Showing results by narrator "Aoife McMahon" in All Categories

Maud Drennan is a dedicated caretaker, but her sunny, capable disposition and snappy quips mask a deep sadness. A tragic childhood event left her in the company of a cast of patron saints who pop in and out of her life like unwelcome tourists. She tries to find solace in her hard work in London...but then she meets the inimitable Mr. Flood. A menace by all accounts, Cathal Flood is a widower living alone in a Gothic Dorset mansion crawling with collector's items and feral cats.

Standing in the doorway of her grandmother Sylvia’s home, Rose Fleury thought returning here was the answer to all of her problems. She has no job and a broken heart, but Sylvia reminds her that Fleury women are strong and independent. Clutching a family heirloom—a beautiful topaz necklace—Rose promises to be brave like her relatives. Until she finds out that the jewels hide a terrible secret…

Christmas day, and DCI Tom Reynolds receives an alarming call. A mass grave has been discovered on Oileán na Caillte, the island which housed the controversial psychiatric institution St. Christina's. The hospital has been closed for decades, and onsite graves were tragically common. Reynolds thinks his adversarial boss is handing him a cold case to sideline him. But then it transpires another body has been discovered amongst the dead - one of the doctors who went missing from the hospital in mysterious circumstances 40 years ago.

You'll be wincing in recognition and scratching your head in incredulity, but like Marian herself you won't be able to stop laughing at the sheer delightful absurdity that is modern life - because each and every one of us is clearly making it up as we go along. She has wonderful and tickling words of advice for those fast approaching 50.

After months of training, former Long Island homicide detective Maggie D'arcy is now officially a Garda. She's finally settling into life in Ireland, and so is her teenage daughter, Lilly. Maggie may not be a detective yet, but she's happy with her community policing assignment in Dublin's Portobello neighborhood.

Aoife MacMurchada is just 14 years old when her father Diarmit, King of Leinster, is brutally deposed, and her family is forced to flee Southern Ireland into English exile. Diarmit seeks help from King Henry II, an alliance that leads him to the charismatic Richard de Clare, lord of Striguil, a man dissatisfied with his lot and open to new horizons. Diarmit promises Richard wealth, lands, and Aoife's hand in marriage in return for his aid, but Aoife has her own thoughts on the matter. She may be a prize, but she is not a pawn, and she will play the game to her own advantage.

DS Katie Maguire is one of Ireland's best detectives. There's no mystery she can't crack with her killer instinct and hunger for justice. Until now...

Lily Fleury used to love visiting her eccentric grandmother Sylvia in Ireland, taking long sunset walks on the beach and exploring the nooks and crannies of the family’s old home Magnolia Manor. But when she arrives from Dublin broken-hearted, hoping to heal in Sylvia’s warm embrace, she finds the once ornate Georgian house in disrepair and the gardens wildly overgrown. Sylvia has always been fiercely independent, but Lily can’t believe she hasn’t told anyone she’s been struggling.

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.

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.

On a leafy suburban street in Dublin, beautiful, poised Stella Greene lives with her successful husband, Matt. They're the perfect couple in every way, and Stella appears to have it all. Next door, at number 72, however, lives Rea Brady. Gruff, bad tempered and rarely seen besides the twitching of her net curtains, rumour has it she's lost it all...including her marbles, if you believe the neighbourhood gossip. But appearances can be deceiving, and when Stella and Rea's worlds collide they realise they have much in common.

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?

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.

Irish fairy tales and legends - full of enchantment, brave deeds and lost loves. The best tales from the Irish tradition, including: 'How Cúchulainn Got His Name', 'The Magic Shoes', 'Deirdre and the Sons of Uisneach', 'The King’s Secret', 'The Children of Lir', 'The Giant’s Causeway', 'The Bodach of the Grey Coat', 'The Pot of Gold', 'Tír na n-Óg' and 'The White Gander'. Irish fairy tales and legends are full of enchantment, brave deeds and lost loves. Told from generation to generation, they are as fascinating now as they were to their original listeners.

Emma O'Donovan is 18, beautiful, and fearless. It's the beginning of summer in a quiet Irish town and, tonight, she and her friends have dressed to impress. Everyone is at the party, and all eyes are on Emma. The next morning, Emma's parents discover her collapsed on the doorstop of their home, unconscious. She is disheveled, bleeding, and disoriented, looking as if she had been dumped there. To her distress, Emma can't remember what happened the night before.

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.

Lorna Byrne sees angels and speaks to them every day. She sees so much more than angels, though: She sees love as a physical force, emanating from those she observes. In this inspiring book, Lorna reveals what angels have taught her about love and how we can unlock the love stored within all of us. While we can't destroy or diminish this love, we can release more of it and love others and ourselves more fully.

Behind the gates of Temple Alice, the aristocratic Anglo-Irish St Charles family sinks into a state of decaying grace. To Aroon St Charles, large and unlovely daughter of the house, the fierce forces of sex, money, jealousy and love seem locked out by the ritual patterns of good behaviour. But crumbling codes of conduct cannot hope to save the members of the St Charles family from their own unruly and inadmissible desires. This elegant and allusive novel established Molly Keane as the natural successor to Jean Rhys.

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.

Reporter Sally Hayden was at home in London when she received a message on Facebook: “Hi sister Sally, we need your help.” The sender identified himself as an Eritrean refugee who had been held in a Libyan detention center for months, locked in one big hall with hundreds of others. From this single message begins a staggering account of the migrant crisis across North Africa. With unprecedented access, Hayden’s book is based on interviews with hundreds of refugees and migrants who tried to reach Europe and found themselves stuck in Libya.