Heart, Be at Peace
A Novel
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By:
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Donal Ryan
About this listen
Winner of the Irish Book of the Year
Shortlisted for the Nero Novel of the Year
From one of the most acclaimed Irish writers today, a new novel about smalltown Ireland that explores a community on the mend and the power of love and trauma to both bring people together and divide them
“I said it before. Madness comes circling around. Ten-year cycles, as true as the sun will rise. . .”
In a small town in Ireland, the local people have weathered the storm of economic collapse and now look to the future: The jobs are back, the dramas of the past seemingly lulled, and although the town bears the scars of its history, new stories have begun to unfold.
But an insidious menace now creeps through back-alley shadows and into the lives of the townspeople. Old grudges fester and new ones arise. Young people are lured by the promise of fast money while the generation above them tries to hold back the tide of an enemy beyond their control. And the peace of this town is about to be shattered in an unimaginable way.
A stunning, lyrical novel told in twenty-one voices, Heart, Be at Peace reveals a community that together looks to overcome the betrayals, secrets, and grudges that can divide families, neighbors, and entire generations.
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Critic reviews
An Post Irish Book of the Year
Nero Novel of the Year Shortlist
“[T]he structure of Heart, Be at Peace is exactly what makes it compelling. The tension and slow unraveling of the mystery at the heart of this chronicle of small-town and small-city Ireland today, fraught with problems created by drug dealers and scam artists, is brought to brilliant life through the intertwining of voices and the individual stories of protagonists and antagonists, heroes and villains, characters both peripheral and intrinsic.”―New York Journal of Books
“An absorbing, empathetic story of a community in trouble.”―Irish Times
“Ryan dives deep into his characters’ hopes and grievances, drawing out their voices with such precision that you can almost hear their breath between words. . . .Ryan’s prose is poetic but never florid, the book’s pacing is perfect and the well-controlled plot has us holding on for revelation and an unpredictable denouement.”―Financial Times
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,647
Who is Audrey Hoedemaker? It's a question her sister Maureen has heard more times than she can count, and she doesn't know what the short answer would be. Little sister, troubled teen, backpacker, musical theatre coach, con artist, childcare worker. Murderer. A tragic, traumatic childhood casts a long shadow on the Hoedemaker sisters. Maureen has worked hard to move beyond the violence of the past and build a good, honest life for herself. Audrey, however, just can't seem to do the same, careening from one state of chaos to another.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Seriously, that was the ending?
- By alicia in athens on 02-13-25
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1 out of 5 stars
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Did not Like!
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1 out of 5 stars
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Did not hold together
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Five high school friends are bonded by an oath to protect one another no matter what. Then, on a camping trip in the middle of the forest, they find something extraordinary: a mysterious staircase to nowhere. One friend walks up—and never comes back down. Then the staircase disappears. Twenty years later, the staircase has reappeared. Now the group returns to find the lost boy—and what lies beyond the staircase in the woods.
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Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers, but with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants. Until, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman mysteriously washes ashore.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Please speak up!
- By Sarah on 03-12-25
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Four Letters of Love
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 43
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 39
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Story5 out of 5 stars 39
Nicholas Coughlan is twelve years old when his father, an Irish civil servant, announces that God has commanded him to become a painter. He abandons the family and a wife who is driven to despair. Years later, Nicholas’s own civil-service career is disrupted by tragic news: his father has burned down the house, with all his paintings and himself in it. Isabel Gore is the daughter of a poet. She’s a passionate girl, but her brother is the real prodigy, a musician. And yet this family, too, is struck by tragedy: a seizure leaves the boy mute and unable to play.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Remarkable
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The Paris Express
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Overall3 out of 5 stars 10
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Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 10
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Story3 out of 5 stars 10
Based on an 1895 disaster that went down in history when it was captured in a series of surreal, extraordinary photographs, The Paris Express is a propulsive novel set on a train packed with a fascinating cast of characters who hail from as close as Brittany and as far as Russia, Ireland, Algeria, Pennsylvania, and Cambodia.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Outstanding narrator
- By Amazon Customer on 03-19-25
By: Emma Donoghue
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The Antidote
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 15
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From Pulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, and bestselling author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove Karen Russell comes a gripping dust bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the dust bowl drought, but beneath its own violent histories.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent in every way
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Alice Scott is an eternal optimist still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud. And they’re both on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: To write the biography of a woman no one has seen in years—or at least to meet with the octogenarian who claims to be the Margaret Ives. Tragic heiress, former tabloid princess, and daughter of one of the most storied (and scandalous) families of the 20th Century.
By: Emily Henry