Showing results by narrator "Caroline Lennon" in All Categories

Inheritance changes everything, as Ella Kennedy soon discovers when her father dies and the hundred-acre farm she has grown up on and run for years in the Wexford countryside is no longer hers. Hurt and angry following a fight with her brother, Ella leaves her home and people she cares for and joins her wild cousin Kitty in Dublin. Exiled in the city, Ella is forced to make a new life for herself like the other country girls. She tries to forget the farm, pushing all thoughts of Sean Flanagan, the neighbour she had loved, from her mind.

1980: Josephine flees her home in Ireland to start a new life in London - but can't leave her traumatic childhood behind. Seventeen years and two children later, her sister calls: their mother is dying and wants to see Josephine. It's a summons she can't refuse....

Everyone knows that Amy and Dan are made for each other. So when they announce their engagement their families are over the moon, especially Amy's mother, Helen. What could be more exciting than planning a daughter's wedding? But as the countdown to the Big Day begins, and mother and daughter throw themselves into creating the wedding of their dreams, not everyone's prepared for the commotion this involves.

No one in Carniskey has ever understood what led local fisherman Sean Delaney to risk his life in a high storm in the dead of night. Three years on from that tragic night, his wife, Alison, is struggling with grief and increasing financial worries. She has grown distant from her daughter and estranged from her friends and fellow villagers, particularly her best friend, Kathleen, who harbours a secret of her own. But the arrival of an outsider artist and lifelong nomad, William, offers Alison a new perspective on life and love that threatens to unearth the mysteries of the past.

Spanning four centuries, The Long Gaze Back features 22 new stories by some of the most talented Irish women writers working today. Taken together, the collected works of these writers reveal an enrapturing, unnerving, and piercingly beautiful mosaic of a lively literary landscape. The anthology presents an inclusive and celebratory portrait of the high calibre of contemporary literature in Ireland. These stories run the gamut from heartbreaking to humorous, but each leaves a lasting impression. They chart the passions, obligations, trials and tribulations of a variety of vividly drawn characters with unflinching honesty and relentless compassion. These are stories to savour.

There is the secret of Birdy's dead grandmother's cat - how the boys tortured it and Birdy Flynn had to drown her in the river to stop her suffering. There's the secret of Mrs Cope, the popular teacher who touched Birdy in the cupboard. There's the secret of the gypsy girl at school, whom Birdy likes, but she can't tell anyone. Because Birdy's other secret is that while she plays and fights as good as the boys, she is a girl, and she doesn't always feel like a girl is supposed to.

Fun, feisty Eva Gordon's never been one to shy away from helping her friends - whether they want her help or not - but this time she might have found a problem that's too big even for her.... When Eva and her family head to Seacove for their summer holidays, she's looking forward to seeing Kate again, but it turns out things have gone very wrong for Kate. Her granny's in the hospital, and with no else to look after her, Kate's hiding out at home by herself, afraid she's going to be taken into care.

Every summer, in a rambling castle in Ireland, TV crews descend to film the nation's favourite cookery competition. For Diana, a celebrated TV chef, it's a way to keep her castle running. Bea, the cupcake queen, is determined to remind everyone why she deserves her own TV show. Connor, the bad boy of the restaurant world, is determined to put his lurid past behind him.

When Eva and Kate find an old diary, they end up determined to right old wrongs! But they can't spend all their time living in the past as the present, too, is throwing all sorts of challenges at them....

Alice and Megan are back together again! When they are together, they can handle anything! Grace invites Alice and Megan to spend Easter in her house in Lanzarote. The girls are accidentally left alone for two days in the house. It's fun at first, until they become trapped on an upstairs balcony and spend a long, cold night and day waiting to be rescued! Meanwhile Melissa is still unhappy at boarding school. Alice wants to help her to get back to their school, but Megan sees this as a betrayal.

