SHORTLISTED FOR THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS 2021 SHORTLISTED FOR THE KATE O'BRIEN AWARD 2022 'A stunning debut from this new Irish talent' STELLAR _____________ A young woman comes of age in the shadow of her family's tragic past When Beth Crowe starts university, she is shadowed by the ghost of her potential as a competitive swimmer. Free to create a fresh identity for herself, she finds herself among people who adore the poetry of her grandfather, Benjamin Crowe, who died tragically before she was born. She embarks on a secret relationship - and on a quest to discover the truth about Benjamin and his widow, her beloved grandmother Lydia. The quest brings her into an archive that no scholar has ever seen, and to a person who knows things about her family that nobody else knows. Holding Her Breath is a razor-sharp, moving and seriously entertaining novel about complicated love stories, ambition and grief - and a young woman coming fully into her powers. __________ 'A beautiful coming-of-age story told with impressive skill and lightness of touch . . . I absolutely loved it' LOUISE O'NEILL 'Whip smart observations and addictive prose' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'Precise, sure, engaging, and a joy to read' RODDY DOYLE 'Effortlessly weaving together a gripping, multi-layered plot, while maintaining a profoundly tender touch, Ryan has marked herself as a captivatingly original voice in Irish literature' HOT PRESS 'A moving debut with a satisfying conclusion' IRISH INDEPENDENT 'Brilliant, vivid - I enjoyed this book ENORMOUSLY' MARIAN KEYES 'Enthralling' IMAGE 'A nimble account of student life with a darkly enjoyable undercurrent of secrecy and emotional turmoil' SARA BAUME 'A truly compelling read, and one I wholeheartedly recommend' BUZZ 'Through the dark sky of our times, Eimear Ryan arrives like a comet, a bright talent scorching through every page' DOIREANN NÍ GHRÍOFA, author of A Ghost in the Throat 'Brilliantly realised, gripping, and moving . . . This is absolutely the real thing' KEVIN POWER 'Written with a wonderful clarity and insight, Holding Her Breath lingers in the imagination. Beth's unravelling and re-ravelling is drawn with great skill and empathy. A brilliant debut' DONAL RYAN

This poignant coming-of-age tale is told from the point of view of the precocious Beth Levy, the youngest in a household of two generations of strong Jewish women in post-World War II Winnipeg.

'Brilliantly funny.' - Matt Lucas 'You have to read this book.' - Tim Harford 'It's funny, touching and gobsmacking in equal measure. At its heart is a breathtaking account of life on the COVID frontline.' - Jay Rayner 'Ed's journey is funny, sad, harrowing, hilarious... I STRONGLY URGE YOU TO READ THIS.' - Colin Mochrie 'Very Funny.' - Fern Brady A gut punch of a memoir by a doctor - and comedian - whose job is to keep people alive by putting them to sleep. Ed Patrick is an anaesthetist. Strong drugs for his patients, strong coffee for him. But it's not just sleep-giving for this anaesthetist, as he navigates emergencies, patients not breathing for themselves and living with a terrifying sense of responsibility. It's enough to leave anyone feeling numb. But don't worry, there's plenty of laughing gas to be had. 'Very funny, very timely, scary in places. Ed writes with wit, insight, surprise and pathos. He is cutting his teeth in anaesthetics, taking people as close to death as you can take them, and then trying to wake them up again. And makes it funny. A joy to read.' - Phil Hammond

In this book, Ace Moloi writes a letter to his deceased mother. This book, this letter, is an important and necessary look at the state of our country twenty-one years into our democracy. It is the story of constantly holding your breath, hoping nothing else goes wrong. In a searing and beautiful narrative, Moloi manages to take the reader through various South African issues like the trials of child-headed families in South Africa, the volatile issue of service delivery in townships, the story of broken families, why fees must fall, and racial division in universities. Funny in parts and tragic in others, this is the ultimate South African story.

A New York Times Bestseller A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2020 Named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR “A fascinating scientific, cultural, spiritual and evolutionary history of the way humans breathe—and how we’ve all been doing it wrong for a long, long time.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Big Magic and Eat Pray Love No matter what you eat, how much you exercise, how skinny or young or wise you are, none of it matters if you’re not breathing properly. There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat twenty-five thousand times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences. Journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The answers aren’t found in pulmonology labs, as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of São Paulo. Nestor tracks down men and women exploring the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary tinkerers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe. Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can jump-start athletic performance; rejuvenate internal organs; halt snoring, asthma, and autoimmune disease; and even straighten scoliotic spines. None of this should be possible, and yet it is. Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. You will never breathe the same again.

A New York Times notable book and winner of The Northern California Book Award for Best Short Fiction, these nine brave, wise, and spellbinding stories make up this debut. In "When She is Old and I Am Famous" a young woman confronts the inscrutable power of her cousin's beauty. In "Note to Sixth-Grade Self" a band of popular girls exert their social power over an awkward outcast. In "Isabel Fish" fourteen-year-old Maddy learns to scuba dive in order to mend her family after a terrible accident. Alive with the victories, humiliations, and tragedies of youth, How to Breathe Underwater illuminates this powerful territory with striking grace and intelligence. "These stories are without exception clear-eyed, compassionate and deeply moving.... Even her most bitter characters have a gift, the sharp wit of envy. This, Orringer's first book, is breathtakingly good, truly felt and beautifully delivered."—The Guardian

Falling under the spell of an enigmatic extreme-sports surfer, a thrill-seeking pair of western Australian adolescents is initiated into a world of high-stakes adventures and dangerous boundary testing.