Maria Kelly

What kind of God can do miracles...but chooses to allow suffering? The doctors had left David with no hope. The family was scared. They told Maria she may need to flee from her mentally ill husband. David, on the other hand, planned to take his own life. God had other plans. When it was all said and done, and after all the miracles they had witnessed, one question remained. Why does God allow people to suffer when He has the power to stop it? This book is a true story of hope and God's faithfulness.

Despite its comparatively small geographical size, the Diocese of Clonfert, in the province of Connacht, is a treasure house of national and ecclesiastical history and folklore. Its founder was the great Brendan the Navigator who discovered America 1,000 years before Columbus and his ‘doom burdened caravels’ reached there. Clonfert itself became so renowned afar as a centre of scholarly learning that Elizabeth I originally intended to site Trinity College there. The Battle of Aughrim was Ireland’s Waterloo, heralding the Penal Laws and earning the reputation as being the bloodiest battle in the history of our nation. ‘The Siege of Saundersfort’ in Woodford in 1886 marked the climax of the Land War when the people cried ‘Enough!’ to the excesses of landlordism. In Clonfert: Croziers and Pikestaffs: Declan Kelly skilfully reveals the stories of the Diocese. Above all, this is the almost forgotten story of the people and of their struggles, joys, and heroics.

Ballinasloe Reivisted

Between August and December 1348, 14,000 people died in Dublin from the plague, a rate of 100 a day. This horrendous disease was carried to its victims by rats, and once infected, those victims could die within 3 days. This is the only book to investigate the disease and its effects specifically in Dublin. Maria Kelly examines the fear, panic, and superstition surrounding the outbreak that many believed was a punishment from God for their sins.