Rights C ata lo g u e 2020 MERRION PRESS MERRION PRESS Merrion Press was established in 2012 as the general interest imprint of Irish Academic Press (est. 1974). It is one of the fastest-growing imprints in Irish publishing, with almost 100 titles published so far, focusing on biography, memoir, pop- ular history, current affairs, politics, art, and contemporary Irish society. Particularly renowned for unflinching exposés on the conflict and politics of the North of Ireland, Merrion Press’s bestselling titles include Burned The Inside Sto- ry of the ‘Cash-for-Ash’ Scandal and Northern Ireland’s Secretive New Elite, Thatcher’s Spy: My Life as an MI5 Agent Inside Sinn Féin, Charlie One, In the Name of the Son: The Gerry Conlon Story, Belfast Days: A 1972 Teenage Diary, and UVF: Behind the Mask. In 2018, Merrion launched a new fiction imprint, which now features four compelling Irish novels that are surely destined for the screen. For Rights Enquiries, contact Conor Graham, Publisher T: +353 86 3870991 E: [email protected] CURRENT AFFAIRS BURNED THE INSIDE STORY OF THE ‘CASH-FOR-ASH’ SCANDAL AND NORTHERN IRELAND’S SECRETIVE NEW ELITE Sam McBride • MORE THAN 40,000 COPIES SOLD TO DATE ‘Burned is a compelling exposé of a system gone rotten ... McBride is a deft storyteller.’ RORY CARROLL, THE GUARDIAN ‘This is a magnificent book by one of Ireland’s finest jour- nalists an absolute page-turner … the flames of BURNED spare no one.’ SUSAN MCKAY, THE IRISH TIMES PAPERBACK ‘This triumph of investigative journalism from one of the UK’s most important reporters spares nobody.’ OCTOBER 2019 PATRICK MAGUIRE, NEW STATESMAN €18.95 / £16.99 One of the most shocking scandals in Northern Irish 9781785372698 political history: originally a green-energy initiative, the Renewal Heat Incentive (RHI) or ‘cash-for-ash’ scheme saw Northern Ireland’s government pay £1.60 for every 418 pages £1 of fuel the public and commercial customers burned 234 x 156mm in their wood-pellet boilers, leading to widespread abuse and ultimately the collapse of the power-sharing administration at Stormont. RIGHTS HELD World Revealing the wild incompetence of the Northern Ire- land civil service and the ineptitude and serious abuses of power by individuals at the head of the Democratic AUDIO Unionist Party, Burned is a riveting political thriller from Rights sold the journalist who covered the controversy for over two years. This is the best-selling inside story of the shocking scandal that brought down a government. Sam McBride is the Political Editor of the Belfast News Letter and the Northern Ireland political editor of the i newspaper in London. He is a regular presence on re- gional and national radio and television in the UK and Ireland. CURRENT AFFAIRS THE ADOPTION MACHINE THE DARK HISTORY OF IRELAND’S MOTHER AND BABY HOMES AND THE INSIDE STORY OF HOW TUAM 800 BECAME A GLOBAL SCANDAL Paul Jude Redmond • FIRST-HAND STORY OF ONE OF IRELAND’S MOST SHOCKING AND SHAMEFUL SCANDALS • THE DARK TRUTH OF CATHOLIC CONTROL IN IRELAND ‘Hard hitting and furious’ SUSAN MCKAY, THE IRISH TIMES In May 2014, the Irish public woke to the horrific discov- ery of a mass grave containing the remains of most 800 babies in the ‘Angels’ Plot’ of Tuam’s Mother and Baby Home. What followed would rock the last vestiges of PAPERBACK Catholic Ireland, enrage an increasingly secularised nation, and lead to a Commission of Inquiry. In The Adoption Machine, Paul Jude Redmond, MARCH 2018 who was born in the Castlepollard Home, candidly re- veals the shocking history of one of the worst abuses of €16.95 / £15.99 Church power since the foundation of the Irish State. A 9781785371776 dark shadow was cast by the collusion between Church and State in the systematic repression of women and the wilful neglect of illegitimate babies, resulting in the 290 pages deaths of thousands. 228 x 152 mm Redmond’s exhaustive research that widened the global media’s attention to all the homes and revealed Tuam as just the tip of the iceberg. He further reveals RIGHTS HELD the vast profits generated by selling babies to wealthy World adoptive parents, and details how infants were volun- teered to a pharmaceutical company for drug trials without the consent of their natural mothers. AUDIO Rights available The Adoption Machine exposes this dark history of Ireland’s shameful and secret past, and the efforts to bring it into the light. It is a history from which there is no turning away. Paul Jude Redmond was born in Castlepollard Mother and Baby Home in 1964, and is Chairperson of the sur- vivor umbrella group, the Coalition of Mother and Baby home Survivors. MEMOIR BURNING HERESIES A MEMOIR OF A LIFE IN CONFLICT, 1979-2019 Kevin Myers • IRELAND’S MOST CONTROVERSIAL JOURNALIST TELLS HIS SIDE OF THE STORY • VIVID