At the height of World War I, Douglas Terrell, an Anglo-Irish aristocrat, leaves Ireland and his wife to fight in the English Army against the Germans. Pamela, his beautiful English wife, driven by her own fierce loyalty, defies her own people as well as the Crown itself while Jane, his sister, meets a revolutionary who is determined to fight for Irish independence—even if it means siding with the Germans against the English.The knotted alliances and conflicting loyalties of this Anglo-Irish family meet their ultimate test during the Easter Rebellion of 1916 and demonstrate how trying to act honorably can be fraught with heartbreak and disappointment.

From the author of the National Book Award–winning An American Requiem and the classic bestseller Constantine's Sword comes the story of Colman Brady, an Irish farmer who involves himself in the Irish rebellion of the early 1920s and later escapes to Boston where he rises to and falls from political power and seeks a second chance through the life of his son.Richly imagined scenes, a complex plot and masterful writing combine fact and fiction; characters like Mayor Curley of Boston and the Kennedys come to life in this classic saga of Irish-America as seen through the eyes of one revolutionary as he makes the daring choices that will shape his, and his son's, fate.

From National Book Award-winning writer James Carroll comes a novel of the timeless love story of Peter Abelard and Héloïse, and its impact on a modern priest and a Holocaust survivor seeking sanctuary in Manhattan.Father Michael Kavanagh is shocked to see a friend from his seminary days named Runner Malloy at the altar of his humble Inwood community parish. Wondering about their past, he wanders into the medieval haven of The Cloisters, and begins a conversation with a lovely and intriguing museum guide, Rachel Vedette. Rachel, a scholar of medieval history, has retreated to the quiet of The Cloisters after her harrowing experience as a Jewish woman in France during the Holocaust. She ponders her late father's greatest intellectual work: a study demonstrating the relationship between the famously discredited monk Peter Abelard and Jewish scholars. Something about Father Kavanagh makes Rachel think he might appreciate her continued studies, and...

In this compelling family saga set during a tumultuous era in Boston history, 1960-1984, James Carroll chronicles the lives of two brothers, Nick and Terry Doyle, as they strive to move beyond the strictures of their working-class Charlestown neighborhood to" the city below." Though one brother is drawn to the worlds of politics and real estate and the other to the underworld of organized crime, their fates remain inextricably linked as each struggles to break free of the blood tie holding him captive to the past. As in his previous best-selling novels Mortal Friends and Family Trade, James Carroll seamlessly blends fiction and history to create a gripping tale of family bonds and ethnic violence, vows and betrayals, and political intrigue in the inner sanctums of both church and state.

It is 1961. Khrushchev is hurling threats, a U.S. spy plane has been shot down over the Soviet Union, tensions are rising. Berlin has been cut off from the West: it’s only a matter of weeks until the Wall will be erected. The United States and Americans abroad face dangers they had never imagined. Against this backdrop, the best-selling novelist and historian James Carroll tells an unforgettable love story that illuminates a key moment in history with the passions of those who lived it.Three teenagers from an American school in West Germany travel to Berlin to join a May Day rally on the Communist side of the divided city. Propelled by nadve ideals and in rebellion against preordained futures, they stumble into the center of an international incident. Paul, the father of one of the boys, and Charlotte, the elegant German-born mother of another, set off to rescue their children from the East German Stasi, which has detained them. Over the course of a weekend, Paul and Charlotte struggle with personal secrets, growing passion, and the weight of a generation that survived World War II only to face the loss of its children to the engulfing paranoia of the Cold War.Secret Father inexorably pulls the reader into the heart of flashpoint Berlin. In this powerful tale, missed signals, cloaked motives, false postures, and panicked responses echo tragically across borders and generations.

From the gangster-ridden politics of Depression-era Chicago to the intrigue and glamour of wartime Washington; from the triumph of virtue in the defeat of Hitler to the moral chaos of Vietnam; from inner-circle turf battles in the Pentagon to tear-gas conflict in the streets; from a man's inbred solitude to the story of an extraordinary love— Memorial Bridge arcs across the pivotal decades of the twentieth century and spans the divisions of the American heart.     Memorial Bridge is the story of Sean Dillon, who escapes from the rough world of the Chicago stockyards to become an agent in J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, and then rises to the very top of military intelligence on the eve of its greatest challenge — and the nation's greatest failure. Dillon is an Irishman, a Catholic, a lawyer obsessed with justice, a man whose fierce integrity sets him apart even in his youth. As he advances, finally becoming an air force general charged with an impossible duty, he finds himself an outsider to everyone but Cass, the indomitable yet deeply feeling woman with whom he has built his life. She alone sees what his defiant adherence to principle is costing him.     In the final, gripping chain of events, Dillon's deepest loyalties to family and country are tested during the Vietnam War, when he must confront not only the man he has become, but also his son, who opposes the war—and Dillon's role in it—with nothing less than the merciless conscience he has inherited from his father. Memorial Bridge is a rich, dramatic novel about one family's intimate and painful participation in America's coming of age, told with all the excitement and compassion we have come to expect from this master storyteller The bestselling author of Mortal Friends has written an acclaimed new epic of one man's journey of conscience--from Depression-era Chicago through the Vietnam War. "Powerful . . . wonderfully written . . . carefully judicious about still-controversial topics."--The New York Times Book Review.

Vietnam: bitterly contested on the American home front and on the battlefields of Southeast Asia. Risking his vows to the priesthood and his status as a Korean War hero, Michael Maguire struggles with God and country in this thrilling novel of faith, truth, and honor, "so rich and vital it leaves you breathless" (Chicago Tribune).

An American Requiem is the story of one man's coming of age. But more than that, it is a coming to terms with the conflicts that disrupted many families, inflicting personal wounds that were also social, political, and religious. Carroll grew up in a Catholic family that seemed blessed. His father had abandoned his own dream of becoming a priest to rise through the ranks of Hoover's FBI and then become one of the most powerful men in the Pentagon, the founder of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Young Jim lived the privileged life of a general's son, dating the daughter of a vice president and meeting the pope, all in the shadow of nuclear war, waiting for the red telephone to ring in his parents' house. He worshiped his father until Martin Luther King, Jr., the civil rights movement, turmoil in the Catholic Church, and then Vietnam combined to outweigh the bond between father and son. These were issues on which they would never agree. Only after Carroll left the...