Emperor of Ice Cream

by Brian Moore

Published 13 September 1965


One of The Guardian’s “1,000 Books to Read Before You Die

This underrated classic of contemporary Irish literature tells the “utterly transfixing” story of a lonely, poverty-stricken spinster in 1950s Belfast (The Boston Globe)


Judith Hearne is an unmarried woman of a certain age who has come down in society. She has few skills and is full of the prejudices and pieties of her genteel Belfast upbringing. But Judith has a secret life. And she is just one heartbreak away from revealing it to the world.

Hailed by Graham Greene, Thomas Flanagan, and Harper Lee alike, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne is an unflinching and deeply sympathetic portrait of a woman destroyed by self and circumstance. First published in 1955, it marked Brian Moore as a major figure in English literature (he would go on to be short-listed three times for the Booker Prize) and established him as an astute chronicler of the human soul.


“Seldom in modern fiction has any character been revealed so completely or been made to seem so poignantly real.” The New York Times

A psychological masterpiece filled with passion and suspense, The Temptation of Eileen Hughes is a stunning exploration of obsession and morality. Eileen Hughes is young, hauntingly beautiful and very naive. Befriended by her wealthy emplyers, Bernard and Mona McAuley, she leaves Ulster for the first time in her life to spend a holiday with them in London. But all is not well with the McAuleys, and, in her bewildering innocence, Eileen fails to see the perilous vulerability of her position until it is almost too late...

Colour of Blood

by Brian Moore

Published 24 September 1987
A beautifully written Hitchcockian thriller, full of suspense and intrigue. Somewhere in an unnamed Eastern bloc country, someone is out to silence Cardinal Bem. Is it the Secret Police, or is it - more shockingly - fanatical Catholic activists who believe that Bem, by keeping the peace between Church and State, has finally compromised himself too far? Narrowly escaping an assassination attempt, Bem is abducted by sinister, anonymous men, and spirited away to a 'safe house' against his will. Evading his unknown captors, he is faced with a horrifying proposition: no longer sure of whom he can trust, Bem realises that he alone can avert the revolution which threatens to tear his country apart...

The Doctor's Wife

by Brian Moore

Published 18 November 1976
Sheila Redden, a quiet, 37-year-old doctor's wife, has long been looking forward to returning with her husband to the town where they spent their honeymoon over twenty years ago. Little does she suspect that after a chance encounter in Paris she will end up spending her holiday with a man she has only just met, an American man ten years her junior.

Four weeks later, Sheila is nowhere to be found. Owen Deane, her brother, follows her steps to Paris in the hopes of shedding some light on her disappearance, but soon begins to wonder if she will ever reappear.

Interspersed with Sheila's harrowing memories of her hometown of Ulster at the height of the troubles, this is a compelling and powerful tale of love, escape and abandon.