Showing results by narrator "Deirdre O'Connell" in All Categories

When 18-year-old Mary Hazard touched down in postwar Putney to begin her nurse's training, she could never have known that it was the beginning of a colourful career that would still be going 60 years later - one of the longest-ever serving NHS nurses. For Mary, raised in a strict convent in rural south Ireland, working in her first London hospital was a shocking and life-changing experience. Against a backdrop of ongoing rationing and poverty, she saw for the first time the horrors of disease...

Zoe Hall has wanted to be an actress ever since she can remember. When she discovers that her husband, Ed, has been cheating on her, she decides now is the time to return home to Ireland. And finally she gets her lucky break - a part in a new play in an acclaimed Dublin theatre. Little does she realise that soon she will be torn between her past and her future....

After a freak accident and eight weeks in a coma, Suzie Connors' family are elated when their mother finally wakes up absolutely fine. Except she's not. Blissfully unaware of her children's shock at having to deal with the changes in their mum, Suzie intends to live life to the fullest, with or without their approval. Then her daughter, Sharon, is faced with some major issues of her own, and the one person she would have turned to - her mother - is no longer there for her.

A powerful, thought-provoking novel about two sisters who must reclaim themselves after their lives are dramatically upended. Alison Donnelly has suffered for love. Still stuck in the small Northern Irish town where she was born, working for her father's real estate agency, she hopes to pick up the pieces and get her life back together. Her sister Liz, a fiercely independent college professor who lives in New York City, is about to return to Ulster for Alison's second wedding.

I talked to my mother the night she died, losing myself in memories of when we were happiest together. But I held one memory back, and it surfaces now unbidden. I see a green postbox and a small hand stretching up to its oblong mouth. I am never sure whether that hand is mine. But if not mine, whose? Louise Redmond left Ireland for London before she was 20. Now, more than two decades later, her heart already breaking from a failing marriage, she is summoned home.

Lynn Stephens' life has been tough recently, thanks to Vincent Boland, the manager at four-star hotel she works in. But, after standing up to him, she is delighted when she is vindicated and feels she can move on. But the consequences of crossing Vincent are more far-reaching than Lynn knows. It’s not long before she realises that this man still has the capacity to destroy her and all she holds dear.

When funny, kind and gorgeous Shane proposes, Cara is over the moon. Excitement, however, quickly turns to apprehension when it seems that everyone has a fixed idea of the perfect wedding and arguments ensue. So she and Shane determine to make a stand and do things their way. But when they announce their plans for a beach wedding on a beautiful Caribbean island, there is uproar.