Tom Phelan Books in Order

Decades after an IRA operation ends in a boy's death, his surviving twin lives isolated at the edge of an Irish village. Multiple voices reconstruct the violence and concealment that damaged both the survivor and the men responsible.

A former priest returns to Ireland to confront his past and encounters suspicious circumstances surrounding a young woman's death. Buried guilt and a remembered crime emerge through village relationships, bringing religious authority, personal responsibility, and unresolved betrayal into question.

Set in the Irish countryside during the 1940s, this humorous novel portrays the lives of ordinary men and women. Phelan turns his attention to a rural community and the people whose everyday experiences shaped the world of his childhood.

Irish friends Matt Wrenn and Con Hatchel enlist in the British army seeking opportunity, only to face the First World War's trenches. Their families wait at home as wartime trauma and Ireland's political divisions threaten the future they imagined.

Two former members of a religious order are found murdered, their bodies nailed to the floor. Police and journalists pursue the killer through secrets linked to an abusive industrial school, confronting the unresolved consequences of collusion between church and state.

Journalist Patrick Bracken returns to his Irish village to investigate two childhood deaths officially called accidents. Having witnessed what he believes were murders, he presses against old loyalties and collective silence in a community reluctant to revisit its past.

Phelan recalls growing up on a County Laois farm in the 1940s, before electricity and indoor plumbing transformed rural life. Family labor, religious influence, and community traditions shape a childhood marked by hardship, humor, and forms of wealth beyond money.