, one of the first mixed-religion estates to be built in Belfast after the war. They were among the first tenants and they lived there until 1963. In...

When Drew Linden’s new job brings him back to his native Belfast, he is determined to remain distant from everything that once tied him there, including his friends and family. But as three generations of family history unfold, it becomes clear that the past Drew has been running from is...

It’s Belfast, 1977. The King is dead and a 14-year-old boy wearing Denim aftershave has just been appointed breadboy in the last Ormo Mini Shop in the world. He’s all grown up now, so he is, and nearly shaving. The Bee Gees fill the airwaves, everyone is in love with Princess Leia,...

In some ways, I didn’t – don’t – want to remember any of it. Which is not to say that one ever forgets. I don’t know any journalist who worked through the Troubles, with its relentless cycle of murders and doorstepping the homes of the dead and funerals and yet more murders, who isn’t...

Balmoral Cemetery

Anna Kelly Sweeney is a writer of popular fiction intent on worldly success. Leo is an idealist who lives in rural County Kerry and devotes himself to poetry, culture and innumerable worthy causes. When Anna falls in love with the handsome and enigmatic Vincy, and Leo with the troubled publicist...

Elizabeth McCullough was born in Derry in 1928, just as her parents were agreeing a less than amicable separation. Even as a young child, she rebelled against middle-class conventions and was never afraid to voice her opinions. After her disastrous first marriage to a German...

This is the story of lovable Maggie Muff – an ordinary Dublin girl with attitude, looking for love, who thinks she knows what she wants in a man. She is called in by the Labour and meets Mr Big, who is tall, dark, handsome, and gorgeous in his chinos. He seems like the man of her dreams,...

Should women be induced when they reach their due date? Attitudes toward the induction of labour, c-section, and stillbirth have changed radically since the 1970s, but are still controversial topics. Renowned obstetrician Jim Dornan tells the compelling, moving and true story of Paddy and Marie...

A classic novel of Ulster life by one of the twentieth centrury's greatest writers. Sarah Gomartin, the servant girl on Andrew Echlin’s farm, bears a child to one of Andrew’s sons. But which one? 

 Her steadfast refusal over many years to ‘bend and contrive things’ by choosing...