Showing results by narrator "Aoife McMahon" in All Categories

All but lost and forgotten, Human Fairies were exiled from Earth to another planet in the Milky Way. After their King’s death, they rage a dark war to see who will inherit the throne. The Pink Fairy, the most powerful sorceress in the land, foretells of a child born in a dungeon. But the child’s evil uncle, Markolous, has a very different plan for her. The Pink Fairy encounters several unusual comrades and enlists their aid to save Clarissa and fulfill the Human Fairy prophecy to bring light back to their world.

A retelling of the favourite Irish fairytale, The Children of Lir. Aífe marries Lir, a chieftain with four children by his previous wife. Jealous of his affection for his children, the witch Aífe turns them into swans for 900 years. Retold through the voice of Aífe, Savage Her Reply is unsettling and dark, feminist and fierce, yet nuanced in its exploration of the guilt of a complex character.

In 1914, when Nicandra is eight, all is well in the grand Irish estate, Deer Forest. Maman is beautiful and adored. Dada, silent and small, mooches contentedly around the stables. Aunt Tossie, of the giant heart and bosom, is widowed but looks splendid in weeds. The butler, the groom, the land-steward, the maids, the men - each as a place and knows it. Then, astonishingly, the perfect surface is shattered; Maman does something too dreadful ever to be spoken of.

The first in a brand-new series by the foster 'super-gran', Wicked Girl is the shocking true story of the very first case Jeanie Doyle dealt with: a baby girl who was found abandoned on the steps of a church just before Christmas. While the 14-year-old mother was tracked down, Jeanie took her little daughter into her own care. But while she tried to help the two of them heal and bond, the terrible truth about the baby's father was revealed.

Exciting stories, extraordinary creatures and compelling gods, goddesses and heroes come together in this compendium of Norse myths - first told long ago by the Vikings. Listen to tales about Thor, the god of thunder, and how he once disguised himself as a bride to seek revenge on a giant and retrieve his powerful hammer Mjölnir; and how Sif, the goddess of fertility, had her long golden hair cut off by Loki, the trickster god. Each myth is told with thrilling immediacy, in language that is easy for children to understand, while retaining the awe and majesty of the original tales.

When Elizabeth Stewart, the only daughter of Protestant parents, announced that she wants to leave Belfast for the west coast of Ireland, her family can’t help but question her judgement. What could she possibly find in leafy Lisara that isn’t available in the city? A stranger in the village, Lizzie’s presence draws the attention of all the locals. And her charming spritely nature doesn’t escape the attention of the charming Patrick Delargy. It’s not long before Lizzie discovers that more than the rolling green hills and beautiful landscapes have captured her heart.

After a series of shootings at an Israeli peace rally, Washington sends for trouble-shooter and peace negotiator Maggie Costello. She follows a trail that takes her from Jewish settlements on the West Bank to Palestinian refugee camps, where she discovers the latest deaths are not random but have a distinct pattern. All the dead men are archaeologists and historians - those who know the buried secrets of the ancient past.

Oliver Molloy never meant to hurt his wife. It was an accident, not his fault. A respected lawyer, he needs to make sure no one finds out the truth. But there’s someone watching him, waiting for him to slip up. Photography student Joanna Lacey has always been close to her mother. But when Rachel Arnold turns up on her doorstep, Joanna’s world falls apart. The father she never knew has been found in the canal – a married man, now dead.

Meet the Augustts...a loving Irish family who, like all families, are a bit complicated. But they are bound together by their love for each other and the way their words shape their world. Things become a little more complicated when the mother has a stroke, and the force of nature who is Granny Mae-Ann comes to try to take charge to keep the family together. She has a job on. There's the son, Jacob, with all his words trapped in his head by The Autism; the father, Mickey, struggling to express himself at all; and Jenny, the daughter, quietly writing it all down to try to make sense of it.

