Showing results by narrator "Aoife McMahon" in All Categories

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.

Lorna Byrne says we all see angels when we are young children but are gradually conditioned to screen them out. Here, for the first time, she has written stories, inspired by real life, of seven children whose lives were transformed and made better by their interaction with their guardian angels. Among these, there is a story of a little girl called Suzy, paralysed from birth and unable to play with other children.

An Irish Nature Year is a filled with plants, animals, birds and creepy-crawlies from all over the island of Ireland. With one short entry for every day of the year, nature columnist Jane Powers serves up five minutes worth of wonderment to enjoy on your coffee break, on your commute or to relax with at bedtime.

Maud Drennan - underpaid carer and unintentional psychic - is the latest in a long line of dogsbodies for the ancient, belligerent Cathal Flood. Yet despite her best efforts, Maud is drawn into the mysteries concealed in his filthy, once-grand home. She realises that Cathal, and the junk-filled rooms, are opening up to her. With only her landlady and a troop of sarcastic ghostly saints to help, Maud must uncover what lies beneath Cathal's decades-old hostility and the strange activities of the house itself.

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.

Staring up at the magnificent, rose-covered walls of her grandmother’s house, Violet Fleury isn’t sure she’ll be welcome inside. After running from her hometown in Ireland to follow her dreams of acting, she’s back to play Irish legend, Kathleen O’Sullivan, in a local film. She’s vowed to tell the story of the woman her village is so proud of—and to build bridges with the family she drifted away from. But will they give her a second chance?

Abigail and her brother Benjamin have always been close. To celebrate his birthday, Abigail hires a grand old house and gathers their friends together for a murder mystery party. As the night goes on, they drink too much and play games. Relationships are forged, consolidated or frayed. Someone kisses someone they shouldn’t, someone else’s heart is broken. In the morning, everyone wakes up – except Benjamin.

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?

A thoughtful, captivating and ultimately uplifting novel from this uniquely talented author. She has just two weeks. Two weeks to teach him how to fall in love - with his own life. Adam Basil and Christine Rose are thrown together late one night, when Christine is crossing the Ha'penny Bridge in Dublin. Adam is there, poised, threatening to jump. Adam is desperate - but Christine makes a crazy deal with him. His 35th birthday is looming and she bets him that before then she can show him life is worth living.

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.

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…

When Hannah learns that famed chef Daniel Costello is facing accusations of sexual assault, she's thrown back to the summer she spent waitressing at his high-end Dublin restaurant when she was a young college student—the plush splendor of the dining rooms, the wild parties after service, the sizzling tension of the kitchens. But Hannah also remembers how the attention from Daniel soon morphed from kindness into something darker. Now the restaurant is shuttered and Daniel tries to understand how his life is now completely out of his control

Ava, newly arrived in Hong Kong from Dublin, spends her days teaching English to rich children. Julian is a banker. A banker who likes to spend money on Ava, to have sex and discuss fluctuating currencies with her. But when she asks whether he loves her, he cannot say more than 'I like you a great deal'. Enter Edith, a lawyer. Refreshingly enthusiastic and unapologetically earnest, Edith takes Ava to the theatre when Julian leaves Hong Kong for work. Quickly, she becomes something Ava looks forward to. And then Julian writes to tell Ava he is coming back to Hong Kong....

The Irish Classics Collection is a wide-ranging collection of 9 classic works of fiction and poetry by Irish authors, read by an award-winning cast of narrators. Included here are stories by some of the greatest writers of all time, including James Joyce; Bram Stoker; Oscar Wilde; W.B. Yeats; Elizabeth Bowen; and more.

Hare's Landing, West Cork. A house full of mystery.... Rachel Lambert leaves London afraid for her personal safety and determined to uncover the truth behind the sudden death of a homeless man with links to a country house hotel called Hare's Landing. New York-based crime reporter Caroline Kelly's career is threatened by a lawsuit, and she needs some thinking space away from her job. But almost as soon as she arrives, Hare's Landing begins to reveal its own stories - a 30-year-old missing-person's case and the mysterious death of the hotel's former owner.

As temperatures soar across Europe during the hottest summer for 40 years, a series of hoax terrorist attacks is generating panic in London. Then a bus blows up on Oxford Street, and the hoaxes have suddenly become real. Student Brioni O’Brien has been desperately trying to contact her older sister since she unexpectedly returned early from travelling, so when Marissa’s bag is found near the site of the explosion, she fears the worst.

Bruised by years of disappointments, political advisor Maggie Costello is finally working for a leader she can believe in. She, along with the rest of America, has put her trust in President Stephen Baker, believing he can make the world a better place. But suddenly an enemy surfaces: a man called Vic Forbes reveals first one scandal about the new president, and then another. He threatens a third revelation – one that will destroy Baker entirely.

Things are finally looking up for Anna. Fourteen miserable years of marriage to man-child Connor have left her drained and ready for a new start. So when they separate, she couldn't be more thrilled to move in with James, a handsome lecturer who is everything her ex-husband is not: kind, thoughtful and above all, reliable. But Anna and James' kids hate living with the loved-up couple and the new set-up. Their teenage daughters—one a studious high achiever and the other a cool rich girl unbothered by grades or exams—have nothing in common.

Set in Ireland prior to its achieving legislative independence from Britain in 1782, Castle Rackrent tells the story of three generations of an estate. One of the main sources of inspiration for the novel was a chronicle of her own family history called The Black Book of Edgeworthstown, which contain legal struggles of the Edgeworth's similar to those portrayed in the novel.

An elderly gentleman checks into a B&B in a small village in rural Ireland where he knows nobody. Four days later, his body is found in the lake. The identity of their unknown guest raises questions for one family in particular, twin sisters Liv and Marianne, and their mother, Ethel, each of whom is searching for her own place in the world. The Ghostlights brilliantly evokes the lives of the people in the town and explores the aftershocks of a stranger’s tragedy.