Irish Mystery

In a town full of liars, who can you trust? When Detective Finnegan Beck is demoted from his high-powered job in Dublin and relocated in disgrace to the small Irish town of Cross Beg, he predicts boredom will be his biggest threat. But then a beautiful local teenage girl is found strangled in the cold, dark woods a mile from town. The prime suspect is the seemingly gentle drifter who found Tanya’s body. Beck seems to be the only person who can’t escape the feeling that Tanya wasn’t killed at random.

"The Other Crowd", "The Good People", "The Wee Folk", and "Them" are a few of the names given to the fairies by the people of Ireland. Honored for their gifts and feared for their wrath, the fairies remind us to respect the world we live in and the forces we cannot see. In these tales of fairy forts, fairy trees, ancient histories, and modern true-life encounters with the Other Crowd, Eddie Lenihan opens our eyes to this invisible world with the passion and bluntness of a seanchai, a true Irish storyteller.

Callahan Garrity is the owner of House Mouse, a cleaning service that tidies up after Atlanta’s elite. She’s also a former cop and a part-time sleuth. She and her coterie of devoted helpers can ransack a house for clues faster than it takes a fingerprint to set. When Callahan Garrity gets caught in a liquor store holdup on the way home from a St. Paddy’s Day party, one of her best friends is shot.

When human remains are found in a fisherman's crab pot, Detective Alana Mack faces her toughest case yet. As she unravels a complex web of genetic links, Alana becomes the target of a seemingly random attack, leaving her injured and reliant on her ex-husband for help.

Dermot Michael Coyne of Chicago goes to Ireland to uncover the true story of his grandparents, who left Ireland under a veil of mystery in the 1920s. There, Coyne meets Nuala Anne McGreal, a college student who helps him translate his grandmother's diaries. His grandparents, the O'Riadas, and the bloody history of Ireland from 1919 to 1923 are mysteriously linked to present-day peace talks between the Irish and English.

Three years after they narrowly escaped the IRA’s worst punishment for informing, Northern Irish sisters Tessa and Marian Daly have built a new life in Dublin with their young children. Though Tessa is haunted by the abrupt and violent end to her old life, she does her best to immerse herself in the joys of Finn’s childhood and the rhythms of her new job at The Irish Observer. It’s a small island, though, and just as quickly as they disappeared, figures from the sisters’ past surface to drag them back into the conflict.

Detective Finnegan Beck is called to a crime scene - a remote house near the rural Irish town of Cross Beg - where a dog lies whimpering beside his beloved owner’s body. At first it looks like a burglary gone wrong. But Beck spots something his colleagues didn’t. The victim, Eddie Kavanagh, was wearing his smartest clothes. He’d brushed his hair. And, on closer inspection, a small velvet box containing an engagement ring is discovered in his pocket, along with a letter to a nameless woman, which seems to suggest she’s in danger.

1916: Betty O’Fogarty is proud and clever. Spurred on by Betty's belief in her husband Seamus’s talent as a violin-maker and her desire to escape rural life, the couple elopes to Dublin. As Dublin is plunged into chaos as the Easter Rebellion of 1916, Betty gives birth to her first child to the sound of gunfire and shelling. A hundred years later, secrets churn their way to the surface, and Betty’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren uncover both Betty’s ruthlessness and her unique brand of heroism.

As 1995 dawns in the North of Ireland, Belfast is a city of army patrols, bombed-out buildings, and “peace walls” segregating one community from the other. But the IRA has called a ceasefire. So, it’s as good a time as any for Monty Collins and Father Brennan Burke to visit the city: Monty to do a short gig in a law firm, and Brennan to reconnect with family. And it’s a good time for Brennan’s cousin Ronan to lay down arms and campaign for election in a future peacetime government. But then a man goes off a bridge on a dark, lonely road; a rogue IRA enforcer is shot; and a series of car bombs remains an unsolved crime.

