Happy St. Patrick's Day from Overlook!

It's Irish Book Day! We’re a proud sponsor of Irish Book Day in New York again this year, a city-wide celebration of Irish books hosted by our friends at the Irish Arts Center. This year we are offering lucky readers a hard-boiled Irish-American crime caper from the bestselling pen of Eoin Colfer, pride of County Wexford and author of the Artemis Fowl books for young adults. Plugged is decidedly NOT for young adults, and we nominate Eoin as Irishman of the Year for the most creative and humorous use of profanity in a novel. If you loved Plugged, get ready for the continuing adventures of Daniel McEvoy in Screwed, coming in 2013. Pictured here is NYC Council Member Diana Reyner with a lucky reader!

And with St. Patrick's Day tomorrow, we must also raise a glass to our friend Peter Quinn - historian, essayist, novelist and raconteur – who Irish America magazine calls one of the most influential Irish-Americans in the country. Quinn, a Bronx native, is the co-founder and past president of the Irish American Writers and Artists, Inc., and last week served as Grand Marshall of the 2012 St. Pat’s for All Parade in Sunnyside/Woodside, Queens. Overlook is the proud publisher of all of Peter Quinn’s books: the award-winning Banished Children of Eve, the acclaimed collection of essays Looking for Jimmy, and his two brilliant novels featuring the Irish-American sleuth, Fintan Dunne.

One of the biggest books of last season was Deadline Artists, an anthology of America’s greatest newspaper columns. This marvelous collection includes contributions from many Irish-American writers and journalists: Jimmy Breslin, Pete Hamill, Maureen Dowd, Jim Murray, and many more.

In October 2012, Overlook will publish another extraordinary new book of Irish-American interest: Circles Around the Sun by Molly McCloskey. Born and raised in America, Molly has spent the last 20 years in Ireland, where she published two acclaimed short story collections, a novel, and most recently a memoir, that will mark her first American publication. Circles Around the Sun is a poignant investigation of mental illness and a work of extraordinary intensity, as Molly pieces together her family history and her older brother's battle with schizophrenia, her own life in Ireland begins to unravel.

"Every once in a while, a writer's voice hits such a clear note, the resulting book has the kind of sweetness that makes you hold it in your hands a moment before finding a place for it on your shelves. Circles Around the Sun is this kind of book: it's a keeper." - Anne Enright, Guardian

Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig!