The Drop-Out: freedom has a prize

Providence Wilde is not the kind of girl you’d expect to see living rough on the streets of Dublin.

After all, not many homeless people get to sleep on the sofa in the VIP lounge of Dublin’s hippest nightclub, maintain their gym membership and go on dates in posh restaurants.

Alienated from her family, she discovers that friends are not forever and “freedom” has a price.

* With extracts from “Floozies” and “Skin Deep”, by the same author.

Wacky Ireland: a romp through the Irish countryside

(Updated version of “Wacky Eire”)

Imagine BBC’s Countryfile crossed with Channel 4’s cult series Eurotrash – and Father Ted!Now imagine it as a book of true stories, from scandalous exposés to charming vignettes of rural life, told by an insider who has travelled the length and breadth of Ireland seeking out the weird, the wacky, the naughty-but-nice and the downright shocking – an outrageous romp through the Emerald Isle, where ancient traditions, strange customs and modern obsessions make lively bedfellows and where people constantly surprise you. Farmers, faith-healers, lovesick bachelors, animal antics, ghosts – this is modern Ireland.You won’t find these stories in the tourism brochures, and this book is not for the easily offended, the ultra-conservative or anyone po-faced. But if you’ve ever drawn a moustache on your local politician’s poster, or a willy on the John Hinde postcard donkey, this is the perfect book for your coffee-table, the ideal gift for a foreign visitor – and a poignant memento for an émigré.Welcome to Wacky Ireland – it’s stranger than fiction.NEW updated edition includes a list of little-known Holy shrines…chapters on the ancient Fair at Maam Cross, the Goddess Fest at the Gates of Hell, Donald Trump, Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary… more about Loftus Hall, spooks in general, feisty farmers, monster plants, Obama, Elvis, Joe Dolan and the mystery of the Boleyn sisters…an explanation of gaelic terms – and a countryman’s guide to “culcher”.

Chasing Casanova

Imagine Love Island set in a small Italian town with a bunch of middle-aged misfits…
It’s 2000 and there’s no such thing as Tinder, so Esmerelda Fox goes looking for love in the country that invented Casanova.
At 34, she’s dated more duds than studs in her native Ireland – and she just wants some uncomplicated amore.
But nothing is ever simple in the land of opera, fashion and the Mafia. Before she can say “Buonasera”, she’s got a slutty reputation, a toxic boss and a set of colleagues every bit as eccentric as her UFO-spotting ,Elvis-impersonating family.

Soon, everyone is hunting Fox.

Floozies: femmes fatales are fighting back

Femmes fatales are fighting back. It’s not easy being the only dysfunctional member of a well-balanced family – especially when you’re a forty-year-old social pariah with a ‘princess complex’ and a reputation for ‘borrowing’ other women’s men. Vain and catty, Frida Carey has always been proud to be what every woman loves to hate and what every man is ashamed to know: a floozy. Now she’s losing her looks – and, with them, the allure that used to make her irresistible to Mr Wrong.And she’s not the only one. Ignored in public by their married lovers, bullied out of jobs by ‘envious’ female colleagues, shunned at weddings and Christenings, mocked by women’s magazines, sabotaged by love rivals, floozies are forever under attack.But they’re not going to take it lying down. No longer content to be garden-fence gossip-fodder, watercooler scandal or some married man’s dirty little secret, Frida and her friends decide to set up a political party to fight for the rights of loose women everywhere.Armed with killer fingernails, mascara and five-inch heels, the Floozy Party is ready to declare war on respectability.But even a bad reputation has to conform to certain rules, and Frida finds it’s not easy being a high-profile low-life.

Shampoo & Sympathy: A story about gossip, split ends…and murder

No one goes to the hairdresser’s just for a haircut. As everyone knows, a hairdresser is a combination of psychiatrist, confidante…and confessor.

Kay and Shay Sheeran’s trendy salon, Ugly, has got the usual clientele of gossips and scandalmongers, with one exception. Because of its location in Dublin’s poshest suburb, it attracts more than a fair share of “VIP”s.

