The Last of the High Kings

A follow-up to the award-winning The New Policeman, this fantasy seamlessly blends myth and contemporary life. Jenny is not like her siblings. She spends all her time barefoot, up on the beacon at the top of the hill talking to a goat and a ghost – a ghost who, we discover, guards the beacon on behalf of mankind against the nature gods.

There are historic enmities and present resentments between man and these fearsome forces of the earth, but it is from Tir na n'Og, the land of the fairies, with their magic and music, that man may find support.

Alongside all the seductive mythology, there are also brilliantly observed depictions of real people's interactions and a strong sense of family life lived in the rural Irish setting.