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!

Peter Quinn's classic novel of Civil War New York, BANISHED CHILDREN OF EVE, Read at the Irish Repertory Theater in NYC

Tomorrow, June 5, the Irish Repertory Theater in New York will stage a reading of playwright Kelly Younger's adaptation of Peter Quinn's Banished Children of Eve, available in paperback from Overlook.

Directed by Ciaran O'Reilly, the reading of Banished Children of Eve will be presented as the culmination of a two-day developmental workshop. The play will be read by Fred Applegate (Happiness, Young Frankenstein), David Wilson Barnes (Becky Shaw, The Lieutenant of Inishmore), Muiris Crowley (The Yeats Project), Mark Hartman* (Avenue Q, Finian's Rainbow), Michelle Hurst ("SherryBaby," The Story), Nicola Murphy (The Yeats Project), Aaron Shaw ("In Treatment") and Tracie Thoms* (10 Things To Do Before I Die, Rent).

Set in New York City during the Civil War years, Banished Children of Eve echoes with Stephen Foster songs and the disparate voices of immigrants, minstrel actors, hucksters, and domestic servants whose lives all intersect. As tensions surrounding emigration, war, and racial strife reach a flashpoint and rush toward the fatal Draft Riots, the characters are drawn together in a net of violence and fear, longing and hope.

The reading is open to public. Friday, June 5, 3pm, Irish Repertory Theater, 132 West 22nd Street, New York.

More Praise for Peter Quinn's BANISHED CHILDREN OF EVE

Peter Quinn's novel Banished Children of Eve is praised in this week's Irish Voice: "As the year 1863 builds toward the draft riots in New York City, the characters in author Peter Quinn's celebrated historical novel (now in a recently released paperback reprinting) are drawn together in a maelstrom of conflict and violence. Mayhem erupts when the Union Conscription Act provides that all able-bodied males between the ages of 20 and 45 are liable for militaiy service, unless they pay the government $300 to be excused. Not surprisingly, this blatantly discriminatory, get out of the service if you can afford it legislation provoked nationwide disturbances that were most serious in New York City, where the mainly Irish mobs rioted for four days. Quinn's book ranks as one of the best historical novels of recent years, an unrivalled feat of scholarship and literary prowess." - Cahir O'Doherty

Meet Peter Quinn, author of LOOKING FOR JIMMY and BANISHED CHILDREN OF EVE, at Upcoming NY Area Events

Join Peter Quinn and a stellar cast of Irish American writers and artists next week in New York for an evening in tribute to Danny Cassidy, Irish-American musician, teacher, labor activist and author of How the Irish Invented Slang. The event will be held on Thursday, September 25, 7pm, at The Donaghy Theatre in Manhattan.

Peter Quinn will also give four New York area readings this Fall in support of the paperback release of Banished Children of Eve, his acclaimed novel of Civil War New York. The author will appear at the beloved Rocky Sullivan's in Brooklyn on October 8, Glucksman Ireland House on October 9, Lower East Side Tenement Museum on October 16, and Garden City Library on Long Island on November 11. And the best part is: Quinn promises to buy Jameson for anyone who whispers "Winged Elephant" in his ear at any of these events!