AND DRAMATIC STORIES FROM EUROPEAN WAR ZONES, AS WELL AS HIS OWN PERSONAL JOUR- NALISTIC CONFLICTS In this remarkable sequel to his critically acclaimed memoir Watching the Door, Irish journalist Kevin Myers reflects on his roller-coaster career in the Irish media, from the European conflicts he reported from to the personal conflicts he fought. Fresh from the horrors of 1970s Belfast, Myers took a job in 1979 with The Irish Times, and brilliantly evokes the PAPERBACK comical chaos of life in the smoky newsroom of Ireland’s paper-of-record. Having taken over An Irishman’s Dia- ry, Myers single-handedly pioneered the campaign to APRIL 2020 rehabilitate the memory of the forgotten Irish soldiers of €19.95 / £17.99 the Great War, and in the process fell foul of the paper’s editor, the legendary Douglas Gageby. His reward was 9781785372612 plane tickets to more perilous assignments as Myers was back in the frontline of European warzones, as commu- nism collapsed and civil wars emerged. 320 pages While Myers is at his brilliant best dodging bullets on 225 x 145mm the battlefields of Tel Aviv, Beirut and Sarajevo, he also keenly and unapologetically participates in the many RIGHTS HELD cultural conflicts erupting within a rapidly changing Ire- land, as he opines on a broad spectrum of Irish life in World his inimitable prose and sardonic wit. This courageously trenchant account of journalistic conflict and hubris also AUDIO forensically examines his very public fall from grace in 2017, and his legal battle with RTÉ for a public apology. Rights available Burning Heresies is a candid and eye-opening must- read for anyone with even a passing interest in Irish life and current affairs. Journalist, broadcaster and novelist Kevin Myers wrote for The Irish Times, The Spectator, Sunday Telegraph, Irish Independent and The Sunday Times in a career that spanned over thirty years. His first memoir, Watching the Door: A Memoir, 1971–1978, was published in 2006. MEMOIR FRENZY AND BETRAYAL THE ANATOMY OF A POLITICAL ASSASSINATION Alan Shatter • ONE OF IRELAND’S MOST FAMOUS POLITICIANS • SEARING ANALYSIS OF POLITICS IN THE AGE OF POST-TRUTH MEDIA ‘Required reading … a case study of how false narra- tives can develop with lightning speed and become widely accepted with devastating consequences for those caught in the centre.’ STEPHEN COLLINS, THE IRISH TIMES On 6 May 2014 two reports wrongly condemning the conduct of Alan Shatter, the Minister for Justice, Equal- ity and Defence, were delivered to government build- PAPERBACK ings in Dublin. Pressurised by Taoiseach Enda Kenny, Shatter resigned from cabinet the next day, his career in tatters. A frenzied media and political reaction to MAY 2019 alleged bugging of the Garda Ombudsman Commis- €19.95 / £16.99 sion’s offices and an avalanche of allegations of Garda corruption put Shatter in the eye of a storm. Damaged 9781785372377 by false narratives and political manoeuvring by Ken- ny, Shatter, a TD for over thirty years, lost his Dáil seat in 450 pages 2016. Pilloried by opposition politicians, journalists and commentators, Shatter was abandoned by his Fine 234 x 156 mm Gael party colleagues. From the penalty points contro- versy, to the discovery of unknown phone tapping in RIGHTS HELD Garda stations, to the explosive Charleton Report, this is the inside story of a cataclysmic period in Irish politics. World Compelling and sardonic, Frenzy and Betrayal is the AUDIO deeply disturbing story of how a dedicated, progressive Irish cabinet minister was falsely accused of wrongdo- Rights available ing and unjustly hounded from office in twenty-first-cen- tury Ireland, and his traumatic five-year battle for vindi- cation and the truth. Alan Shatter is a former Irish Fine Gael politician who served as Minister for Justice and Equality and Minister for Defence from 2011 to 2014. He was a TD for the Dublin South constituency from 1981 to 2002, and from 2007 to 2016. MEMOIR THATCHER’S SPY MY LIFE AS AN MI5 AGENT INSIDE SINN FÉIN Willie Carlin • THRILLING TRUE STORY OF A SPY STILL ON THE RUN • RECEIVED FERVENT UK & IRELAND MEDIA ATTENTION ‘Carlin’s story leaves the reader with a sense of the trag- edy of those times and of the ways in which humanity, peace and the common bonds of community were betrayed against again and again, in political, physical and spiritual terms.’ BECKY LONG, THE IRISH TIMES Early one morning in March 1985, as he climbed the six steps of Margaret Thatcher’s prime-ministerial jet on the PAPERBACK runway of RAF Aldergrove, little did Willie Carlin know the role Freddie Scappaticci played in saving his life. SEPTEMBER 2019 So began the dramatic extraction of Margaret Thatch- €16.95 / £14.99 er’s key undercover agent in Sinn Féin – Willie Carlin, 9781785372858 aka Agent 3007.