Showing results by narrator "Aoife McMahon " in All Categories

Chrissy Livingstone grieves over her dad's sudden death. While she cleans out his old things, she discovers something she can't explain: seven photos of schoolboys with the year 1987 stamped on the back. Unable to turn off her desire for the truth, she hunts down the boys in the photos only to find out that three of the seven have committed suicide…. Tracing the clues from Surrey to Santa Monica, Chrissy unearths disturbing ties between her father's work as a financier and the victims.

Standing in the doorway of her grandmother Sylvia’s home, Rose Fleury thought returning here was the answer to all of her problems. She has no job and a broken heart, but Sylvia reminds her that Fleury women are strong and independent. Clutching a family heirloom—a beautiful topaz necklace—Rose promises to be brave like her relatives. Until she finds out that the jewels hide a terrible secret…

Staring up at the magnificent, rose-covered walls of her grandmother’s house, Violet Fleury isn’t sure she’ll be welcome inside. After running from her hometown in Ireland to follow her dreams of acting, she’s back to play Irish legend, Kathleen O’Sullivan, in a local film. She’s vowed to tell the story of the woman her village is so proud of—and to build bridges with the family she drifted away from. But will they give her a second chance?

Maddie is restless in London. She has friends, a job and a sort-of boyfriend, but something in her life is missing. Then she visits the ancient village of Walditch, deep in the Dorset countryside. Something stirs in her, and on a whim she buys a centuries-old cottage and moves there three months later. Her friends think she's crazy, but for Maddie it feels like coming home. Late at night in the cottage, Maddie hears strange noises and sees mist gathering indoors and out.

In early 2018, Erin Darcy created an online art project, "In Her Shoes – Women of the Eighth", to safely and anonymously share private stories of the real and devastating impact of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution of Ireland. In the five months leading up to the referendum on abortion, the project asked a simple question of undecided voters: put yourself in her shoes. Within weeks, Erin was receiving hundreds of stories from a broad spectrum of experiences of planned and unplanned terminations.

At the time of her death in 1815, twenty-nine-year-old Ellen Hutchins had catalogued over a thousand species of seaweed and plants from her native Bantry Bay. Ireland’s first female botanist, Ellen was a major contributor to nineteenth-century scientific discovery. And yet, like so many brilliant women lost in history, it is her personal story that will resonate today. In her remarkable debut novel, Marianne Lee fuses fact with fiction to imagine Ellen’s rich but tormented inner life, repressed by the gender and class confines of her time.

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.

On a boat offshore, a fisherman guts a mackerel as he anxiously awaits a midnight rendezvous. Villagers, one by one, disappear into a sinkhole beneath a yew tree. A nameless girl is taped, bound and put on display in a countryside market. A dazzling and disquieting collection of stories, How to Gut a Fish places the bizarre beside the everyday and then elegantly and expertly blurs the lines. Sheila Armstrong’s exquisitely provocative stories carve their way into your mind and take hold.

A retelling of the favourite Irish fairytale, The Children of Lir. Aífe marries Lir, a chieftain with four children by his previous wife. Jealous of his affection for his children, the witch Aífe turns them into swans for 900 years. Retold through the voice of Aífe, Savage Her Reply is unsettling and dark, feminist and fierce, yet nuanced in its exploration of the guilt of a complex character.

When a couple holidaying in the small Irish village of Doolan disappear one night, leaving their child behind, Chrissy Livingstone has no choice but to involve herself in the mystery surrounding their disappearance. As the toddler is taken into care, it soon becomes apparent that in the close-knit village the couple are not the only ones with secrets to keep.

All but lost and forgotten, Human Fairies were exiled from Earth to another planet in the Milky Way. After their King’s death, they rage a dark war to see who will inherit the throne. The Pink Fairy, the most powerful sorceress in the land, foretells of a child born in a dungeon. But the child’s evil uncle, Markolous, has a very different plan for her. The Pink Fairy encounters several unusual comrades and enlists their aid to save Clarissa and fulfill the Human Fairy prophecy to bring light back to their world.

This is a story of true love and deep soul connection, about being the sole carer for a spouse with terminal cancer, about when to love means to let go and about what the author has learned from her grief following her husband's death in 2018.

A little girl finds herself inside a bouncy ball that takes her all the way up to the stars. On the way, she meets monkeys and birds and even a crocodile! When she comes back down, the Earth is different - cleaner, brighter, happier, and filled with wonders such as a lollipop tree and a real, live teddy bear!

Is it possible to be young, progressive and a Catholic? Ellen Coyne is about to find out.... 'You know, this isn’t a Catholic country anymore,' someone proudly declared in a Dublin pub where Ellen Coyne was celebrating the repeal of the Eighth Amendment. About to turn 30, like many her age, Ellen had left the Church a long time ago, but she had never stopped believing in and talking to God. Now, she suddenly realised she wasn’t quite ready for this statement to be true, however much of a contradiction it seemed to present with some of her most strongly held views.

In March 2017, Niamh Fitzpatrick’s life fell apart overnight. Her beloved sister, Dara, was killed in a helicopter crash. Soon afterwards, Niamh’s marriage ended, and she feared she would lose her home. Life as she knew it was gone forever, and the grief was overwhelming. A psychologist for many years, Niamh’s job is to help clients through the toughest times in their lives.

In 1914, when Nicandra is eight, all is well in the grand Irish estate, Deer Forest. Maman is beautiful and adored. Dada, silent and small, mooches contentedly around the stables. Aunt Tossie, of the giant heart and bosom, is widowed but looks splendid in weeds. The butler, the groom, the land-steward, the maids, the men - each as a place and knows it. Then, astonishingly, the perfect surface is shattered; Maman does something too dreadful ever to be spoken of.

Jessica and Jane have been living together for six months and are devoted friends - or are they? Jessica loves her friend with the cruelty of total possessiveness; Jane is rich, silly, and drinks rather too many brandy-and-sodas. Watching from the sidelines, their friend Sylvester regrets that Jane should be 'loved and bullied and perhaps even murdered by that frightful Jessica', but decides it's none of his business. When the Irish gentleman George Playfair meets Jane, however, he thinks otherwise and entices her to Ireland where the battle for her devotion begins.

Durraghglass is a beautiful mansion in Southern Ireland, now crumbling in neglect. The time is the present - a present that churns with the bizarre passions of its owners' past. The Swifts - three sisters of marked eccentricity, defiantly christened April, May and Baby June, and their only brother, one-eyed Jasper - have little in common, save vivid memories of darling Mummy, and a long lost youth peculiarly prone to acts of treachery.

The first in a brand-new series by the foster 'super-gran', Wicked Girl is the shocking true story of the very first case Jeanie Doyle dealt with: a baby girl who was found abandoned on the steps of a church just before Christmas. While the 14-year-old mother was tracked down, Jeanie took her little daughter into her own care. But while she tried to help the two of them heal and bond, the terrible truth about the baby's father was revealed.

When Marianne’s carefully constructed life and marriage fall apart, she is forced to return to Ancaire, the ramshackle seaside house perched high on a cliff by the Irish Sea. There she must rebuild her relationship with her mother, Rita, a flamboyant artist and recovering alcoholic who lives by her own rules. Marianne left home when she was 15 following a traumatic and tragic incident. She never planned to return, and now she has to face the fact that some plans don’t work out the way you wanted them to.