Showing results by narrator "Caroline Lennon" in All Categories

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.

Sisters Laura and Penny were once close, bonded together after the early death of their mother. Laura always had her younger sister’s back until one day everything changed and Penny disappeared. Twenty years later Laura finds herself alone and at a crossroad in her life; questioning her marriage and her future. Meanwhile Penny has spent her whole life running away from her problems until one day she is forced to stop and face the shocking truth. When Penny turns up on Laura’s doorstep late one stormy night, Laura is immediately suspicious of her sister’s motives.

A gloriously warm-hearted novel about wonderful hats, the people who buy them - and their remarkable stories. Hats! Hats! Hats! Upbrims, sidesweeps, silks, ribbons and trims all become part of Ellie's life when she inherits the little hat shop on Dublin's South Anne Street. But the city is changing, and Ellie must decide if she wants to follow the hat-making tradition of her mother or accept a generous offer to sell the shop. Encouraged by her friends, Ellie takes on the hat shop, and her quirky designs and tempting millinery confections soon attract a rich assortment of customers all in search of the perfect hat. 

Lucy Black must protect the young and vulnerable... but can she protect herself? Late December. A 16-year-old girl is found dead on a train line. Detective Sergeant Lucy Black is called to identify the body. The only clues to the dead teenager's last movements are stored in her mobile phone and on social media - and it soon becomes clear that her 'friends' weren't what they claimed to be. Lucy is no stranger to death: she is still haunted by the memory of the child she failed to save, and the killer she failed to put behind bars.

1980. Three schoolgirls visit St. Valentine's shrine in Dublin, to write petitions for love. 2010. These same women have discovered that finding love was the easy part; it's what you do with it that's tricky. When one of the women returns home unexpectedly from California, all three are forced to examine their choices. Vonnie, Abby and Diana must learn they need to open their eyes and more especially their hearts...

Having lost her mother at a young age, Maria Conti is close to her father, Leo, who owns an Italian restaurant, Leonardo’s. Secretly, however, she worries over Leo's drinking and gambling binges. Maria has no one to advise her as Leo's family is in Italy and her mother's family in Ireland rejected her when she married a foreigner. Then Leo is tragically killed. In the dark days that follow it emerges that he has left them deeply in debt. Maria has no choice but to turn to her estranged Irish family.

Maggie Ryan can't help it! She constantly finds herself organising and meddling in the lives of others, trying to match things and people together, from her neighbours in Dublin's Pleasant Square to her own family. With three bright, beautiful daughters who are still single, Maggie decides that a little romantic matching is needed. However, matchmaking is not as easy as it seems, and Maggie's quest to find the perfect partner for each of her reluctant daughters is proving difficult.

Kate Cassidy is about to celebrate 25 years of marriage to Paddy. But the secret she has kept all this time is about to be discovered. Erin Harris has always known that she is different from the rest of her family. Over the years she has begun to put the pieces together, and now she has to discover who she really is and where she comes from. Nina Harris has always put her marriage and family before everything. But now she must face up to the truth as her daughter is prepared to run off and search for a woman she doesn't know. 

1845. Seamstress Mary Sullivan’s dreams of a better future are shattered as she looks out over their ruined crop. Refusing to give in to despair, she must use every ounce of courage and strength to protect her family as they fight to survive. Dr Dan Donovan is medical officer to the Skibbereen Union. The arrival of ‘The Hunger’ soon brings starving men, women and children crowding into the town and the workhouse, desperate for assistance. Fr. John Fitzpatrick’s faith is tested by the suffering that surrounds him as his pleas for help fall on deaf ears.

One moment Shelley has everything - three beautiful children, an adoring property magnate husband, and the life of her dreams. Then Charlie’s business empire crashes and he vanishes. When Charlie’s estranged mother, Vera, opens her doors to the broken family, secrets emerge that reveal there was more to Charlie than meets the eye. Maybe Charlie’s family is simply better off without him....

Set entirely on a London bus travelling from Hoxton to Highbury and taking place over just 36 minutes, the events of The 392 unfold through a cast of charismatic characters coming from very different worlds. On the 392 are all the familiar faces you might expect to see on any bus ride through inner-city London in the grip of gentrification; delinquent school kids, the high-flyers, the weird, the wonderful and the homeless. These Londoners share two things: a bus journey and a threat. A threat which is ready to blow apart everything they know.

St Brigid's Island lies off the west coast of Ireland, and by 1960 it is a community in decline. It possesses no modern conveniences; there are also no doctors, priests, running water or electricity. The government wants the island evacuated, but those who have refused to go cling hard to their traditions. Among those remaining families are two sisters, Rose and Emer. Rose is beautiful, blessed with fertility and a deep love for her husband, but her sister, Emer, is cursed with both being unlovely and possessing a punishing gift.

Alison's American dream is in tatters. Her high-flying career is on the skids, and her Upper East Side apartment is now way beyond her means. But pride prevents her from telling her family back home just how bad things are.

Everything changes for Kate, Moya and Romy when they receive word that Maeve Dillon, their mother, is critically ill. It is time to return from Dublin, London and New York to Rossmore and the old stone house overlooking the Irish Sea where they grew up. But ancient jealousies surface as each sister confronts the past and the decisions they have made.

One of the greatest historical fiction adventures in children's literature. For Eily, Michael and Peggy the memory of the famine is still strong. But Mary-Brigid, Eily's first child, has the future to look forward to. What kind of future is it? Ireland is in turmoil, with evictions, burnings, secret meetings, fights over land. Eily and her family may be thrown off their farm. Michael may lose his job in the big house. And Peggy, in America, feels trapped in her role as a maid. Will they ever have land and a home they can call their own?

“When I rolled out of bed at the butt crack of dawn, I had no idea my day would start with a missing sheep and end with a dead dude in a crotchless mankini". Armed with her newly issued private investigator’s license, Maggie Doyle is on the case...of a sheep that went missing 22 years ago. When she trips over a dead body on the first day of the investigation, Maggie realizes there’s more to this cold case than a fight over lamb chops.

Can Nora make a new start in Ireland if her heart is in Liverpool? 1940s Dublin. Handsome widower Johnny Cassidy is out of work and lost as to how to look after his four children. Broken-hearted, he's tempted to look for the answer at the bottom of a beer glass, and it takes another calamity for him to realise help sometimes comes from the strangest places.

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?

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.... 

County Armagh, 1845. Married to the local blacksmith, young Sarah Hamilton spends her days looking after John and his apprentices at the forge, and her happiness is strengthened by the steady love of her husband and the beautiful green landscape of her home on Drumilly Hill. But when tragedy strikes, her life is changed forever. As the crops across Ireland begin to fail and the textile industry struggles to adapt to new methods, Sarah isn't the only one enduring hardships.