A mythical man known as Nightmare haunted young children for years. Until he became real. DCI Harry McNeil knows the legend all too well. Growing up in the Highlands, Nightmare was on his and every other child's mind as they went to sleep. Then, Nightmare claimed his first victim. A young girl, found dead in an abandoned cemetery with the words, I am Nightmare, carved into her chest. Two more victims, the same words carved into them. Then Nightmare disappears. Now, years later, there have been reports of graffiti being sprayed around Inverness and on graves in old cemeteries.

10am: A mother rushes for a train after dropping her daughter at school but is reported missing when she doesn't return to pick her up. 2.47pm: The same train causes the death of a young woman; her body bound and placed on the tracks. When Detective Alana Mack discovers the missing mother has vanished from the same train that claimed the life of the young woman, she fears the worst. A killer is on the loose, targeting women and leaving their broken bodies scattered across Dublin's Dart train line.

One of the best-known collections of W. B. Yeats' prose, The Celtic Twilight explores the old connection between the Irish people and the magical world of fairies. Yeats, by traveling the land in the early 20th century and talking to the common people about their experiences with the creatures, yielded a colorful overview of Celtic fairy folklore.

April 20th, 1968: Enoch Powell, MP for Wolverhampton South West, gives a speech that shakes a community and Britain to its very core. Words that provoke, that divide...that profoundly affect the lives of those they touch. Mrs. Georgina Verington-Delaunay is an administrator working in the Conservative riding office of Enoch Powell. Frank and Christine are art students inadvertently caught in an undercurrent of intolerance. Nelson and his aunt Irene are Jamaican immigrants striving to make a life for themselves in a turbulent atmosphere.

The Aldens visit Ireland and stay in a beautiful castle that's now a hotel! But the caretaker seems very superstitious, and at night they see a mysterious figure who walks the halls carrying a lantern. Could it be one of the banshees of ancient legend? The Boxcar Children must discover the secret that Duncarraig castle is hiding!

Seventeen-year-old Dayna Walsh is struggling to cope with her OCD; the aftermath of being outed as bisexual in her conservative Irish town; and the return of her long-absent mother, who barely seems like a parent. But all that really matters to her is ascending and finally, finally becoming a full witch - plans that are complicated when another coven, rumored to have a sordid history with black magic, arrives in town with premonitions of death. Dayna immediately finds herself at odds with the bewitchingly frustrating Meiner King, the granddaughter of their coven leader.

Lady Audley is universally adored: Beautiful, kind and charming, she enamors all whom she meets. It is not until the strange disappearance of widower George Talboys that her behavior takes an odd turn. George's friend, Robert Audley, Lady Audley's nephew-in-law, is on the case; an upper-class layabout turned detective, he is determined to get to the bottom of things.

In 1972, Morgan Llywelyn tells the story of Ireland from 1950-1972 as seen through the eyes of young Barry Halloran, son and grandson of Irish revolutionaries. Northern Ireland has become a running sore, poisoning life on both sides of the Irish border. Following family tradition, at 18, Barry joins the Irish Republican Army to help complete what he sees as "the unfinished revolution". But things are no longer as clear cut as they once were.

April in Florida and Benedicta (Ben) O'Keeffe is enjoying balmy temperatures during the last few days of a six month stint with a US law firm. A week later, she returns to Glendara, Inishowen, where a charity cycle event is taking place. The town is abuzz with excitement, but it starts to rain, causing the cyclists to postpone the start of their event. The rain doesn't stop—it becomes relentless, torrential. In the middle of the night, Police Sergeant Tom Molloy is called out to Mamore Gap, where a body, dislodged from a high bank by the heavy rain, has fallen onto a passing vehicle.

Tony, Hugh and Karen thought they'd seen the last of each other 30 years ago. Half a lifetime has passed, and memories have been buried. But when they are asked to reunite—to lay ghosts to rest for the good of the future—they all have their own reasons to agree. As they take the ferry from Northern Ireland to Scotland, the past is brought into terrible focus—some things are impossible to leave behind.

This collection includes The Mystery at the Calgary Stampede, The Sleepy Hollow Mystery, and The Legend of the Irish Castle.