This week we bring you Bird in the Snow by Michael Harding from the not-so-dusty shelves of our archive! The Sunday Business Post called it ‘a powerful, dramatic read,’ while Books Ireland called Harding’s writing ‘supple and utterly modern.’ Set over the course of 24 hours in the life of Birdie Waters – a woman who has just buried her troubled son – the book is a journey through the memories of an old woman in rural Ireland, and it is delicately and affectingly handled by Harding. It’s a quiet, moving book that suits the end of winter and the start of the early evenings quite perfectly.

It’s on sale for the special price of €10.00 this week for being our archive pick. Here’s a little taster.

‘BERNADETTE. That was Birdie’s name. And her Daddy brought her to Dublin on the steam train. And from that day, and ever since, she loved the flutter of a bird’s wing. And that first magical encounter with birds, on a street outside the railway station orchestrated by a beggar woman, became a bond between herself and Daddy. It was a sign of his ultimate fidelity. It excused everything. Because he was doing his best for her, in those years after her mother died. And every winter she fed the same little robin with crumbs and lard from the kitchen table.

What a day! Standing there at eleven years of age, with ten or twenty white pigeons flitting about her head. And afterwards on the train home Daddy whispered in her ear. ‘They were like angels from heaven,’ he said.

She could see he was enchanted. She could see that he too was thinking about Birdie’s mammy. Birdie can remember how he held her up on the platform. The great iron skirts of the engine dripping wet and the clouds of steam enveloping everyone on the platform in Ballinasloe.’

Buy it here for the special price of €10.00!