* The Age of Philip II King of Spain (1988)
* Wits, Wenches and Warriors: Women in Shakespeare's Plays (1990)
* The Sublime Savage: A Study in Social and Literary Transformation (1991)
* The Last of the Irish Kings: The Fall and Rise of Gaelic Lordship (1996)
* Gender, History, and Literature: The Long Debate (1997)
* At the Court of the Papess Joan: Stories from the Life and Times of Europe's Most Famous Transvestite (2000)
* The Four Horsemen: The Catholic Church in Irish Life, 1870-1914 (2002, co-edited)
* Ungrateful Daughters: The Story of an Irish Mother and Her Three Daughters (2004)
* The Rise of the City (2012, co-edited)
Articles
* "The Queens, their Husbands and the Nation" in Gender and Colonial Identity: Irish and British Women in India, 1780-1900, edited by Antoinette Burton (London, 2001)
* "Introduction: Women and the City in Seventeenth-Century London" in Women and the City, 1500-1800, edited by Judith M. Bennett and Fiona MacDonald (Oxford, 2006)
* "Women in the City" in The Cambridge Guide to the Arts in Ireland, edited by Alex Davis and Claire Connolly (Cambridge: CUP, 2010)
* "Rethinking the Reformation" in The Cambridge History of Ireland Vol II: 1550-1730, edited by Toby Barnard (Cambridge, 2012)
* "Early Women's Voices" in The Routledge History of Women in Europe Since 1700, edited by Laura Gowing and Helen Tierney (London, 2013)
* "The City, Women and Space c1500-1800" in Gender, Urban Space and Infrastructure, edited by Lisa Marie Griffith and Barbara Penner (London: Routledge, 2014)
* "The City and the Gendered History of Religion in Early Modern Europe" in Religion in Urban Life in Europe: 1550–1800: Challenges to Orthodoxy, edited by Alexandra Walsham and Emidio Campi (London: Routledge, 2016)
* "Early Modern Women's Writing" in The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Irish History 1500-1700, edited by Jane Ohlmeyer (Oxford: OUP, 2017)