Showing results by narrator "Aoife McMahon " in All Categories

Beth didn’t want to move to Dublin - she misses her old life and her best friend back in London - and to make matters worse someone keeps messing up her new room.... When she discovers that a boy called Robbie, from the 1950s, is slipping through time and into her house, things start to get really weird! Beth and Robbie create havoc together, learn about their different worlds and manage to help each other when they’re down. But the 1950s and the present day sometimes seem very far apart.... Can their friendship stand the test of time?

London. Private investigator Chrissy Livingstone’s dirty work has taken her down a different path to her family. But when her upper-class sister begs her to locate a friend missing after a horrific train crash, she feels duty-bound to assist. Though when the two dig deeper, all the evidence seems to lead to one mysterious conclusion: The woman doesn’t want to be found.

It started with the judge. He was about to sentence five of Cork's most notorious criminals. But his body has just turned up, beaten and broken, on an isolated road in his burned-out car. Now four members of a rival gang have been shot, and in retaliation three civilians have been blown up. To Katie's horror, Cork is becoming a gang battleground like Dublin. Can Katie save the city? Can she save herself?

Best Loved Irish Legends brings together some of Ireland’s most loved folk stories for a younger audience. Stories from long, long ago, part of an ancient oral tradition, handed down from generation to generation and written down by the Christian monks of medieval Ireland.

A young girl has been found in a deserted cemetery. She speaks a foreign language, and she cries for her mother. But nobody claims her. Nobody knows who she is. On the streets of Cork, beggars are being horrifically murdered. But why would anyone want to kill the city's homeless? It's up to DS Katie Maguire to find out. Katie's fiancé is fighting his own battle: against illegal puppy farming, a lucrative black market run by Ireland's most fearsome gangs. When the investigations collide, who will Katie save first?

Heather’s beloved daughter, Kayla, is her world. She is 15, a brilliant basketball player and a fierce friend. Heather and Kayla have always had a special relationship. For so many years it was just the two of them, watching Friends, baking cupcakes and laughing together. But now Kayla knows her time is short, and she wants to give something back to the mother she loves more than anyone else in the world. A gift that will change Heather’s life.

A collection of 13 dark, feminist retellings of traditional fairy tales that follow in the tradition of Angela Carter; stories from Cinderella to Rumpelstiltskin, tales of mermaids and monsters, are given a unique witchy makeover....

Since following her heart and moving from her comfortable home in Scotland to the harsh mountainside of Ardtur, County Donegal, Hannah McGinley hasn’t had the easiest life. But surrounded by her two children and her loving husband Patrick she has found happiness. When her daughter returns home with news that her school may close as one of the teachers is moving away, Hannah feels compelled to take the vacant post. With the schoolmaster Daniel having lost his sight, Hannah knows that he won’t be able to manage the children alone.

Set in rural Ireland in the early 1960s, House of Memories concludes the story of two neighbouring farms and their feuding families. Following his brutish father's death, young Danny Conway strives to rescue the family farm from ruin. When all seems hopeless, help comes from the most unexpected quarter. A story of grief and trying to cope with loss but also of resilience in the face of family tragedy. No one knows the minutiae of country life as Alice Taylor does, and again she displays her unique ability to capture its rhythms and cadences.

At Mossgrove, the Phelan family farm, longtime hired hand Jack plays peacemaker as widow Martha Phelan battles her young son, Peter, who wants to modernise the farm. Tensions on the home front are bitter enough, but at the Conway farm across the river, more trouble is brewing. Slovenly Matt Conway feels trapped and abuses his wife, Biddy. Spurred on by a misguided belief that the Phelans got the best of him in a loan to buy land, he keeps vigil at a fence post plotting revenge....

Ava Connors is comfortable with her life just as it is, still living in the tiny terrace house where she was brought up by her grandmother, Maggie, seeing her long-term boyfriend, Finlay, and working in a florist. But Maggie’s health is declining, and Finlay is tired of waiting for Ava to make a commitment. Ava has never really known her mother, Scarlett; when she inherits an old and dilapidated house it ignites an interest in the mother who abandoned her as a child. Why did Scarlett leave her to be brought up by her grandmother? Ava begins to question her past.

