13 Irish Writers to Read this St. Patrick’s Day

"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy -- exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling-- does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies. Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors--yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness. Angela's Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic.

This story about a married couple attending a Christmas-season party ends with a shocking confession. This admission showcases the power of Joyce’s greatest innovation: the epiphany, that moment when everything, for character and reader alike, suddenly becomes clear.

Set in the same village where BROOKLYN begins, Colm Tóibín’s magnificent seventh novel introduces us to the formidable and deeply moving Nora Webster. Widowed at forty and with four children, Nora has lost the love of her life. Wounded but strong-willed, she is drowning in her own sorrow and blind to the suffering of her children. As she navigates the complexities of grief and loss, the novel shines with moments of courage, empathy, kindness, and hope.

During a business visit to Count Dracula's castle in Transylvania, a young English solicitor finds himself at the center of a series of horrifying incidents. Jonathan Harker is attacked by three phantom women, observes the Count's transformation from human to bat form, and discovers puncture wounds on his own neck that seem to have been made by teeth. Harker returns home upon his escape from Dracula's grim fortress, but a friend's strange malady — involving sleepwalking, inexplicable blood loss, and mysterious throat wounds — initiates a frantic vampire hunt.

A soaring novel that spans continents, leaps centuries, and unites a cast of deftly rendered characters, both real and imagined. This is the story of three iconic trans-Atlantic crossings, connected by a series of remarkable women whose personal stories are caught up in the swells of history.

Ellie, a shy orphan girl married to a man whose life has been blighted by an unspeakable tragedy, lives a quiet life in an Irish village until she meets a young photographer preparing to leave Ireland and his past forever. The chance intersection of these two lost souls sets in motion a haunting love story about the choices of the heart.

Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie walk through the back of a mink enshrouded wardrobe into the magical realm of Narnia. Years pass, worlds collide, lessons are learned, a certain badger rises to greatness, Aslan roars and this is one of the best books about taking a leap into time a kid could read.

The community of Prosperous, Maine, has always thrived when others have suffered—its future is secure and it shuns outsiders. But the death of a homeless man and the disappearance of his daughter draw private investigator Charlie Parker, who will encounter a most vicious opponent.

Stoneybridge is a small town on the west coast of Ireland where all the families know each other. Resident Chicky Starr decides to take an old, decaying mansion and turn it into a restful place for a holiday by the sea. The resulting unlikely group shares their secrets and even sees their dreams come true.

Are You Somebody is a moving and fascinating portrait of both Ireland and one of its most popular and respected commentators. This gem of honesty and insight had its first life as the introduction to a collection of Nuala O'Faolain's Irish Times columns that became a number-one bestseller in Ireland. It now stands alone. Ireland has fallen in love with this memoir of an Irish woman of letters, and now this country will too.

Adapting a child narrator for the screen could make a screenwriter’s life hell—but the author herself penned the script in this case, so there’s hope that the book’s celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child will have the adaptation it deserves.

Release date: Fall 2015