Showing results by author "Jean Grainger" in All Categories

A charming Irish bus driver. A group of disparate American tourists. One life changing week. Take a tour you'll never forget as you navigate the stunning vistas of gorgeous Ireland along with the hearts and minds of a cast of characters who will live with you long after you've finished this audiobook. During a routine tour of Ireland, tour guide Conor O'Shea finds himself on a journey of his own through the lives of his hilarious companions as together they navigate both the Irish countryside and the secrets of their individual lives.

Twelve-year-old Harp Delaney is an unusual child, quiet and intelligent far beyond her years. She would rather spend her days in the library of the grand Georgian house that she sees as her home than playing on the streets with other children. Her mother, Rose, is the reserved and ladylike housekeeper at the Cliff House. The local women envy her grace and poise while the men admire her beauty. She behaves not as a servant should, but as someone who belongs at the ancestral home of eccentric loner Henry Devereaux.

Sixteen-year-old Harp Devereaux is growing up in a country in turmoil. Her mother Rose is struggling to navigate single parenthood, run the Cliff House, and stay out of the way of the authorities. Harp’s uncle, Ralph Devereaux, has only one thing on his mind. The port of Queenstown bustles with activity as people traverse the Atlantic either in search of new lives on foreign shores or returning to old familiar ones in Ireland. The Cliff House is fast gaining a reputation as a wonderful place to stay, and the business is going from strength to strength.

Dublin 1950: Liesl Bannon has never felt like she was truly at home anywhere, not since her mother placed her and her brother Erich on the last Kindertransport out of Berlin in 1939. She’d been so much more fortunate than most Jews, saved from the horrors of the Nazi regime. Being adopted by Elizabeth and Daniel Lieber meant she and Erich spent the war in Northern Ireland, safe and loved, but Liesl always knew something was missing.

New York City, 1922. Harp Devereaux is torn. Part of her desperately wants to return to Ireland to finish what she and her family and friends started and to witness the departure of the British forces from Ireland after eight hundred long years. But the other part finds life in America during the Roaring Twenties too exciting to trade for the sleepy streets of County Cork. She and John Joe are united and determined to sample all that life after the Great War has to offer, but life Stateside is not as free and easy as Harp first imagines.

Handsome, kind, and funny, Conor O'Shea has had enough of driving and guiding tours of Ireland. So when an opportunity to renovate and run the magnificent but rundown Castle Dysert as a five-star resort presents itself, he grabs it with both hands. But problems arise almost immediately when his business partner appears to have more on her agenda than just business.

For 20-year-old Harp Devereaux, life should be idyllic. At university, she feels for the first time in her life that she belongs, her mother Rose is running the Cliff House as a successful business, and her childhood sweetheart JohnJoe is by her side, but the storm clouds of war grow ever darker.

When Dr. Richard Buckley returns home to his wife and beloved hometown of Dunderrig, his mind is wearied by the ravages of The Great War. Disillusioned by the horror and pointlessness of battle, his civilian transition strains more than just his state of mind, as his marriage crumbles beneath the weight of duty. Out of the rubble of this doomed relationship, twins James and Juliet arrive - born into an uncertain and hostile new world.

Assuming their roles as the new Lord and Lady Kenefick and returning to Robinswood with the plan to drag it back from the brink of dereliction is taking its toll on Kate and Sam. With a young family to raise, a very limited budget, and only Kate’s parents to help, the task seems insurmountable.

Carmel, a 40-year-old Irish woman, is living a life that’s fine, not exciting or awful, just fine. She has a house, a husband, it’s all okay. She never had kids, but that’s just life, right? She knows she should be grateful. She’s better off than a lot of people. Then one day, out of the blue, she gets a Facebook message from a total stranger with information that could transform her life, for better or for much worse. It could be a scam. It could be malicious. It could be a crazy person. But what if what they say is true?

Erich Bannon is happy in the small Irish village he has thought of as home since he arrived as a terrified, traumatized seven year old, one of the last Jewish children to escape Berlin in 1939. Now, at 23, it feels like all of his friends are drawn to The Promised Land, and he can understand why, but Israel is not for him. One by one, they leave, and Erich is bereft. He feels lost, but a chance encounter with an Irish Catholic girl gives him hope. All he and Róisín want is to be allowed to love each other, but the traditions and rules of their backgrounds forbid it.

Berlin, 1944. Ariella Bannon is being hunted. Someone is determined to betray her as a Jew, but she has survived against incredible odds, and the end is in sight. She will be reunited with her precious children, no matter what it takes. Meanwhile, Liesl and Erich have found a home in Ireland, away from the chaos of war-ravaged Europe. As the dark news of what has happened to the Jews filters through, they are torn - love for their mother and their home on one hand, and the profound sense of peace and belonging they have in Ballycreggan, on the other.

When a shadowy couple turn up on Conor O'Shea's grand tour of Ireland, the tranquility of Ireland's landscape acts as a shelter against the stormy reality of the life they left behind. On the run from a notorious mob boss, this mysterious couple flees the US in search of sanctuary on the shores of the Emerald Isle, hoping to blend in with the tourists. In their wake lies a mafia family's secrets and a scarred priest torn between his duty to the cloth and to the truth.

 In the first book, What Once Was True, two families, one of grandeur and one of the working class, navigate the conflicts associated with the looming war ahead. Despite delusions of grandeur, Lord and Lady Kenefick and their adult children live a life of decayed opulence as the money needed to keep such a house and grounds ever dwindles.  

Queensland, Australia, 1936. Sister Claire McAuliffe has been called from Dungarvan, County Waterford, to do God’s work in Jumaaroo, Queensland. Along with four other sisters, she is charged with setting up a Catholic school for the education of the gold rush families. But life between the tropical Australian rainforest and the azure ocean is far from the spectacular paradise it seems. Sister Claire finds life challenging in more ways than she can count, but far more worrying is the constant presence of the much-loved mayor of Jumaaroo, Joseph McGrath.

Robinswood, Co. Waterford, 1939. The once grand house is home to two very different families. Despite delusions of grandeur, Lord and Lady Kenefick and their adult children live a life of decayed opulence as the money needed to keep such a large house and grounds ever dwindles. Meanwhile, the Murphy family, Dermot, Isabella and their three almost grown-up girls, live and work on the estate and do their best to keep everything running smoothly.

When her husband doesn’t come home one day, Ariella realizes that the only way she can ensure her Jewish children’s safety is to avail of the Kindertransport, but can she bear to let them go? A thousand miles away, Elizabeth Klein has closed herself off from the world. Losing her husband on the last day of the Great War and her child months later, she cannot, will not, love again. It hurts too much. But she is all Liesl and Erich Bannon have.

Years of neglect and abandonment have left the family seat of the Keneficks almost derelict, but the new Lord Kenefick and his charming young wife Kate are determined to breathe life into the old house once more. The war is over, and they have survived, so now they must set about making a bright future for themselves and their family. But the shadows of the past are ever lurking, and there are many who are not willing to see the new Lady Kenefick as anything more than the housekeeper's daughter.

For three young boys, Liam, Patrick, and Hugo, life in Ireland of the 1960s proves to be both idyllic and flawed. Living in close proximity but leading vastly different lives, the bonds of friendship bind these young men as they grow, dream, and navigate the storms of youth.

Mary Doyle arrives in Dublin in 1913, doomed, she fears, to a life of domestic service. Instead, however, she finds herself deeply affected by the social and political turmoil of a fledgling nation struggling for independence. Suddenly, all that was once inevitable is no longer a certainty as she is embroiled in the very heart of the Easter Rising.