Irish Fiction Thrillers

Sept jours d'idylle... Il aura suffi d'une semaine pour que s'inverse le cours de l'existence monotone de Sarah. Depuis qu'elle a rencontré Eddie sur une petite route de campagne anglaise, la jeune femme est certaine qu'un bonheur sans nuages les attend. Sa vie débute enfin. Le jour où il lui annonce qu'il doit s'absenter pour un voyage prévu de longue date, Sarah n'a aucune inquiétude. Mais le temps passe et Eddie ne revient pas. La laisse sans nouvelles. Ne répond plus à ses messages. Rien.

Susan has everything she ever wanted. A loving husband, an angelic daughter and the cottage of her dreams in County Cork. Her picture-perfect life seems too good to be true. And it is. At a housewarming party with their new neighbours, her daughter Amelia goes missing. As friends become suspects, Susan’s life spirals out of control. And when Amelia’s yellow cardigan is dredged from the lake, every parent’s worst nightmare suddenly seems horribly real. In the aftermath of Amelia’s disappearance Susan and her husband Paul are not themselves. Someone is hiding something.

New York in 1803 is rife with tension as the city expands, and whoever knows where the city will build can control it. And violence builds as a mysterious provocateur pits the city’s black and Irish gangs against each other. When a young black girl is found stabbed to death, both Justy Flanagan, now a city marshal, and Kerry O’Toole, now a school teacher, decide separately to go after the killer. They each find their way to a shadowy community on the fringes of the growing city, where they uncover a craven political conspiracy....

As a widowed mother of three, new love seems impossible for Freya - until she meets Duncan, and suddenly she feels alive again. While Freya’s older children are less than welcoming, six-year-old Sophie helps Duncan find his place in the family - but even Sophie harbours fears that threaten to overshadow any chance of a new start. The past is hard to leave behind when pictures of Freya’s idolised late husband hang in every room, and the more Duncan tries to find the source of Sophie’s anxiety, the more he is convinced that Reuben was not the perfect husband and father Freya remembers.

Devastated by a broken engagement, Stella Jackson leaves her old life behind for a new start in rural Scotland. But when she arrives in the remote coastal village of Arisaig, nothing is what she expected. At the edge of Arisaig sits Munro House; grand, imposing and said to be cursed by a string of tragic deaths. No less intriguing is its eccentric and handsome young owner, Jamie Munro, who hires Stella as his assistant while he pursues a seemingly impossible aim.

When Charlotte McKay wakes up in a hospital bed with no memory of how she got there, all she wants is to go back to the perfect London flat she shares with her husband, and the impressive career she’s worked so hard to build. But something’s not right. Her husband David is at her bedside - but so is a three-year-old girl, and she’s calling Charlotte "Mummy"....

A wave lifts the stern of the boat, rigging groans in protest and a crash comes from down below, as the wails of the cargo rise above the howl of the storm. It's a wild Christmas Day on the rugged Northern Irish coast. But there's no time for turkey and pud with the family for Detectives Harvey and Birch. DS Aaron Birch leans into the wind and driving sleet. Thick, scudding clouds make the streets of Lisburn almost as dark as early evening. Then he gets the tip-off. Smugglers coming into a boatyard in Bangor.

Sue Hearn is planting a herb garden on the site of her grandfather's old greenhouse. She's spent the morning digging up all sorts of odds and ends already. But she doesn't expect this grisly find. A skull. Could it be the remains of her mother, Monica, who went missing thirty years ago? Sue's father, in hospital with dementia, insinuates that a police officer was involved in her mother's disappearance. But can he be trusted?

In this gothic, virtuoso debut collection, Mike McCormack dispenses nightmares both stylish and macabre. "A Is for Ax" offers alphabetized look at the killing of a parent, while the title story tracks a chilling sibling rivalry. Other works here offer multiple-quiz on the road to Calvary, a door-to-door saleswoman trafficking in strange and menacing feats, and a self-mutilating artist pushing himself to the limit. These sly and dangerous stories show us a young writer who was already a master of wicked formal play, and whose sly takes on life and death remain profoundly unsettling.

What happens when an intrepid band of thrill-seeking, rollicking Americans ventures out in search of adrenaline? They learn the hard way that having everything means you have that much more to lose. Orla, a beautiful and sharp-witted young Irish woman, saves the day, earning their loyalty. She proves to be a valuable addition to the globe-trekking crew on a high-stakes journey where discoveries unravel at every turn.

