Dalzell Press

03/01/2024

On sale on Kindle all month for just 99p, from Dalzell Press:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Afraid-Dark-Memoir-Mental-Fatherhood/dp/1838087125

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Upside-Down-Tara-West-ebook/dp/B08K7LH249

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Treasury-Mindfulness-Rest-Quiet-Heart/dp/0956386482

“Paddy Brosnan has a gift for making mindfulness and the philosophy behind it immediately understandable in everyday life.” Padraig O’Morain From author and mindfulness expert, Paddy Brosnan (This Works, Hay House, 2018) comes Treasury of Mindfulness. A collection of simple yet precious resour...

27/02/2023

Coming from Dalzell Press on March 8th by Melanie Verwoerd, her compelling new memoir, Never Waste a Good Hysterectomy: Life Lessons from a Crisis.

Sneak peak of my upcoming book cover, Never Waste a Good Hysterectomy

01/02/2023

E Book on sale this month on Amazon for just 99p!:

Two weeks after the launch of her first novel, Tara West confessed to her husband that she wanted to kill herself. And yet she was living a life most people only dream of ̶ a well-paid job in advertising, a published novel, a loving husband, great hair… In this warm and unexpectedly ...

30/01/2023

In yesterday's Independent, and many other Irish and UK newspapers:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/author-university-northern-ireland-nazi-olympia-b2271389.html

Fionola Meredith’s book The Stamp Of Beauty is set in post-Troubles Northern Ireland.

19/01/2023

https://twitter.com/TempoRoad/status/1615755724017090560

Best books about Northern Ireland since the end of the Troubles, from Dalzell Press author Jason Johnson (Did She See You?)...

“Best books about Northern Ireland since the end of the Troubles. Thanks to , , , and Robert McLiam Wilson for the material, and to for the opportunity https://t.co/DoYlSZPOCW”

17/01/2023

Fantastic turnout for the launch of Fionola Meredith's debut novel, The Stamp of Beauty, at the fabulous Golden Thread Gallery (thanks!) on Friday night.

12/01/2023

Congrats to Fionola Meredith on publication today of her debut novel, The Stamp of Beauty.

Available now in paperback at No Alibis Books in Belfast, and in paperback and e book on line at Amazon and Waterstones.

Praise for The Stamp of Beauty

"At last we have the opportunity to jump head
first into the warped, seductive and darkly
humorous mind of Fionola Meredith."
David Holmes

"Fionola Meredith creates a visceral story
of mistaken love that manages to both
disturb and entertain."
David Park

"An uncommon, compelling debut."
Tanya Ravenswater

A young married woman begins an intense affair with an older man as a way of escaping her manipulative mother. But she comes to realise that her lover is a mirror image of her mother – just as seductive, just as demanding, and ultimately just as dangerous.

Set in modern-day Ireland, this unsettling novel from Belfast journalist Fionola Meredith charts the course of an unlikely and deeply dysfunctional ‘age-gap’ relationship to its inevitable conclusion. Disturbing yet darkly humorous, forensic but somehow compassionate, this compelling debut unflinchingly reveals what lies at the heart of the male fear of intimacy, and the hidden impulses which can drive our most fatal attractions.

Fionola Meredith is a writer, broadcaster and commentator, based in Belfast. She is a long-established contributor to the Irish Times and to BBC Northern Ireland, and writes a weekly opinion column in the Belfast Telegraph.

The Stamp of Beauty is Fionola’s debut novel. Aside from her media work, she enjoys messing about in boats, and is a member of East Belfast Yacht Club. She lives in Belfast with her husband, Robbie, and their Dalmatian dog, Ripley.

07/01/2023

In advance of publication on Thursday Jan 12th, Fionola Meredith writes about her debut novel from Dalzell Press in today's Belfast Telegraph.

Paperback will be available in Belfast at No Alibis on Thursday.

