Showing results by narrator "Breffni Holahan" in All Categories

Meet Sarah. It started out like any other day for Sarah Lawler; getting the kids ready for school, making the pack lunches and juggling baby Ella’s feeds. There was no way of knowing that her husband, Paul, would leave for work that morning and simply not come home. Now the questions are piling up quicker than the unpaid bills and, unable to answer her children’s questions about where their Daddy is, Sarah is getting desperate. But it turns out she isn’t quite as alone as she thought she was.

Set between Ireland and London in the first two decades of this millennium, the stories in Hearts and Bones, Niamh Mulvey's debut collection, look at the changes that have torn through these times and ask who we are now that we’ve brought the old gods down. Witty, sharply observed and deeply moving, these 10 stories announce an extraordinary new Irish literary talent.

Anne Bonny is a young woman of privilege who is anything but comfortable, hell-bent on a voyage of self-realisation with or without the consent of those around her. Novelty-seeking, contrary, stubborn and bisexual, she is also neurodivergent, brave and capable of deep and enduring love. She spent all of two months actually being a pirate. Seaborne is the thrilling and sensuous imagining of the loss, frustration and desires that steer this lonely daughter of a plantation owner towards elopement, two marriages, two pregnancies, violence, trial for piracy and legendary status.

Spring 1937: Teresa, a young Basque girl, is evacuated to London in the wake of the Guernica bombing. She thinks she has reached safety in the lofty halls of Rochester Place and the soothing arms of Mary Davidson, but trouble seeks her out wherever she goes. Autumn 2020: Corrine, an emergency services operator, receives a call from a distressed woman called Mary. But when the ambulance arrives at Rochester Place—the address the woman gave them—she is nowhere to be found.

Natasha is flying home for yet another Christmas as a Singleton with her Mum, Aileen and annoyingly perfect older sister Doon. At least she will be in Ballyclare - the beautiful old house in the Wicklow hills that has been a treasured home since her father walked out all those years ago. Then comes the killer blow - it looks like the house will have to be sold, and this will be their last Christmas there. But when a stranger knocks on their door, Christmas takes an unexpected turn; and Tasha is not the only McDonnell woman to have her romantic fortunes turned on their head in a matter of days.