Peggy Bowden has not had an easy life. As a teenager, her mother was committed to an asylum, and then a local priest forced her into an abusive marriage. But when her husband dies in an accident, Peggy sees an opportunity to start again and trains as a midwife. In 1950s Dublin it is not easy for a woman to make a living, and Peggy sees a chance to start a business, and soon a lucrative maternity home is up and running. But when Peggy realizes that the lack of birth control is an issue for women, she uses their plight as a way to make more money. Very soon Peggy is on the wrong side of the law.

Mary Creighton was just 15 when she found herself pregnant out of wedlock in 1960s Ireland. She dreamed of a happy life with her child, but that was shattered when she was sent away to Castlepollard - a home for mothers and their unborn babies. Stripped of their clothes and forced into gruelling work whilst pregnant, those who survived childbirth were made to force-feed their children for adoption into wealthy families. Babies were ripped out of their mothers' hands, but Mary refused to let that happen to her. She managed to escape only to later lose her beautiful daughter to social services and the meddling nuns....

On the night that Aunty dies, the Raggedy Witches come for Mup's mam. Pale, cold, relentless, they will do anything to coax Mam back to Witches Borough. When they kidnap Mup's dad, Mup and her mam must leave the mundane world to rescue him. But Mam is strange on this side of the border - striding, powerful, and distant. Even if they can save Dad, Mup is not sure anything will ever be the same again....

For single mother Kate O'Hara, there was no decision to make. Her daughter, Rosie, is one of a small percentage of children with a disorder that prevents them from being immunized. All Kate can do is hope that herd immunity keeps the disease at bay and her little girl safe. For Madeleine Cooper, vaccinations were a leap of faith she wasn't prepared to take. Which was why, following much soul searching, she and her husband declined controversial measles shots for their daughter, Clara.

Izzie Silver left the small Irish town of Tamarin behind her for life in New York. She's big, beautiful, and dreams of her own model agency for plus-sized women (what her grandmother would call "healthy" women). Life is good--but she's just broken one of her cardinal rules and fallen for a married man.

Last year, DS Katie Maguire and her team destroyed the biggest drug trafficker in Cork. So how is the city's drug trade at an all-time high? Meanwhile, a spate of violent attacks which leave victims severely disabled has brought confidence in the Garda to an all-time low. As Katie investigates, she realises that the two cases might be connected. Someone is using brain-damaged victims to smuggle drugs into the country. And the only way to find out more is to go in undercover....

Dear Elizabeth, I've been watching you. I hope to see you...soon. Liz Cafferky is on the up. Rescued from her dark past by the owner of a drop-in centre for older men, Liz soon finds herself as the charity's face - and the unwilling darling of the Dublin media. Amidst her claustrophobic fame, Liz barely notices a letter from a new fan. But then one of the centre's clients is brutally murdered, and Elizabeth receives another, more sinister note. Running from her own ghosts, Liz is too scared to go to the police.

An exclusive short story for World Book Day from one of our best-selling authors.... Sometimes all we need is a relaxing holiday in the sun. For Anthony and Carole, a week in a lovely Greek hotel has helped them mend the cracks in their marriage. For widowed Jessica, it’s the longest she’s ever gone without visiting her beloved husband’s grave. However when the flight doesn’t go according to plan, they are each forced to face up to the very things they have been avoiding for so long.

Being held hostage at gunpoint by her childhood friend is not Dr Heather Gilmore's idea of a good day at work. It only gets worse when she hears that her 19-year-old daughter, Leah, has been kidnapped. Sergeant Claire Boyle wasn't expecting to get caught up in a hostage situation during a doctor's appointment. When it becomes apparent that the kidnapping is somehow linked to the hostage taker, a woman called Eileen Delaney, she is put in charge of finding the missing girl.