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/life/books/fionola-meredith-on-debut-novel-writing-may-be-a-solitary-pursuit-but-this-book-is-built-on-friendship-42267979.html

12/12/2022

Over the moon that Dalzell Press's Murder Memoir Murder by Anthony J Quinn has been named one of the Irish Times' 2022 Crime Novels of the Year!:

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/2022/12/10/the-best-crime-fiction-of-2022-chosen-by-declan-hughes-and-delcan-burke/

Another author writing about writing, albeit in a more serious vein, is Anthony J Quinn, whose Murder Memoir Murder (Dalzell Press, £12.00) is an investigation into his own past growing up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, when the Quinn family home was invaded by IRA men who hijacked the family car and afterwards used it during the shooting dead of an off-duty RUC policeman. The result is breathtakingly honest true crime writing

Irish writers kept the home fires burning steadily throughout the year with absorbing new titles

06/12/2022

Cover Reveal:

Publishing January 12th, the debut novel from Belfast based journalist Fionola Meredith, The Stamp of Beauty.

https://www.dalzellpress.co.uk/

28/11/2022

Great review of Anthony J. Quinn's Murder Memoir Murder by Declan Burke in the Irish Times!

14/11/2022

Delighted with this review in the Irish Times from the acclaimed crime writer Declan Burke for Anthony J. Quinn's Murder Memoir Murder:

November’s best crime fiction:

"Fiction set during the Troubles and Northern Ireland’s post-conflict years has delivered some of the most memorable Irish crime fiction over the past decade. Anthony J Quinn and his impressive series of Tyrone-set novels featuring the PSNI detective Celsius Daly have been to the fore in investigating the recent past, but in Murder Memoir Murder (Dalzell Press, £11.99) Quinn takes his investigations onto a whole other plane.

The story is rooted in two unsolved murders that affected Quinn’s own family, one of which occurred during the War of Independence, the other in 1982, when the Quinn family home was invaded by IRA men who hijacked the family car and subsequently used it during an operation in which they shot dead an off-duty RUC policeman. Handed a bullet as the IRA men left, as a warning against alerting the authorities, the young Anthony Quinn was left traumatised, with the shock still reverberating 40 years later.

Now a critically acclaimed writer of crime fiction, Quinn is frustrated by the limitations of fiction, and his own limitations too: “Every crime novel poses its own technical problems, which have to be resolved by the plot and the deductions of the detective figure, but my detective didn’t seem to have much talent for investigating, or was it the writer who lacked the talent?” And so Quinn sets out — in defiance of the received wisdom of not rocking the boat in rural Tyrone parishes where “the Troubles had yet to end” — to discover the identity of the IRA man who handed him the bullet. The result is a breathtakingly brutal piece of true crime writing that is ruthless in exposing the truth, regardless of who it might implicate or whether it might confirm Quinn’s own suspicions about his own failure as a writer."

Murder Memoir Murder; The Book of the Most Precious Substance; High John the Conqueror; Urgent Matters; Black Light

04/10/2022

Dalzell Press October E Book Sale on Amazon:

Afraid of the Dark: A Memoir of Mental Health and Fatherhood by Jonny Jonathan McCambridge will be discounted to GBP 0.99 in a Kindle Monthly Deal which runs from 01-Oct-2022 until 31-Oct-2022 on Amazon.co.uk.

The Upside of Down by Tara West will be discounted to GBP 0.99 in a Kindle Monthly Deal which runs from 01-Oct-2022 until 31-Oct-2022 on Amazon.co.uk.

Peninsula by Tanya Ravenswater will be discounted to GBP 0.99 in a Kindle Monthly Deal which runs from 01-Oct-2022 until 31-Oct-2022 on Amazon.co.uk.

Too Close by Gayle Curtis will be discounted to GBP 0.99 in a Kindle Monthly Deal which runs from 01-Oct-2022 until 31-Oct-2022 on Amazon.co.uk.

Treasury of Mindfulness: How to Rest in the Quiet Heart of Calm by Paddy Brosnan will be discounted to GBP 0.99 in a Kindle Monthly Deal which runs from 01-Oct-2022 until 31-Oct-2022 on Amazon.co.uk.

20/09/2022

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/life/weekend/my-weekend-with-anthony-quinn-having-kids-ruined-our-socials-lives-but-having-a-laugh-with-them-is-the-best-41976206.html

Dalzell Press author Anthony J. Quinn in the Belfast Telegraph last week.

Catch him this Thursday at the Aspects Literary Festival with his new hybrid novel/memoir Murder Memoir Murder.

With thanks to

Weekends, I rise at the same time as I do during the week, which is as early as possible with a family of four, including three teenagers. I try to be up for about 6am. Great stories come not from the mind but from the place where we dream, and our brains are closest to their dream state first thing...

10/09/2022

Launching Thursday September 22nd at the Bangor Aspects Literary Festival, from Dalzell Press:

Did She See You? by Jason Johnson

Murder Memoir Murder by Anthony J. Quinn

Books now available from No Alibis in Belfast so get your copies before the event.