Crookedwood, quiet Irish midlands town, place of secrets, past and present. Sarah left it behind years ago for life in the city, where she's now a rising star of the Dublin culinary scene. She's home to help her mother sell the family farm. One evening, while out walking in the nearby woods, Sarah is chased by a man and his vicious dog, narrowly escaping injury. In the days to follow—as painful memories resurface of another dark night in the woods years before—further unsettling events unfold, and Sarah becomes convinced that she is under threat.

Dana's young life revolves around her martial arts, taught to her by her mother, her father's art gallery, and her girlfriend. Having witnessed her mother's brutal murder, Dana descends into the dark underworld of drug lords and murderers, relying on her martial art skills for revenge. The drug lords she chases quickly give Dana the nickname "Red Bitch" Dana assembles a small crew of confident, successful women and goes after the killers.

A relaxing sailing trip on his day off becomes anything but for DSI Mick Hays when a body is found at sea. The coastguard pluck the corpse from the ocean with ease, but establishing the dead man's identity won't be straightforward. And when pathology indicates he was murdered, Hays' partner DI Maureen Lyons is put in charge of the investigation. Good forensics and a nose for trouble lead Lyons to a small hamlet in an isolated part of the coast. But the locals, who are running a smooth bootleg liquor operation, are none too forthcoming with information.

Fi McKinnery is full of nerves as the gorgeous Mae B (aka her best friend Robyn) takes to the stage for her debut at drag club TRASH, but Mae B is dazzling…that is until local queen Eve lampoons her performance and ruins the show. So when Eve turns up dead later that night, face down in the gutter of a rain-soaked Dublin street, the timing seems awfully suspicious… The police are quick to rule Eve’s death an accident, but Fi is convinced it was foul play.

Lucy Hall arrives in the Seychelles determined to leave her worries behind. The tropical paradise looks sun-soaked and picture-perfect - but as Lucy soon discovers, appearances can be very deceptive. A deadly secret lurks in the island's history, buried deep but not forgotten. And it is about to come to light. As black clouds begin to gather over what promised to be a relaxing family break, Lucy realises that her father stands in the eye of the coming storm.

Dividers is a stand-alone novel that pays homage to stories told by Stanley Kubrick. Billionaire Jacob Calbraw has just started a relationship with famed singer Celeste Marie. Their forbidden love affair has stirred the wrath of Jacob's father, Earl Calbraw. Since the two billionaires have been at war for years, and Earl still has Celeste under contract, the situation comes to a head in rapid fashion. To further complicate things, Jacob awakens frequently in odd places, having lost several hours from his memory.

If you see him it’s already too late.... Some secrets can’t be hidden. The Fullers are the picture-perfect family, a wealthy couple with a grand home in the middle of remote woodland. But even they have something to hide - and it will prove fatal. Some crimes can’t be forgotten. Psychologist Dr Jessie Flynn and DI Marilyn Simmons arrive at the Fullers' home to find a suburban nightmare. A crime scene more disturbing than anything they have ever encountered. Some killers can’t be stopped.

Absalom “Abbie” Kearney grew up an outsider in her own hometown. Even being the adopted daughter of a revered cop couldn’t keep Abbie’s troubled past from making her a misfit in the working-class Irish American enclave of South Buffalo. And now, despite a Harvard degree and a police detective’s badge, she still struggles to earn the respect and trust of those she’s sworn to protect. But all that may change, once the killing starts.

The Beetle tells the tale of an evil, ancient Egyptian spirit seeking revenge on an up-and-coming British politician, Paul Lessingham. The shape-shifting creature that pursues Lessingham is possessed of hypnotic powers and takes different forms, both male and female, as well as morphing into a beetle - a figure that induces terror in its victims.

Scrapped Spring is in the air, but the ladies of the Cumberland Creek Scrapbook Crop hardly have time to stop and smell the roses. Not when famed Irish dancer Emily McGlashen is found murdered in her studio just after the St. Patrick's Day parade - and one of the Crop's own members is the prime suspect. Vera's dance studio may have suffered when Emily waltzed into town, but the croppers know she's not a vengeful murderer. Lucky for her, co-scrapbooker Annie is a freelance reporter eager to vindicate her friend. What she discovers is a puzzling labyrinth of secrets that only add question marks to Emily's murder.