O’Callaghan, Billy – The Bell Bookshop https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk Henley-on-Thames Mon, 14 Aug 2023 16:22:38 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/cropped-Bell-Background-Blue-32x32.png O’Callaghan, Billy – The Bell Bookshop https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk 32 32 The Paper Man https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/the-paper-man/ Thu, 04 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/?post_type=product&p=32457 A sweeping and unforgettable interwar love story, from the Costa-shortlisted and bestselling Irish author of Life Sentences

A BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2023 IN IRISH TIMES, RTÉ GUIDE AND SUNDAY INDEPENDENT

1980s Cork. Jack Shine discovers a shoe box full of love letters in his mother’s belongings. Rebekah came to Cork alone as a young Jewish refugee from Vienna when the Second World War broke out. She died soon after, and Jack never learned of his father’s identity. Why did she keep newspaper clippings about a famous footballer player? Who was ‘The Paper Man’?

As Jack uncovers his mother’s life, he is transported to 1930s Vienna, a bustling city on the brink of war. At the heart of the action is Matthias Sindelar, one of the most famous footballers in the world, known as ‘The Paper Man’ because of his effortless weave across the pitch. When Sindelar unexpectedly meets Rebekah, both of their lives are changed forever. As war looms, they must accept that their survival will tear them apart.

Based on true events, The Paper Man is the story of twentieth-century Europe and love against the odds. It is a story that will take Jack far from Cork and all the way back to Vienna, and towards The Paper Man.

]]> Life Sentences https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/life-sentences/ Thu, 13 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/?post_type=product&p=19292 *THE #3 IRISH BESTSELLER*

‘Momentous and epic’ BERNARD MACLAVERTY
‘Superb and moving’ JOHN BANVILLE
‘A lovely, piercing book’ SEBASTIAN BARRY

Three generations. More than a century of famine, war, violence and love.

At sixteen Nancy, the only member of her family to survive the Great Famine, leaves her small island for the mainland. Finding work in a grand house on the edge of Cork City, she feels irrepressibly drawn to the charismatic gardener Michael Egan, sparking a love affair that soon throws her into a fight for her life.

In 1920, Nancy’s son Jer has lived through battles of his own as a soldier in the Great War. Now drunk in a jail cell, he struggles to piece together where he has come from, and who he wants to be.

And in the early 1980s, Jer’s youngest child Nellie is nearing the end of her life in a council house, moments away from her childhood home; remembering the night when she and her family stole back something that was rightfully theirs, she imagines what lies in store for those who will survive her.

‘Brilliantly immerses us in its respective time periods’ SUNDAY TIMES

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