Summer offers from BooksIreland

BooksIreland, the bookstore arm of the Ulster Historical Foundation, specialises in books covering the North of the island and has a very worthwhile sale on at the moment. Not only do the books deserve space on the shelves, there are some pretty significant discounts worth grabbing while you can.

Among the goodies that caught my eye were:

• Scotch-Irish Merchants in Colonial America, by Richard K Macmaster (2009) which explores the realities of life and work for the merchants in the 18th century, and is discounted to £9.99;
  
• Traveller's Accounts as Source Material for Irish historians by C J Woods (2009), with a sale price saving of £35;
  
  
• Researching Scots-Irish Ancestors – The Essential Genealogical Guide to Early Modern Ulster, a 2010 e-book by Dr William Roulston that concentrates on sources for ancestors who lived in 17th and 18th century Ulster (£4.99, saving £3);
  
• Them Wild Woods - an Irish Quaker Family's Transatlantic Correspondence 1818-1877, a 2012 e-book in which nearly all the contemporary residents of Dungannon, Co Tyrone, are mentioned one way or another, for £7.99.
  

Books in the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland series are also marked down (most to just £3.75).

These publications, written in the 1830s, document the landscape, buildings, land-holdings and employment/livelihood of the population of individual counties in the northern half of Ireland immediately before the Great Famine.

Office Manager Kathryn McKelvey tells me that while the sale is expected to continue until the end of August, there is limited availability of some the books. 'Once they are gone, there are no plans to reprint,' she warns. So get your skates on.