Patrick McCabe

"This is a book about a fat man with glasses. Aviator shades to be precise, which he only wears when he is about to go on a rampage." "Joey Tallon lives in the small, close-knit town of Scotsfield, where dread and death are the neighbours of hilarity and abandon. We meet Boyle Henry, Hoss and other sharp men of the place, and watch as they move from brutality and corruption to wealth and respectability. And Joey transforms himself too. From bovine pie-eating barman to a man of total organisation, a seeker after truth, a holy fool determined to assuage the community's guilt for its violent deaths. And it's love that has transformed him, his love for Jacy, a beautiful blonde-haired girl, so Californian in appearance she might be Joni Mitchell's twin." "Joey wants everyone to know the truth, but who'll believe the testimony of a kidnapper, a fantasist, a jailbird, when he says he knows what happened to Campbell Morris in the reservoir, and Detective Tuite in the animal pit? Who wants to hear his stories when the men of violence are now pillars of society? But try silencing Joey Tallon. Scotsfield's only true living genius is gonna tell it like it was!"--BOOK JACKET.

Pat McNab is a soft lad, reflecting on days gone by and fending off the meddlesome ways of his small-town neighbours - Mrs Tubridy, the Turf Man of Ardee and the like. This is by far one of McCabe's funniest books.

Set in the politically tumultuous London of the 1970s, Breakfast on Pluto follows the misadventures of Patrick "Pussy" Braden, a transvestite prostitute on a quest to find love and a place to call home. Pussy narrates his own story, occasionally pausing to direct comments at Dr. Terence, the psychiatrist who suggested he write it. Born in the border town of Tyreelin, Ireland in the mid 1950s, Pussy is the product of an encounter between the village priest and his beautiful teenaged housekeeper. Abandoned by his mother and unable to contact his father, Pussy is raised by "Whiskers," a chain-smoking, beer-guzzling foster mother. When Pussy begins demonstrating a penchant for women's clothing and female impersonations, he is booted out of his house. He finds temporary contentment with a British politician who acts as sugar daddy until he is killed by the IRA, leaving Pussy alone once more. Searching for his birth mother, Pussy winds up in London where he finds himself hustling in Piccadilly Circus. Although decidedly apolitical, the terminally exuberant Pussy cannot help being drawn into the terror around him as his friends and lovers are murdered and bombings become a regular occurrence. As he flirts with a soldier in a club one night, a bomb explodes, blowing the soldier to ribbons. When Pussy is arrested on suspicion of planting the bomb, he begins to lose his already tenuous hold on reality. Despite the obvious losses, Pussy never seems to lose hope in his dream of finding love. A courageous optimist, Pussy Braden navigates a world splintered by violence with "pastiche, wickedness and cheek." He and his story are unforgettable.

In his new novel, The Dead School, McCabe returns to the same rich, emotionally dense landscape of small-town Ireland that made The Butcher Boy unforgettable. Here he explores the inner lives of two men, each the product of a soul-stifling culture, each battling his own demons of loss and betrayal. When Malachy Dudgeon, a bright, sensitive child, discovers his mother's infidelities and his father's standing as the town cuckold, he is doomed forever to believe that the only place for love is "in the grave." Decades earlier in a different town, "goody-goody" Raphael Bell decides to forego the priesthood and become a teacher. Years pass and Bell thrives in his chosen profession, becoming Headmaster - until times begin to change. New ideas are invading the strict provincial Catholic culture he loves, unhinging old ways, pulling Ireland and an unwilling Bell into the future. Along with them comes Malachy Dudgeon, now grown and teaching at Bell's school, distracted to the point of madness by an adult love of his own - a love most definitely "in the grave." Tension coils - until tragedy strikes a student in their charge and the latent despair, rage and helplessness lying below the surface of the two men explode, ending in a denouement of heartbreaking, startling power.

Francie Brady, the "pig boy," is growing up in a poor small Irish town in the early sixties, fueled on an adolescent's comic books, Flash Bars, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. He is determined to win the Francie Brady Not A Bad Bastard Anymore Diploma. But how do you do that when your mother is sent to the madhouse, your father is an alcoholic, and everyone turns their back on you? Not only was The Butcher Boy nominated for, and the winner of, major literary prizes, but McCabe's theatrical adaptation of the novel, Frank Pig Says Hello, was staged in Dublin with tremendous success, and a production is now planned for London's Royal Court theater.

A native son returns to Ireland from America to open a meat-processing plant, raising hopes of prosperity for all. But an economic slump, accompanied by renewed sectarian fighting causes the plant to close. A signal for more native sons to leave for America. By the author of Butcher Boy.

It is 1958, and as Laika, the Sputnik dog is launched into space, Golly Murray, the Cullymore barber's wife, finds herself oddly obsessing about the canine cosmonaut. Meanwhile, Fonsey 'Teddy' O'Neill, is returning, like the prodigal son, from overseas, with brylcream in his hair, and a Cuban-heeled swagger to his step, having experienced his coming-of-age in Butlin's, Skegness. Father Augustus Hand is working on a bold new theatrical production for Easter, which he, for one, knows will put Cullymore on the map. And, as the Manchester United football team prepare to take off from Munich airport, James A Reilly sits in his hovel by the lake outside town, with his pet fox and his father's gun, feeling the weight of an insidious and inscrutable presence pressing down upon him.

In Hello Mr. Bones two damaged souls have--thanks to each other's love--turned their lives around. But as London's weather takes a turn for the worse, so do their fates, and raw evil runs riot the night of the impossible hurricane. Goodbye Mr. Rat centers around the spirit of an IRA bomber watching over his ex-lover as she takes his ashes back to his rural hometown. This girl from northern Indiana may not be ready for rural Ireland, yet the townsfolk of Iron Valley certainly have plans for her.

HE WAS NOTORIOUS AND DANGEROUS ... SHE WAS PRIMLY PROPER AND BEAUTIFUL ... With his six-shooter slung low on his hips and his bold, lazy smile, Slade Maverick looked as if he were riding to a showdown. Rachel Wilder couldn't believe the famous gunslinger had come to Wichita to care for three orphaned children. She didn't trust him for a minute! But she trembled every time he came near, dreamed of his kisses and knew, deep in her heart, that he was the one she would long for all the days of her life ...