Two sisters, one dangerous truth.... One hot August night, Rachel Darcy gets the call everyone fears. It's the police. Her younger sister Evie's had a car crash; she's in a coma. Can Rachel fly to London right away? With Evie injured and comatose, Rachel is left to pick up the pieces of her sister's life. But it's hard fitting them together, especially when she really doesn't like what she sees. Why was Evie driving when she doesn't even own a license?

Your family are always there for you...aren't they? For Tara, Vee, Niall, and Damian, the children of the Shine family, their parents have seen them through thick and thin. In fact, Gus and Joan's lifetime of hard work has given their children a very comfortable start in life. But with the Irish economy in crisis - money is thin on the ground and perhaps it's time to for the younger generation to learn a few home truths. As the children are forced to live a life without the Bank of Mum and Dad.

When a young girl is discovered dead on an isolated Irish country road, it seems to be a simple hit and run. Then the cops see the tattoo on her back - a pair of beautifully wrought angel wings. Forensic investigator Reilly Steel is soon on the scene and she suspects that there is more to this case than a straightforward murder. Then the angel tattoo is traced to other children - both dead and alive - who are all similarly marked.…

Irish singing star Daniel O'Donnell's mother, Julia, grew up on a remote island off the northwest coast of Ireland, going barefoot and doing hard labour as a child during the poverty-stricken 1920s. The hard work continued through her teenage years as she picked potatoes in the fields and travelled to Scotland to gut fish in the ports. After she married and settled in Kincasslagh, Julia's beloved husband, Francie, was forced to leave his family for months on end to work on farms, again in Scotland.

As she mourns for the father who was her whole family, Light starts to notice unexpected presences all around... Suddenly the mysterious world in which her father moved invades young Light's life with a bang. The Inuit folklore she vaguely knows comes alive all around her.

It is 1960, and Clare Hamilton is returning home to her beloved Armagh to marry Andrew Hamilton, her childhood sweetheart. They plan to live in Andrew’s ancestral home, which they intend to run as a guest house. Their ambition is to buy back the land of the former family estate so that Andrew can quit his hated job and farm the land. At first, things go well, and the guest house prospers, but the 1960s are a time of change. Air travel becomes increasingly affordable and bookings decline. And the increasing political turmoil and religious tensions too close to home make them wonder if, despite all their efforts, their project might fail.

Dom Coleman-Cappabianca is the divinely handsome owner of the hottest restaurant in town. But he’s about to find out things are even steamier out of the kitchen. For starters, his girlfriend Tanya seems hell-bent on promoting her own interests, whatever the expense. And then Dom’s glamorous Italian mother Cici is getting herself into some very hot water. From Dublin to Rome and New York, family fidelity is tested to its limits.

To her neighbours in Belfast, Maura Brady looks like she has it all - an attractive husband, a comfortable home and a gorgeous little boy, Danny. But behind closed doors, things are far from idyllic. Maura has long harboured doubts that her husband Adam only married her because he was quickly trying to mend a broken heart. Years ago, Adam’s childhood sweetheart Evelyn suddenly left town to marry a rich, older man and left Adam shocked and shaken.

The Valentine's card was meant to be Orla's fairy tale ending, but really, it was only the beginning… Orla adores her actor boyfriend, Sim, who's away filming a sumptuous costume drama. Although the long-distance relationship means that she can eat toast for dinner and watch as much reality TV as she likes, she misses him like crazy. But Valentine's Day changes everything.… The same morning Orla learns that Sim has died, she receives a card from him. As Orla travels from Ireland to London, to live and breathe Sim's final moments, can she bring herself to open the Valentine's card and read his final message?

It is 1942, and the Second World War has been going on for three wearying years. Work is hard and hours long in the four Ulster mills in Northern Ireland where Alex Hamilton struggles to keep overworked machines going, just as his wife Emily tries to provide food and comfort not only for their own son and daughters, but for the many young American soldiers stationed nearby.