Goblin Precinct

John A. Costello remains the most elusive of our former Taoisigh, despite his enormous contribution to Irish history. He declared the Republic, led the country's first ever coalition government, and faced the Mother and Child Crisis. A surprise choice who battled against taking the job, Costello was the Reluctant Taoiseach.

Fascinating stories of Irish soldiers who fought for European powers from the seventeenth century until the late nineteenth century. Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a dangerous place. Religious strife and unstable politics saw war stretch across the centre of the continent for long periods of time. Amidst that chaos Irishmen, exiled from their homeland by the re-conquest of the island by Elizabethan England, emerged as a powerful force.

From before the Flight of The Earls in 1607, through the Flight of The Wild Geese after the Fall of Limerick in 1691 and until the British placed a ban on Irishmen travelling to join foreign armies in the middle of the eighteenth century, Irishmen fought for Austria, Spain, Poland, Russia, France and England. In this selection of biographies, George B. Clark offers us an overview of the wars they fought in, the battles that they turned, won or lost, and the profiles and attitudes of those men who created the myth of the fighting Irish.

Includes Daniel O'Mahoney who served in France & Spain in the early 1700s, Henri Clarke who fought in France from 1782 to 1818 and Franz Moritz Lacy who served in Austria until 1801.

The union is doomed, its death foretold in the fever dreams of Mary Todd Lincoln . . .

As a great nation's destiny is being written in blood on the battlefields of Pea Ridge and Shiloh, a grim tomorrow is foreseen by a deeply troubled first lady and interpreted by her best friend, Mercy, herself an accomplished seer. But hope appears out of the mist with the arrival of Thomas, a mysterious stranger with an astonishing mastery over time and space. Against the backdrop of the Civil War's greatest events, these three must join together to salvage a future with the aid of unlikely collaborators: the uncannily gifted Confederate captain Cole Younger, his notorious career as a bank robber as yet undetermined, and President Lincoln himself, called upon to willingly make the ultimate sacrifice.

And the key to their desperate endeavor lies in a mysterious image from Mrs. Lincoln's tortured visions-a magical sword which, when wielded, will bring redemption . . . or destruction.

"Scholars now have Warnicke to use as their chief one volume study of Mary"

Julian Goodare, University of Edinburgh

In this biography of one of the most intriguing figures of early modern European history, Retha Warnicke, widely regarded as a leading historian on Tudor queenship, offers a fresh interpretation of the life of Mary Stuart, popularly known as Mary Queen of Scots.

Setting Mary's life within the context of the cultural and intellectual climate of the time and bringing to life the realities of being a female monarch in the sixteenth century, Warnicke also examines Mary's three marriages, her constant ill health and her role in numerous plots and conspiracies. Placing Mary within the context of early modern gender relations, Warnicke reveals the challenges that faced her and the forces that worked to destroy her.

This highly readable and fascinating study will pour fresh light on the much-debated life of a central figure of the sixteenth century, providing a new interpretation of Mary Stuart's impact on politics, gender and nationhood in the Tudor era.