This is a love story, set in the Irish literary world between 1986 and 2015. When they were first introduced by the poet Derek Mahon, Alannah Hopkin was an arts journalist turned full-time writer and Aidan Higgins, twenty-three years her senior, was a literary stylist, often cited as the heir to Ireland’s great Modernist tradition. They wrote steadily during their twenty-nine years together, but their careers could not have been more different: while Aidan focused on fiction and memoirs, Alannah prioritised work that paid the bills.

This is a story of true love and deep soul connection, about being the sole carer for a spouse with terminal cancer, about when to love means to let go and about what the author has learned from her grief following her husband's death in 2018. 

A little girl finds herself inside a bouncy ball that takes her all the way up to the stars. On the way, she meets monkeys and birds and even a crocodile! When she comes back down, the Earth is different - cleaner, brighter, happier, and filled with wonders such as a lollipop tree and a real, live teddy bear!

Julia Kelly met charismatic and successful artist Charlie Whisker while she was working on her first novel. He was 20 years older than her. Their relationship was passionate and extraordinary; each of them inspired the other. Their friends were writers, artists and rock stars; they lived a glamorous life of exhibitions, parties and concerts. They became parents to a daughter they adored. But Charlie suddenly changed, becoming hopelessly forgetful, angry and confused. 

Long ago, on a windswept Irish beach, a young father died saving the life of another man's child. Thirty years later, his widow, Julia, decides to return to this wild corner of Ireland to lay the past to rest. Her journey sparks others: her daughter Bel, an artist, joins her mother in Ireland, while son Matt and daughter-in-law Rachel, at home in Liverpool, embark on some soul searching of their own. As the threads of past and present intertwine, Julia's family confront long-buried feelings of guilt, anger, fear and desire.

There once was.... A woman who loved her husband's cock so much that she began taking it to work in her lunchbox. A man who made films without a camera, which transfixed his estranged daughter. A couple who administered electric shocks to each other, to be reminded of what love is. A world where you wake up one day and notice that, one by one, people are turning blue. Startling, wry, beguiling and emotionally charged - the stories in Modern Times might be reminiscent of Lydia Davis, Angela Carter and Daisy Johnson, but they are also unlike anything you've heard before.

Jessica and Jane have been living together for six months and are devoted friends - or are they? Jessica loves her friend with the cruelty of total possessiveness; Jane is rich, silly, and drinks rather too many brandy-and-sodas. Watching from the sidelines, their friend Sylvester regrets that Jane should be 'loved and bullied and perhaps even murdered by that frightful Jessica', but decides it's none of his business. When the Irish gentleman George Playfair meets Jane, however, he thinks otherwise and entices her to Ireland where the battle for her devotion begins.

Lady Charlotte French-McGrath has successfully ruled over her family with a rod of iron until the arrival of Cynthia: beautiful, young, talented, selfish - and engaged to her son, Desmond. When Cynthia enters the Jazz Age, on the surface her life passes in a whirl of hunting, drinking and romance. But the ghosts of Garonlea are only biding their time: they know the source of their power, a secret handed on from one generation to the next.

These real stories from real people vividly illustrate how lifestyles can be restructured both physically and mentally to help you recover from, and indeed prevent, illness. Why it so difficult to change your lifestyle habits, even when you know your life is at risk? Bernadette Bohan acknowledges that it’s not easy to change your life, especially if you are also dealing with a health crisis that is in itself life-changing.  

Join the Bubble Street Gang as they investigate crimes, solve mysteries and have brilliant adventures! Cass and her best friends, Lex and Nicholas, are the Bubble Street Gang! They investigate crimes, solve mysteries and have brilliant adventures. They’ve even got their own secret clubhouse!

Meet Cass and her best friends, Lex and Nicholas - aka the Bubble Street Gang! They investigate crimes, solve mysteries and have brilliant adventures. They've even got their own secret clubhouse. Join them as they investigate two mysterious mysteries...and go on other crazy adventures!