Showing results by narrator "Aoife McMahon" in All Categories

The story of a relationship that everyone thought was forever and which is now in danger of being for never, The Break is about getting older and staying in love when life, real life, is trying to pull you apart.

Orphaned as a young child, Mirin O'Malley has been brought up by her grandparents on their isolated, rambling estate Hob's Hallow. Long ago her family prospered due to a deal struck with the mer, the terrifying creatures who live in the depths of the sea: safety for their merchant ships in return for a child of each generation. But for many years the family have been unable to keep their side of the bargain and their fortunes have suffered as a result. When Mirin's grandfather dies, her grandmother puts in train a plan to restore their glory - but at the price of Mirin's freedom.

When Lily McDermott walks in to find her husband of just three months in bed with a famous actress, life as she knows it is over. Lily thinks things can't get any worse when she sees photos of her husband and his new lover splashed across the glossy magazine pages, but when she loses her job, too, she is at her lowest ebb and turns to baking to soothe her soul. Wounded and broken, she has to try to pick herself up again with the help of her best friend, Frankie. With her encouragement, Lily decides to turn her hobby into a business and sets up Baked with Love.

Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in the west of Ireland, but the similarities end there. In school, Connell is popular and well-liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation—awkward but electrifying—something life-changing begins. Normal People is a story of mutual fascination, friendship and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find they can't.

One day, sitting in traffic, Stella Sweeney attempts a good deed. The resulting car crash changes her life. But in this event is born the seed of something which will take Stella thousands of miles from her old life, turning an ordinary woman into a superstar, wrenching her whole family apart. For the first time real, honest-to-goodness happiness is just within her reach. But is Stella Sweeney, Dublin housewife, ready to grasp it?

When Declan Lorne, the last remaining knight in Ireland, dies suddenly, an ancient title passes with him. But his estate on Ireland’s rugged south-west coast is left to his three daughters. The two eldest, Ottie and Pip, inherit in line with expectations, but to everyone’s surprise - and dismay - it is the errant baby of the family, Willow, who gets the castle. Why her? Something unknown - something terrible - made her turn her back on her family three years earlier, escaping to Dublin and vowing never to return....

Fans of Marian Keyes, Lisa Jewell and Santa Montefiore will love Sunday Times best-selling author Sheila O'Flanagan's The Missing Wife. Have you ever wanted to disappear? When Imogen Naughton vanishes, everyone who knows her is shocked. She has a perfect marriage. Her handsome husband treats her like a princess. She's always said how lucky she is. So why has she left? And how will she survive without Vince?

Cathy Connolly discovers the bones of a baby concealed in the hem of an old wedding dress. When the dress' original owner, Lavinia Grant, is found dead in a Dublin suburb, Cathy is drawn deep into a complex web of secrets and lies spun by three generations of women. Meanwhile, a fugitive killer has already left two dead in execution style killings across the Atlantic - and now he's in Dublin with old scores to settle. Can the team track him down before he kills again?

Mary Kate takes a deep breath as she stands outside 24 Merrion Square with its red front door and pretty rose garden. Grieving from her recent heartbreak, will returning to the Irish boarding house be the second chance she so desperately needs?

Sent away to convent school at the age of six, Irini McGuire has never really known her celebrated archaeologist mother, Bridget, who lives on the paradise island of Santorini. So, when Irini receives news that Bridget has been injured at a dig and is in coma she knows it is time to return to the island of her birth. Discovering her mother's notes, and driven by rumours that her mother's injury was no accident, Irini starts to reveal the dark secrets behind her family's separation. Can she unearth the truth about her parents and her past before it is too late?

Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a distribution warehouse and asks him if he'd like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a break-up and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen and Simon are still young—but life is catching up with them.

981 AD. The Viking King of Dublin is dead. His young widow, Gormflaith, has ambitions for her son – and herself – but Ireland is a dangerous place and kings tend not to stay kings for long. Gormflaith also has a secret. She is one of the Fomorians, an immortal race who can do fire-magic. She has kept her powers hidden at all costs, for there are other immortals in this world – like the Tuatha DE Danann, a race of warriors who are sworn to kill Fomorians.

For one week, everything in Luke Miller's life is perfect. Surprised with a belated honeymoon by his wife, Rose, he's had seven days with her in a Caribbean paradise. It's more than he ever thought he'd deserve. But as they pack their bags, Rose breaks down, confessing that on the day they left London, a violent man from her past tracked her down and broke into their home. He wasn't expecting her to fight back. And, in her terror, Rose killed him. Now there's a dead body in Luke's apartment, and only one person he can think to turn to.

When Detective Cormac Reilly's girlfriend, Emma, stumbles across the victim of a hit-and-run early one morning, he is first on the scene of a murder that would otherwise never have been assigned to him. The dead girl is carrying an ID, that of Carline Darcy, heir apparent to Darcy Therapeutics, Ireland's most successful pharmaceutical company. Darcy Therapeutics has a finger in every pie, from sponsoring university research facilities to funding political parties to philanthropy - it has funded Emma's own groundbreaking research....

From the opening story about a married woman who takes a trip to the city with a single purpose in mind - to sleep with another man - Antarctica draws you into a world of obsession, betrayal and fragile relationships.

It's 1975. A baby, minutes old, is forcibly taken from its devastated mother. In 2010, the body of an elderly woman is found in a Dublin public park in the depths of winter. Detective Inspector Tom Reynolds is working the case. He's convinced the murder is linked to historical events that took place in the notorious Magdalene Laundries. Reynolds and his team follow the trail to an isolated convent in the Irish countryside. But once inside, it becomes disturbingly clear that the killer is amongst them....

Frances is 21 years-old, cool-headed and observant. A student in Dublin and an aspiring writer, at night she performs spoken word with her best friend Bobbi, who used to be her girlfriend. When they are interviewed and then befriended by Melissa, a well-known journalist who is married to Nick, an actor, they enter a world of beautiful houses, raucous dinner parties and holidays in Provence. But when Frances and Nick get unexpectedly closer, the sharply witty and emotion-averse Frances is forced to honestly confront her own vulnerabilities for the first time.

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.

A small girl is sent to live with foster parents on a farm in rural Ireland, without knowing when she will return home. In the strangers' house, she finds a warmth and affection she has not known before and slowly begins to blossom in their care. And then a secret is revealed, and suddenly, she realises how fragile her idyll is.