Showing results by narrator "Róisín Rankin" in All Categories

Christian’s fed up of being on his own every Christmas. He doesn’t mind being alone, but he hates his family’s sad eyes and soft tones as they sit around coupled up. Because he’s actually, totally, fine. So when Megan literally bumps into Christian in a Dublin pub, they come up with a pact to see them through the holiday season. They’re going to be the very best fake dates for each other, ever. Rules are drawn up, a contract is signed on a wine-stained napkin. They will sit through each other’s family gatherings and be outrageously in love until freed from their annual obligations.

Close your eyes and make a Christmas wish . . . Oliver wants to give his best friend Lara the happy Christmas she deserves, and he hatches a plan - with disastrous consequences. Zoe just hopes the season will pass without a hitch for her and her almost four-year-old - but the universe seems to...

Can she finally put herself first, in order to find love? Peggy Cassidy is a milly, working in the Belfast linen mills to just about get by. But Peggy also has another job - a secret one. She works as a handywoman - an illegal midwife, tending to the women of her community in their time of need...

When Willow witnesses her animal-loving father, Silas, get kidnapped by a group of foxes and a huge wolf-like creature, she pursues them into the woods. There she meets wolves who tell her they know her father. Together they boldly enter the enormous tower the foxes have built deep in the forest. In the tower Willow discovers the dark project of the chief fox, Reynard, to create new life forms from magical clay buried in the Deep Forest where few can enter.

Mara and her dad have lived in their van for as long as she can remember. Whatever her father does to scrape a living has kept them constantly moving, and Mara has never questioned it. That is until she uncovers a collection of notes addressed to ‘the Tider’, an individual responsible for harvesting lost time from people whose lives were cut short. But before Mara can question her father, he is taken by a dangerous group who want to use his power for evil. With the very fabric of time and space at stake, it’s down to Mara and her new friend Jan to find him before it’s too late.

It’s Katie’s 17th birthday – the dancefloor is packed, the drink is flowing and Raven’s Hill School confession site is alight with gossip. Then a huge fight breaks out, sending guests fleeing. When Frankie, Jess and Sorcha go back to help Katie clear up her wrecked house before her parents get home, they find more than broken bottles… There’s a body on the living room floor.

In his final year at the Royal College of Music, star pianist Flynn Laukonen has the world at his feet. He has moved in with his girlfriend, Jennah, and is already getting concert bookings for what promises to be a glittering career. Yet he knows he is skating on thin ice—only two small pills a day keep him from plunging back into the whirlpool of manic depression that once threatened to destroy him.

Twenty-nine-year-old Katie Kelly is at an all-time low. By now she was supposed to have the perfect relationship and her dream career - but her boyfriend left her behind to travel the world, she’s sleeping on a friend’s sofa, and she’s working a temporary job... that she’s been in for two years.

Twenty-nine-year-old Lily Buckley planned to be happily married and in her dream job by now. Instead, she’s been single since being left at the altar three years ago, and works at her local paper, writing stories about giant vegetables at the village fete and a dog who looks exactly like Chewbacca. Not quite what she was dreaming of. So when Lily’s allowed to write her own column it’s exactly what she’s always wanted - except there's a catch. She has to do one thing every week that scares her then write about it.

On a remote farm in the deepest Devonshire countryside, four pregnant women arrive at an exclusive yoga retreat for a five-star weekend of prenatal pampering. The location is idyllic. Their host, Selina, is eager to teach them all she knows about pregnancy and motherhood. But, like Selina, each of the women has a secret. And secrets can be deadly.

On a sleepy Irish island, two teenagers from different worlds collide. Dee is a mainland girl on a summer retreat. Fionn is a local fisherman’s son, desperate to escape. Their connection is instant and electric, but fleeting – destined to end when summer does.

Life is hard in Ireland in 1867. Eliza Carthy moves with her lighthouse-keeper husband James and sons Peter and Joseph to the remote island of Skellig Michael. When assistant keeper Edmund and his wife Ruth arrive, Eliza hopes for respite. But her new neighbours are not what she'd expected.

After decades of dereliction and inner-city neglect, Barrack Street, Cork is finally being excavated. The work uncovers the skeletal remains of six men, scattered around the site, their hands and feet all bound, all clearly killed violently, but many decades, even centuries, ago. When a seventh body is found, Detective Garda Alice McCann knows immediately this one is different. It's female, for a start, and considerably more recent. Who was she? And who killed her?

It's Krystal's 29th birthday. This year: Her boyfriend finally proposed after six years of dating (only for her to find out he cheated on her for five and a half of them). She landed her dream job as a writer at Craze magazine (which swiftly fell into administration). She moved into her dream flat overlooking the city (just for the pipes to explode making the place unlivable) As she mourns everything wrong in her life, her best friend mutters the dreaded words: Saturn Return.

Jenna Walker has suddenly found herself with no job, no boyfriend, nowhere to live—and she's been wondering for a while now if, apart from her beloved cat Bertie, she has anything to live for. She really doesn't want to turn up on her sister's doorstep, but that feels like her only option. Already stretched between her job and the demands of looking after their mother, Rosie is not happy about having yet another person to take care of. If only one thing in her life would work out the way she wants it to.

In 1950s Dublin, life is hard and jobs are like gold dust. Nineteen-year-old Nell Flynn is training to be a nurse and planning to marry her boyfriend, Liam Connor, when her mother dies, leaving her younger sisters destitute. To save them from the workhouse, Nell returns to the family home - a mere two rooms at the top of a condemned tenement. Nell finds work at a biscuit factory and, at first, they scrape through each week.

A brilliant collection of beautiful stories by exciting artist Lara Hawthorne. The collection includes four stories: Alba the Hundred Year Old Fish, Herbert's Garden, The Night Flower and Ratty's Big Adventure.

A heartfelt and delicately crafted debut novel about two young women who become entangled in one another and embark on a surprising journey of self-discovery and modern love. Aisling and Maya’s connection is unexpected. Maya has recently returned to the University of Edinburgh for her second...

When Cat finds out that her cool new neighbour, Dr Becca Ryan, is a witch, she’s fascinated. Cat already loves magic – she has The Sight – and she’s sure she can learn loads from Becca. But Cat has other things on her mind – her mum has a boyfriend and Cat’s not happy. When she turns to Becca for advice, she gets more than she bargained for. Cat and her friend Shane are sent off on a perilous quest for an ancient harp that, when played, can influence the thoughts of anyone who hears it – and it seems like Cat will go to any lengths to find it …

Beatrice Alright is the queen of silver linings. She can find a spark of hope in any situation. Even when her partner delivers earth-shattering news that leaves Bea and their four-year-old, Ellie, without a home, she refuses to panic. Because Bea believes that what she does have is more important–her job at St Helen’s Hospital, which offers a warm, dry shelter for her and Ellie to stay while she figures things out. By day Bea cleans the wards, by night she tucks her daughter into bed between mops and buckets. And tries so hard to hold on to hope.