Frank Delaney Books in Order

Delaney turns Ulysses into a guided walk through Dublin, explaining the city's streets, the novel's characters, and its Homeric echoes. It is a practical, enthusiastic companion for readers who want help without homework.

Part literary travel book and part portrait of John Betjeman, this volume follows the places that shaped the poet's eye. Delaney uses landscape, architecture, and memory to show the England Betjeman loved.

Written alongside his television series, this book traces the origins, growth, and legacy of Celtic culture. Delaney ranges across history, literature, myth, and art in a broad, reader friendly survey.

Delaney revisits early medieval Europe and challenges the idea that the Dark Ages were simply blank centuries. He treats the period as a world of movement, belief, and survival, told with a guide's sense of story.

This collection retells Irish and Welsh legends in clear, approachable prose. Delaney keeps the old stories moving, from heroic battles to tragic love stories, without losing their strangeness.

A bank cashier gives a lift to a young girl and then an enigmatic old man, and those chance encounters spiral into a national scandal. Delaney turns the setup into a tense story of obsession, paranoia, and unraveling sanity.

In wartime Belfast, mill girl Belle McKnight dazzles her coworkers by retelling the films she has seen. Her gift for story collides with suspicion, class pressure, and betrayal in a city marked by conflict.

In 1925, Ellen Morris takes a teaching post in a rural Irish village and finds herself caught between desire, violence, and the demands of church and community. It is a dark village drama with fierce emotional stakes.

Following the path of Boswell and Johnson, Delaney travels through Scotland's western islands with a reader's eye and a broadcaster's curiosity. It is part literary pilgrimage, part travel book, and part conversation across centuries.

In 1950s Ireland, the Kane sisters seem unprepared for Dennis Sykes, a charming predator with a talent for emotional wreckage. Delaney turns family drama into a study of innocence, seduction, and damage.

After the murder of his lover, architect Nicholas Newman is trying to recover in Switzerland when a stranger drags him toward buried Holocaust history. The result is a tense psychological thriller about evil, memory, and survival.

Journalist Christopher Hunter falls for Ann Halpin at first sight, on the day of her wedding. Told in two voices, the novel turns that obsession into a dark story of love, cruelty, and social tension in modern Ireland.

Architect Nicholas Newman is drawn into a violent mystery when a football star hires him and a dead friend's bequest points back to wartime crimes. The story links personal grief, neo Nazi violence, and secrets that refuse to stay buried.

Delaney offers an accessible tour through Irish literature and the writers who shaped it. It works as a lively introduction to the books, voices, and traditions behind Ireland's literary reputation.

An architect's marriage comes under strain as desire, disappointment, and the lure of other possibilities unsettle the life he has built. Delaney treats it as an intimate emotional drama, sharp on the fault lines between love and habit.

A reflective novel about marriage, memory, and the hidden pressures inside ordinary lives. Delaney keeps the drama intimate, showing how old wounds and private loyalties can shape the future.

As a boy, Ronan O'Mara hears a wandering storyteller and never gets over it. His later search for that seanchai becomes a sweeping journey through Ireland's myths, history, and family secrets.

Delaney recounts the ordeal of the Flying Enterprise and Captain Kurt Carlsen's long fight to save his storm broken ship in 1951. It is a tense true story of seamanship, endurance, and duty.

Charles O'Brien, healer, wanderer, and amateur historian, moves through the upheavals that shaped modern Ireland while pursuing the elusive April Burke. It is a big historical novel about land, obsession, and national change.

In 1922, Marine chaplain Robert Shannon comes to Ireland hoping to recover from war and trace his family roots along the river that shares his name. Instead he finds church corruption, civil war, and a country that might still heal him.

When Ben MacCarthy's father abandons the family for a traveling show, Ben sets out to find him and bring him home. The search becomes a coming of age journey through performance, politics, and a changing Ireland.

A sly druid with more cunning than magic tries to win a beautiful young woman's hand. This short tale is playful, sharp, and shaped like an old fireside story.

In wartime Ireland, Ben MacCarthy travels to interview the Matchmaker of Kenmare and finds an unexpected ally in Kate Begley. Their friendship leads into espionage, divided loyalties, and a risky journey far beyond the west coast.

Years after Treasure Island, Jim Hawkins is pulled back into pirate business when a frightened woman asks about one of Flint's marooned men. Old dangers rise again as he chases treasure, secrets, and the shadow of Long John Silver.

A singing pig sets this short Irish tale in motion, and the result is stranger than the setup suggests. Delaney uses the oddness to explore language, belief, and the magic of really listening.

A girl leaves the moon on a moonbeam and brings wonder, comfort, and odd wisdom to the world below. It is a brief, dreamy tale that feels as if it was meant to be heard by a fire.

In 1956 Ireland, Ben MacCarthy returns to a country worn down by poverty, unrest, and old grudges. His search for Venetia Kelly pulls him into political danger and toward the deeper question of what stories can save.

Two siblings are drawn toward the western sea and the old stories that live there, including seals, mermaids, and Hy-Brasil. It is a compact tale of coastal danger, wonder, and belief.

Built from Delaney's podcast on Ulysses, this book walks readers through Joyce's novel in plain, lively language. He explains the jokes, references, and structure without draining away the pleasure.

Delaney traces the vampire story from old myth to Bram Stoker's Dracula and beyond. It is a brisk literary history about blood, sex, immortality, and why the undead still hold such power.