Dublin City Council and Dublin UNESCO City of Literature are delighted to announce that The Coroner’s Daughter by Andrew Hughes is the One Dublin One Book choice for 2023, following on from Nora by Nuala O’Connor in 2022.

One Dublin One Book aims to encourage everyone in Dublin to read a designated book connected with the capital city during the month of April every year. This annual project is a Dublin City Council initiative, led by Dublin UNESCO City of Literature and Dublin City Libraries, which encourages reading for pleasure. The initiative is also funded by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.

Dublin City Librarian, Mairead Owens, says “The Coroner’s Daughter is a story rooted in Dublin city of the early 19^th Century with fascinating themes such as forensic science, religion, and the role of women in Ireland at the time. It is also an entertaining detective story, which I’m sure will engage the readers of Dublin and beyond. I’m looking forward to the discussions that will take place among readers next April.”

A new One Dublin One Book edition of The Coroner’s Daughter (Penguin-Transworld) will be available to borrow from all public libraries nationwide and to buy from all good book shops. There will be a programme of free events in April to accompany the reading initiative. 

Andrew Hughes says “I’m so thrilled that The Coroner’s Daughter has been chosen for next year’s One Dublin One Book. The city has always been a huge source of inspiration, providing me with a setting and a cast of characters, and I love uncovering stories hidden in Dublin’s old houses. Although I’m from Wexford, I went to college here, have lived in Drumcondra for more than twenty years, and all of my extended family are Dubliners, so it’s a huge source of pride to have my book celebrated in this way. I sincerely hope readers enjoy following Abigail and her forensic investigations. I can’t wait for the events to begin next April.”

 

The Book

1816 was the year without a summer. A rare climatic event has brought frost to July, and a lingering fog casts a pall over Dublin – a city stirred by zealotry and civil unrest, torn between evangelical and rationalist dogma.

Amid the disquiet, a young nursemaid in a pious household conceals a pregnancy and then murders her newborn. Rumours swirl about the identity of the child’s father, but before an inquest can be held, the maid is found dead. When Abigail Lawless, the eighteen-year-old daughter of the city coroner, by chance discovers a message from the maid’s seducer, she is drawn into a world of hidden meanings and deceit.

An only child, Abigail has been raised amid the books and instruments of her father’s grim profession. Pushing against the restrictions society places on a girl her age, she pursues an increasingly dangerous investigation. As she leads us through dissection rooms and dead houses, gothic churches and elegant ballrooms, watching from the shadows is a sinister figure whom she believes has killed twice already, and is waiting to kill again . . .

Determined, resourceful and intuitive, and more than just a dutiful daughter or society débutante, Abigail Lawless emerges as a memorable young sleuth operating at the dawn of forensic science.

BORROW THE BOOK

 

The Author

 

Born in Co. Wexford, Andrew Hughes was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. A qualified archivist, he worked for RTÉ before going freelance. It was while researching his social history of Fitzwilliam Square – Lives Less Ordinary: Dublin’s Fitzwilliam Square, 1798-1922 – that he came across the true story of John Delahunt, a Victorian murderer and Dublin Castle informer. His debut novel, The Convictions of John Delahunt, was shortlisted for the Bord Gáis Irish Crime Book of the Year. The Coroner’s Daughter, a tale of a young lady sleuth operating at the dawn of forensic science, was nominated for the CWA Historical Dagger. Andrew lives in Drumcondra, where he continues to work on archival and historical research projects, as well as Dublin-set crime fiction.

 

The Publisher

The Coroner’s Daughter is published by Transworld, a division of Penguin Random House.

 

For more information on One Dublin One Book please contact Anne-Marie Kelly, Director, Dublin UNESCO City of Literature at annemarie.kelly@dublincity.ie

For further information on The Coroner’s Daughter by Andrew Hughes, please contact Sorcha Judge, Penguin Ireland at SJudge@penguinrandomhouse.ie

 

Love, says Bloom – Exhibition

Curated by Nuala O’Connor at Museum of Literature Ireland, St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin.

Into the heart of the Joyce Family
2 February – 3 July 2022

https://moli.ie/lovesaysbloom/

—Love, says Bloom looks at the deep love between Irish writer James Joyce, his wife Nora Barnacle, and their children Giorgio and Lucia, using music as a steadfast element in their lives. Giorgio trained as a singer, Lucia was an accomplished dancer, and all four Joyces often sang at the piano, with friends, for both celebration and succour.

The Joyces lived in a war-ruptured early twentieth-century Europe – in Pola, Trieste, Zürich, and Paris – and their native Ireland was also up-ended by division. In this exhibition, curator Nuala O’Connor celebrates the Joyce’s mutual devotion, alongside some of the music that bound them, while their world was in flux.

Curator Nuala O’Connor was born in Dublin in 1970 and lives in County Galway. Her fifth novel NORA (Harper Perennial/New Island, 2021), about Nora Barnacle, wife and muse to James Joyce, was named as a Top Ten historical novel by the New York Times in 2021. Nuala is editor at flash fiction e-journal Splonk. nualaoconnor.com