Showing results by author "James Lawless" in All Categories

When Mariana Rivas arrives from Spain to work as an au pair in the Dublin home of the Mac Converys, Garda Inspector Fionn Mac Convery tries to seduce her. In the course of avoiding Fionn, Mariana experiences the mean streets of Dublin city and meets some of the characters who, in his ambitious rise in the police force, have been damaged by him.

Thirty-three-year-old romance novelist Penelope Eames moves to Spain to avoid her oppressive father and drug-addicted brother, Dermot. When she meets Ramon, a young Spanish school teacher, she is immediately attracted to him and feels the happiness that eluded her all her life may at last be hers. However, she receives a distress call from Dermot saying he is at the mercy of Charlie Eliot, a pimp and drug dealer on the Costa.

Laurence J Benbo is a 37-year-old graphic artist and Dublin bachelor, awkward with women and lonely after the breakup with his girlfriend Deborah. He meets Jadwiga, a lapdancer, and, after winning a lottery, he bestows gifts on her. But his upwardly mobile brother Maoilíosa and his scheming wife Ena, on hearing of his win, try to blackmail the innocent Laurence into handing his money over to them by alleging that he interfered with their daughter Lydia.

The mean streets of Dublin and powers that be lurking. A man known to wear a wig in his exemplary life roams the dark streets of the city exploiting the weak and vulnerable. And who is the hooded figure who has to pick up the pieces for him, perpetuating the age-old problem?

During a long, hot summer, a young man, inspired by Bobby Darin's "Dream Lover", becomes infatuated with a beautiful girl only to make an emotionally wrenching discovery.

A scantily-dressed girl dancing in a lighted window jolts Francis Copeland from his world of books. Francis, now approaching middleage, whose life and marriage are in a rut, fantasises about the girl and finds it hard to accept, as he discovers later, that she is Judy, a dancer in the local pub. The hidden world of the avenue unfolds to Francis. Who is Myrtle, his wife? (Does she genuinely go to bingo every Tuesday night?). He does not know her.

A North of Ireland woman learns through her child's tragedy how to face her prejudices while on a holiday in Turkey. Shortlisted for the Willesden Prize, Jolt is a story about perception and ingrained prejudices that we can carry around with us in our everyday lives. Sometimes it can take a journey to a strange place to waken us into a less intransigent way of seeing the world.

Why does the mysterious Mr. Washington slowly demolish a house?

Lovers Who Wound Blame It on the Storm shows how a talented writer can take the framework of an erotic love fixation and turn it into art by infusing it with a bona fide sense of character, motive, and atmosphere.

In his hilarious story "Sound Reflections", James Lawless sends up in his typical humorous fashion the effects of noise on contemporary people, and this follows with the more serious poem "Noise", which explores the devastation uncontrolled cacophony can inflict on sensitive individuals.

Jo Jo is an endearing but sometimes mischievous little girl of eight years. She has a great imagination. She can talk to animals, and she loves the woods where many of her adventures take place. Find out how the deer, Rudolf, got his red nose, or what a crab turns into at the seaside, or what happens to Jo Jo when she gets lost in the city or when she is whisked off to a magic kingdom. Sometimes, Jo Jo can be scary, too, as in the spooky tale of "The Moving Door Handle".

A young boy in the old Liberties of Dublin learns about growing up through his handicapped cousin and a strange bookseller.

Jo Jo es una adorable, pero a veces traviesa pequeña niña de ocho años, que puede hablar con los animales y adora el bosque, en donde ocurren muchas de sus aventuras. Descubre por qué la nariz de Rodolfo el Reno es roja, en qué se convierte un cangrejo cuando llega a la costa, qué le ocurre a Jo Jo cuando se pierde en la ciudad o cuando es transportada a un reino mágico. En algunas ocasiones, Jo Jo también puede tener un lado tenebroso, como en el espeluznante cuento de “El picaporte que se movía”.

Relato de ciencia ficcón y erotismo que trata de amigos que quieren vivir experiencias corporales conjuntas pero se encuentran con inhibiciones personales de uno de sus protagonistas, haciendo que la historia tome cuerpo desde el primer momento del relato.

When university student Guido van Thool accidentally bumps into the beautiful ballerina Anna Zweig in Loti's café, it sets them off on a whirlwind of romance of ballet concerts, anti-globalisation marches and love trysts in bluebell woods. Paralleling their lives, however, is that of Judge Jeremiah Delahyde, and the government minister Bartholomew Smythe. These parallel lives collide on New Year's Eve when the drunken judge knocks Anna down in his car with fatal consequences. How does one retaliate against a corrupt and powerful, politically appointed high court judge?

Peeling Oranges tells the story of how Derek Foley, while sifting through his late father's diaries and his mother's correspondence with an IRA man, discovers that Patrick Foley, a diplomat in Franco's Spain, was not really his father. Derek's mother, who is ailing, is unwilling to discuss the past, forcing her son on a quest that will plunge him into the early history of Irish diplomacy, taking him to Spain and later to Northern Ireland, until he discovers who his real father was with tragic consequences.

After the death of her invalid husband, a widow’s previously suppressed feelings for her late husband’s best friend surface to reveal what was a desperate course of action

An uncherished daughter flees to the city from a rakish and abusive father.

Hennessey Award nominated story of an impressionable young man's hitchhiking journey through France in 1968 during the time of the Sorbonne riots where he encounters predatory sex and tastes the delights of elusive love.

Award-winning contemporary poems of country and city life.