Showing results by narrator "Aoife McMahon" in All Categories

Long ago, on a windswept Irish beach, a young father died saving the life of another man's child. Thirty years later, his widow, Julia, decides to return to this wild corner of Ireland to lay the past to rest. Her journey sparks others: her daughter Bel, an artist, joins her mother in Ireland, while son Matt and daughter-in-law Rachel, at home in Liverpool, embark on some soul searching of their own. As the threads of past and present intertwine, Julia's family confront long-buried feelings of guilt, anger, fear and desire.

It's June 2008 and 21-year-old Adam Lattimer vanishes, presumed dead. The strain of his disappearance breaks his already fragile family. Ten years later, with his mother deceased and siblings scattered across the globe, Adam turns up unannounced at the family home. His siblings return reluctantly to Spanish Cove, but Adam's reappearance poses more questions than answers. The past is a tangled web of deceit. And, as tension builds, it's apparent somebody has planned murderous revenge for the events of 10 years ago.

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.  

Kieran O'Regan was responsible for hunting down killers. Now he's become one of the dead: his decapitated body has been found in a graveyard, a tin whistle stuffed into his throat. O'Regan was due to give evidence at a trial for police corruption. His gruesome murder sends a clear message to whistleblowers: only silence is safe. DCI Katie Maguire is determined to uncover the truth. But corruption in the Garda stretches back decades. As more officers are horrifically silenced, Katie must decide whom she can trust.... 

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.... 

Siobhan Clough and her children are enjoying a holiday on the English coast. With them is Mary McCarthy and her volatile son, Liam. All is well until the arrival of Siobhan’s husband, George. A man of strong views and temper, he browbeats his wife, belittles his daughter, Christine, and treats Liam like a servant. A year later, Liam unexpectedly comes face to face with the father he has never known. Liam wants nothing to do with him, but when George Clough throws him out, he has little choice but to enter his father’s dangerous world of Irish politics. 

1958: In a small town like Athenry, people talk. Everyone’s noticed that the injury which stopped Annie Fagan’s father from working doesn’t prevent him from hitting his wife. But a man’s home is his castle, and no one is going to intervene. Until Annie runs into Arthur ‘Sketch’ Talbot. Sketch is determined to help Annie, and the two soon fall in love. But Annie’s father won’t give his daughter up lightly, and Sketch’s attempts to save her will have devastating consequences....

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....

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?

Leah is in love. It should be the happiest summer of her life, but she can't help feeling lonely with Jake's attention divided between her, his ex-wife and his young son. As insomnia sets in, the walls of their new basement flat feel as if they're closing in around her. Until she meets her upstairs neighbour, Anton, who has recently moved back in after a long absence from the street. He's a sympathetic ear when Jake can't be, and even though others on the street seem strangely hostile towards him, Leah soon comes to rely on Anton and their secret conversations in the night.

When Cissy Ryan’s real mother comes to claim her from the workhouse, it’s not how she imagined. Her family’s tumbledown cottage has ice on the inside of its windows and is in an isolated, poverty-stricken village in the muddy Irish countryside. But when Cissy is allowed to help neighbour Colm Doyle and his horse named Blue on their milk round one morning, Cissy starts to feel as though friendship could get her through anything.

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.

Julia Kelly met charismatic and successful artist Charlie Whisker while she was working on her first novel. He was 20 years older than her. Their relationship was passionate and extraordinary; each of them inspired the other. Their friends were writers, artists and rock stars; they lived a glamorous life of exhibitions, parties and concerts. They became parents to a daughter they adored. But Charlie suddenly changed, becoming hopelessly forgetful, angry and confused. 

Everything is going great for Lily. She and Sam are more in love than ever, and she is about to open her very own bakery, but she soon discovers that no matter how much time you spend perfecting delicate pastries, running your own business isn’t always easy. When Sam announces he is moving to New York for work, Lily is miserable...but when he surprises her with a proposal life is perfect, right? But Lily finds it hard to let go of old hurts, and when Sam eventually loses patience, Lily is left devastated. Can she finally learn to leave the past in the past, or will she let it ruin the future? 

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....  

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.

Amanda King and Tess Cuffe are strangers who share the same Georgian house, but their lives couldn't be more different. Amanda seems to have it all, absolute perfection. She projects all the accoutrements of a lady who lunches. Sadly, the reality is a soulless home, an unfaithful husband and a very lonely heart. By comparison, in the basement flat, unwanted tenant Tess has spent a lifetime hiding and shutting her heart to love. It takes a bossy doctor, a handsome gardener, a pushy teenager and an abandoned cat to show these two women that sometimes letting go is the first step to moving forward and new friendships can come from the most unlikely situations.

An enchanting and nostalgic tale of Ireland in the 1950s by Ireland’s favourite writer, Alice Taylor. The Phelans have owned Mossgrove for generations. The small, rural Irish farm has been the pride of them all until Ned's wife, Martha, arrives and begins to undermine generations of hard work and happiness. She resents the deep history of the place and sets about making it her own, shutting out what is left of Ned's family. She is particularly jealous of Ned's sister, Kate, a local nurse and doting aunt to Martha's children. 

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.