With thanks to Arts Council NI for their support!

https://aspectsfestival.com/whats-on/new-crime-writing

Join Anthony J. Quinn and Jason Johnson, in conversation with Sharon Dempsey, as they launch their new books.

11/08/2022

Announcing two new crime novels coming in September from Dalzell Press, launching Thursday September 22nd at the Bangor Aspects Literary Festival:

https://aspectsfestival.com/whats-on/new-crime-writing

Join Anthony J. Quinn and Jason Johnson for the launch of their new books.

01/07/2022

On sale in July for just 99p e book:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Afraid-Dark-Memoir-Mental-Fatherhood-ebook/dp/B08T9X4P6J

‘The bed is hard. I'm utterly exhausted but never has sleep seemed so far away. I lie there, terrified. How can I find a way back to any sort of life from this?

Soon a man in a blue uniform comes into the room. Softly he walks to the side of the bed and shines a torch into my eyes. At first, I'm confused, but then the awful realisation hits me – he's checking to make sure I'm still alive. I am on su***de watch.’

In May 2013, 38-year-old journalist Jonny McCambridge seems to have the perfect life – a beautiful wife and a newborn son, a top job in local media and a bright future in the newspaper industry. But just four months later, in the early hours of a September morning, he finds himself in the acute ward of a Northern Ireland psychiatric hospital. It’s a voluntary admission – but only because a doctor insisted that the alternative was to have him forcibly sectioned.

How has his life so dramatically fallen apart? And how indeed will he be able to ‘find a way back . . . from this’?

This is Jonny’s heartfelt, viscerally honest account of his attempt to overcome the mental health demons which tormented him for decades and brought him dangerously close to the conclusion that life simply wasn’t worth living anymore. He embarks on a long and often bumpy road to recovery which sees him returning to work too soon and having to abandon his media career, then adjusting to a new life as a ‘stay-at-home’ dad, becoming the world’s least likely blogger and ultimately finding meaning and purpose in his role as a full-time father.

All the while, he struggles to better navigate the uncharted territory of his own mind and make sense of his emotions, shut down decades earlier by the expectations of a repressed society where boys don’t cry and men are supposed to be strong and silent.

By turns poignant, heartbreakingly sad and side-achingly funny, this is a book which will speak to anyone who struggles to articulate their own emotions or to make sense of all that life throws at them, as well as those who at times feel crushed by the challenges of new parenthood.

‘The bed is hard. I'm utterly exhausted but never has sleep seemed so far away. I lie there, terrified. How can I find a way back to any sort of life from this? Soon a man in a blue uniform comes into the room. Softly he walks to the side of the bed and shines a torch into my eyes. At firs...

23/06/2022

If you live on the Ards Peninsula (or anywhere else!) this novel is a must read:

On sale for 1 more week at 99p on Kindle.

Peninsula, the second novel from Tanya Ravenswater (Jacques, 2017) is a beautifully told love story with a dark secret at its heart.

‘To lay the past to rest, once and for all. To be able to forget the bad, remember the good. To reconnect with the indisputable beauty of the landscape.’

Gillian and David – strangers with their own reasons for returning alone to Northern Ireland. When they find themselves in neighbouring holiday cottages, their intention is to avoid getting involved.

Life is everything but predictable.

Forced to resolve issues from the past, each must stay in the flow of a present which brings its own challenges. In reconnecting with the ‘raw truthfulness of the countryside’, they feel driven to confront inescapable truths about themselves and others – and drawn to consider fresh, uncharted possibilities for the future.

A compelling novel about people being alone and together; the upsides and downsides of family and community; about those with the power to wound or heal; dialogues and silence; about bridges broken and bridges to be built.

Peninsula is a lyrical evocation of a landscape; another iteration of Ireland’s ‘terrible beauty’. And a story which acknowledges the darkness in human experience, while celebrating the pleasures and the lighter side of being alive.

Tanya Ravenswater is the author of the novel Jacques and the short story collection, Modern Fairy Tales For Grown-up Girls. She is also an award-winning poet. Born in Northern Ireland, she now lives in Cheshire, UK.

Peninsula, the second novel from Tanya Ravenswater (Jacques, 2017) is a beautifully told love story with a dark secret at its heart. ‘To lay the past to rest, once and for all. To be able to forget the bad, remember the good. To reconnect with the indisputable beauty of the landscape. ...