Showing results by narrator "Roisin 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.

Princesses Daphne, Beatriz, and Sophronia have trained their entire lives for one purpose: to bring down nations. Their mother, Empress Margaraux of Bessemia, is determined to rule the continent of Vesteria, and her daughters are her weapons. Promised for marriage since birth, they are her ticket across enemy lines. And also her decoys.

Katie Collins has barely ever left her tiny Irish village of Ennisbawn. Why would she? With its tightknit community, friendly local pub, surrounded by glistening lakes and perfectly mysterious forests, it’s a place of peaceful beauty. Or it was peaceful. Until Callum Dempsey turned up. Part of a hotshot (and, Katie has to admit, hot is annoyingly apt for him...) development team with zero eye for beauty or charm, he’s not only building a hideous hotel just outside the village, he’s also just announced a plan to knock down Ennisbawn’s only remaining pub.

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.

Ranka is tired of death. All she wants now is to be left alone, living out her days in Witchik’s wild north with the coven that raised her, attempting to forget the horrors of her past. But when she is named Bloodwinn, the next treaty bride to the human kingdom of Isodal, her coven sends her south with a single directive: kill him. Easy enough, for a blood-witch whose magic compels her to kill. Except the prince is gentle, kind, and terrified of her. He doesn’t want to marry Ranka; he doesn’t want to be king at all.

Empress Margaraux has had plans for her daughters since the day they were born. Princesses Sophronia, Daphne, and Beatriz will be queens. And now, age sixteen, they each must leave their homeland and marry their princes.

Descendants of the founder of the Guinness beer empire, they were the toast of 1920s high society, darlings of the press, with not a care in the world. But Felicity knows better. Sent to live with them as a child because her mother could no longer care for her, she grows up as the sisters’ companion. Both an outsider and a part of the family, she witnesses the complex lives upstairs and downstairs, sees the compromises and sacrifices beneath the glamorous surface. Then, at a party one summer’s evening, something happens that sends shock waves through the entire household.

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.

Most students would kill to be accepted into the prestigious Law and Literature cohort at Franklin University. But for Jessie Mooney, enrollment in the course is about more than campus status, rigorous thought, and professional connections. It’s her chance to get close to charismatic professor Jay Crane so she can expose who he really is.

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.

Moving between Ireland, Scotland and London, Something About Her is a story about the fragility and transformative power of first love. With vivid insight and tenderness, it exposes the fear, hope, and longing that can consume us, particularly when there’s so much you still don’t know about love, about life, and about yourself.

Before Hisako Saski is even born, her parents make a deal on her behalf. In exchange for a first-class education and a boost out of poverty, Hisako will marry Adem Sadiq, a maintenance engineer and self-styled musician who works the trade lanes aboard his family's sub-light starship, the Hajj. Hisako is not happy when she finds out about the plan. She has little interest in the broken branch of physics the deal requires her to study and is not keen on the idea of giving up her home and everything she knows to marry a stranger.

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.

Amy jumps at the opportunity when she’s offered a nannying job in picturesque West Cork for the friendly and welcoming Carroll family. It’s the perfect chance for Amy to escape the suffocating city and the man who made her life hell. With two adorable children to oversee, a pair of generous employers, and more freedom than she’s enjoyed in years, everything seems wonderful. So why can’t Amy shake a creeping sense of unease? Perhaps it’s the husband’s erratic behavior.

It's the dawn of the 1930s and the three privileged Guinness sisters, Aileen, Maureen and Oonagh, settle into becoming wives and mothers: Aileen in Luttrellstown Castle outside Dublin, Maureen in Clandeboye in Northern Ireland, and Oonagh in Rutland Place in London. But while Britain becomes increasingly politically polarized, Aileen, Maureen and Oonagh discover conflict within their own marriages.

The potatoes for the family lunch are half-peeled and forgotten in the kitchen, and Dee is upstairs, clutching a fragile boat made of folded paper. The tears won’t stop as she thinks about Sean, Fionn and Oisin. The three O’Connell boys who over the last twenty years, changed her life forever. The one she loved, the one she married, and the one who died…

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.

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.

Where Nirrim lives, crime abounds, a harsh tribunal rules and society's pleasures are reserved for the High Kith. Life in the Ward is grim and punishing. People of her low status are forbidden from sampling sweets or wearing colours. You either follow the rules, or pay a tithe and suffer the consequences. Nirrim keeps her head down and a dangerous secret close to her chest.

Granddaughters of the first Earl of Iveagh, the three daughters of Ernest Guinness are glamorous society girls, the toast of Dublin and London. Darlings of the press, with not a care in the world. But what beautiful ruins lie behind the glass of their privileged worlds? The love affairs, the scandals, the tragedies, the secrets....