Showing results by narrator "Caroline Lennon" in All Categories

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.

It's the week before Christmas. Catherine Berlin sits alone gazing at a bank of monitors, each capturing a slice of a vast industrial estate. A van appears: two men delivering crates, moving quickly. Her boss tells her to ignore them, but she can't. Berlin's scars have faded, but she still walks with a limp. Broke, she's working nights as a relief CCTV operator, and looking for something more substantial. Her heroin habit is under control - only just. The night shifts end, but now Berlin herself is being watched.

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...

It’s 1913, and the time has come for Lily to leave primary school in Sligo and start her job in the Big House - Lissadell. Her employers, the Gore-Booths, are kind, but life as a young housemaid is hard: Lily misses her home and family, she works long days and has to learn how to get on with her sullen roommate, Nellie. Then Maeve, the daughter of Constance Markievicz and niece of the Gore-Booths, comes to visit. She decides to paint a portrait of Lily, and a friendship begins.

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.

Annie Madden and her husband, Peter, seemed to have the perfect life: two beautiful children, a wonderful home and each other. That was before everything changed. Now Annie must face a different future, after a devastating event casts a shadow over her family and their future. When she is offered the chance to pick up her previous career as a writer, Annie is reluctant. Hollywood bad-boy Senan Donnelly has scared off every other ghost-writer who has tried to tell his story, so why would she be any different?

Lissadell House, Sligo, 1915. In the Big House, young housemaid Lily feels life is changing for everyone—and she fears for her new friend Sam and his choices. Plans are also being made for Maeve de Markievicz, daughter of the famous Countess, whether she likes it or not. Can Lily help her friend without getting into too much trouble? All the while, Lily knows she has a chance to grab hold of her own special dreams, as long as nothing goes wrong. With friendship they can face anything.

Resurrecting buried scandals, audacious hoaxes and private tragedies, Emma Donoghue has written a sequence of short stories about peculiar moments in the history of the British Isles. Here artists mix with poisoners and countesses rub shoulders with cross-dressers, vicars and revolutionaries; the Second Coming is proclaimed in Scotland; and a miniature girl becomes a tiny skeleton in a London museum.

Thirteen-year-old Anna is upset when she is sent to stay with her dad and his new family at Fairy Hill in the west of Ireland. Hearing whispers in the wind, Anna senses she is being watched, but nobody believes her except the mysterious boy down by the lake. When her little half-brother, Jack, nearly gets lost, Anna suspects that someone is trying to steal him away. She wonders if the stories about the old house and the fairies are true. And if they are, could Jack be in real danger?

Brianna Kelly has worked at Ballymacool House and Boarding School since she was a wee girl and will likely die there. Despite a sense that she was made for something more, Brianna feels powerless to change her situation, so she consoles herself by exploring the Ballymacool grounds, looking for hidden treasures to add to the secret trove beneath the floorboards of her room.

What if something happened long ago that still makes you sad? Graham is Molly and Beth’s favourite uncle, so they really want to help him fix the past – and as the girls know of a mysterious door that can take them back in time, maybe they can! But how can they find who they’re looking for without apps or social media? And what will the girls make of the '60s, where the hairstyles are wild, the slang is weird and no one’s heard of ciabatta?

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.

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.

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.

This latest instalment in the popular series sees Lily finally on her way to realising her dream of becoming a teacher. Nellie's older sister, Johanna, starts walking out with Harry the footman, and is extremely worried when he enlists and goes off to fight in World War I. He send letters to the girls from the front and tells them all about the Christmas Day truce in 1914...but then a telegram comes. Harry is missing, presumed dead. Will he return to Lissadell, safe and sound? 

In 1920s inner city Dublin Tenements, Ivy Rose Murphy struggles to survive in the harsh poverty-stricken environment she was born into. She is trying to adapt to her new role as a married woman. There are those jealous of the improvements she has managed to make in her life. To Ivy it seems everyone wants a piece of her. Ivy's friends gather around to offer support, but somehow Ivy is the one who gives hope to them.

Through hard work and determination, Ivy Rose Murphy has come up in the world. She still begs for discards from the homes of the wealthy which lie only a stone’s throw from The Lane, the poverty-ridden tenements where she lives. She repairs and sells these discards in Dublin market. With her talent for needlework and a team of neighbourhood helpers, she has also begun to supply an upmarket shop in Grafton Street with beautifully dressed dolls. Then Ivy’s wealthy friend Ann Marie Gannon, with her beloved camera, spends a day at the airport photographing planes.

Martha MacKenzie was an ordinary woman. Nothing extraordinary had ever happened to her, unless she counted her marriage to Dan and the birth of her three perfect, healthy children. Until the day of the accident, when she touched the Lucas boy as he lay dying on the tarmac, and they said she saved him. That was the start of it all.... As word of her healing spreads, Martha's life and the lives of those around her are radically altered. Hounded by the media and those in desperate search of hope and miracles, Martha is forced to decide what is most important in her life.