Ireland. An introduction to the matchless Irish experience of hospitality and good times, strength in adversity, spiritual intelligence when none might be expected, and a vibrant culture millions share, and millions more long for. Travel to Ireland in this book and come home with memories, or take it along and use it as a cultural compass to the Emerald Isle. Ireland Explained takes readers on a very personal trip around the Emerald Isle, with stops at interesting venues from Georgian homes to nouvelle cuisine restaurants--indeed, to one of the first ones in Ireland when it opened in the...

"Cow-Tipping and the Deep Blue Sea" is a (mostly) light-hearted look at life as we know it everywhere except the internet. It is a book of poetry that depends on real life, not life viewed through cyberspace nor friendships formed one pixel at a time. It is funny and pithy in equal measure. It travels around the Atlantic rim from New York to Florida to Ireland to Cornwall. Indeed, in many ways it unifies the experience of people living in the mainly Anglo cultures of those places, but with a seasoning of more exotic cultures that flavour the experience of most people these days. This easy to...

"The Luminous Shadow of the Muse" explores what's left behind when humans confront their lives...the feelings, hungers, pains, and joys, but beneath it all, the changes begun by everything a person does, and the activities altered by everything a human thinks. This volume is at times gentle, at times cogent and at times just plain unsentimental as it explores the big and small facets of modern life. It moves through space and time, from the 1950s to now, from the gentle breezes of the Cornish coast to the fug of midtown Manhattan. It assesses marriage, families and the single life. Dogs and...

Shelf Barker, not the world's greatest detective...just the world's detective who gets himself into the greatest number of unusual spots...with hilarious results. Needless to say, Halloween is a special time of year for Shelf and is wife and his ex-wife and his two loyal pets. Also needless to say, Shelf finds himself in a predicament very close to the witching hour, a predicament including a Jack-O'-Lantern that contains a deadly surprise, and a pack of disembodied souls that won't leave HIS house until he grants THEIR wishes. Odd? Topsy-turvy? Sure. But everything in Shelf's world is a bit...