The beautiful, the successful and the scandalous…all queue up to have their hair styled and spill the beans…. Long before the tabloids have got the news, Kay knows whose husband has run off with a visiting Hollywood actress and Shay has enough information to topple the Government.

The young couple stick conscientiously to the hairdressers’ code of conduct: they never reveal clients’ secrets. That usually means not telling a gossip columnist whether an actress is a natural blonde or not…or which famous rock star popped in for a change of image.

But when a bestselling author tells them that he has murdered his philandering wife, Kay and Shay are put in a dilemma. Should they break the confidential bond between hairdresser and client and tell the police? Should they tell an equally famous celebrity journalist who also happens to be one of their clients? Or should they keep quiet, pretend they never heard it and continue building their reputations as Dublin’s most prestigious stylists?

As they are drawn deeper into the writer’s real-life plot, Kay and Shay find themselves dealing with a grey area that they can’t cover over.

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unRIP

The last critic to drive a knife into Karina Stark gave her the fame she craved – and she’s not ready to RIP!

When a pseudo-goth popstar and animal rights activist is found viciously murdered, she becomes a cult icon – and her mother a monster. For Karina Stark left a diary in which she accused Gloria of being ‘the Mum from Hell’. Envious of her daughter’s growing success, bitter about her own broken dreams, Gloria wanted Karina dead – or so the girl claimed.

As her morbid young fans turn to Witchtok, the real Karina emerges, wreaking havoc from beyond the grave.

* Aneeta Hall is a pseudonym for the journalist Geraldine Comiskey

* The screenplay for a TV series pilot based on the book has won several awards

Battle of the Birds by Korg the Crow

Korg is the bossiest bird in his community. Respected by ravens, rooks, jackdaws, magpies and his own flock of grey crows, he enjoys being King of the Corvids.

But Korg has enemies: cats, birdwatchers – and a flock of marauding seagulls.

In an action-packed summer, Korg protects his patch, makes friends with the songbirds – and becomes a rock star!

Now Korg is telling his story*

*(with the help of his human ghostwriter, Geraldine Comiskey)

Cash Kills: the case against untraceable currencies

Cash kills people…
Oliver Hayes abducted widow Anne Corcoran from her remote farmhouse, bludgeoned her to death, buried her in a shallow grave – and went on holidays with the cash he had stolen from her bank account.
Christy Hanley was tied to a chair and beaten to death after he had sold his horses.
James Cahillane’s battered body was found in a burning house.
Tommy Casey, Tom Niland, Mary Nolan and many others died as a result of their injuries.
Cash kills freedom…
Elizabeth Gill never left her house again after a drive-by mugging.
Michael McMahon fled his own home and cycled through the night.
Cash kills dignity…
A nephew dragged his dead uncle to the post office to collect his pension, a granddad was beaten in front of his grandson, and young women were pimped.
Cash kills commerce, communities and civilisation.
Spanning thirty years, these stories are about ordinary people’s lives destroyed – for cash. Some were killed for thousands of euro; others for the price of a pint; others still on the false assumption that they had cash.
The purpose of this book is to make the case for the abolition of cash as a currency, on the grounds that the existence of an untraceable currency puts everyone – especially the most vulnerable – at risk of robbery and violence.

Journalist Geraldine Comiskey interviewed some of the victims of crime and their families, trawled the newspaper archives and her own notes going back to her youth as a cub reporter covering the district courts, and followed-up long-forgotten stories to put together this random collection of true stories about brutal crimes, which will remove the rose-tinted lens on our sentimental attachment to cash.
* Includes chapters on the worldwide campaign to keep cash, statistics and tips to protect vulnerable people

Greener

As teenagers, Helen, Annie and Laura were inseparable, bonding over family, boys and their dreams for the future. But when school ended, so did their friendship.

Twenty-five years later, a snowstorm forces the three women to spend time together, leaving them wondering if they can reconcile the gap between who they are and who they used to be.

Greener is an exploration of the changing dynamics of adult friendships and asks whether old friends can ever let us become new people.

Winter People

          The wild Atlantic coast of Ireland.