Showing results for "Caroline Lennon" in Literary Fiction

Lola has every reason to be interested in who Paddy de Courcy is marrying - because although she's his girlfriend, she definitely isn't the bride. Heartbroken, she flees the city for a cottage by the sea. But will her retreat prove as idyllic as she hopes? Not if journalist Grace has anything to do with it. Grace knew Paddy a long time ago. But why can't she forget 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.

Paula O'Leary is hugely popular with the boys from her working-class Dublin neighbourhood. But it is the charming Charlo Spencer who finally gets her. Yet after their honeymoon, everything changes. When Charlo first strikes her, she is stunned. But as his violent outbursts develop from slaps and bruises to broken fingers and knocked-out teeth, she gradually loses all self-respect, denying how bleak things are and drinking heavily.

Thea Osborne hopes to spend a quiet Christmas house sitting for the Shepherds in the picturesque village of Stanton. Walks in the local countryside with the dogs and perhaps a meal in the pub are all the excitement she wants. When her arrival at the village coincides with the funeral of local businessman Douglas Callendar, found electrocuted in his bath, Thea's interest is stirred but the onset of flu looks to prevent any sleuthing.

A book about family, selfishness and compassion on Ireland's Atlantic coast, from the Booker Prize-winner. Hanna, Dan, Constance and Emmet return to the west coast of Ireland for a final family Christmas in the home their mother is about to sell. As the feast turns to near painful comedy, a last, desperate act from Rosaleen - a woman who doesn't quite know how to love her own children - forces them to confront the weight of family ties and the road that brought them home.

Nestled in the hills of the Cotswolds, the village of Duntisbourne Abbots is a well-kept secret. When Joel Jennison is found slaughtered in the same field where his brother’s corpse had lain ten weeks previously, a whole community falls under suspicion. Was it a family feud? An act of revenge?

Annie Dunne and her cousin Sarah live and work on a small farm in a remote and beautiful part of Wicklow in late 1950s Ireland. All about them, a way of life is about to disappear. Like two old rooks, they hold to their life, cherishing everything. When Annie's nephew and his wife are set to go...

Rabbit Hayes loves her life, ordinary as it is, and the extraordinary people in it. She loves her spirited daughter, Juliet; her colourful, unruly family; the only man in her big heart, Johnny Faye. But it turns out the world has other plans for Rabbit, and she's OK with that. Because she has plans for the world too, and only a handful of days left to make them happen.

Shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize 2017 County Kerry, Ireland, 1825. Nóra, bereft after the sudden death of her beloved husband, finds herself alone and caring for her young grandson Micheál. Micheál cannot speak and cannot walk and Nóra is desperate to know what is wrong with him. What...

If it hadn't been for the child then none of this might have happened. She saw me kissing her father. She saw her father kissing me. The fact that a child got mixed up in it all made us feel that it mattered, that there was no going back.

Late 1960s, Tullamore, County Offaly. Life is full of exciting possibilities for Fiona Tracey as she prepares to leave Ireland to work for a wealthy family in New York. Then a sudden tragedy forces Fiona to postpone her departure. As her mother sinks into illness and depression, Fiona's responsibilities mount, and she uncovers information which explodes old family secrets....

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.

Life is looking up for Saffy. After six years it seems like her boyfriend, Greg, is going to propose. Things couldn’t be more different for Conor and Jess. Even after seven happy years and two kids, she won't get married. But everyone's keeping secrets, and things aren’t quite what they seem. It's going to take some tough questions, and even tougher answers, before anyone's being honest - even with themselves. Postcards from the Heart is a book about four friends in their thirties. It's about love, lust, life, death, balloon rides and missing hamsters.

Nora and Theresa Flynn are 21 and 17 when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. Nora is the responsible sister; she's shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn't sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by their new life in Boston and besotted with the fashionable dresses and dance halls on Dudley Street. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan - a decision with repercussions they are both far too young to understand.

Georgina Corrigan is dead! It must be true. It has been printed in the newspapers. How does one prove one is not dead? Georgina is forced to seek assistance from her well-connected friends to establish that she is indeed alive and well and living in Percy Place. The accident that caused the death of her unlamented husband has had other ripple effects, and a young woman is being forced to flee all that she knows.

1971. With the troubles in Belfast at their height, a happy domestic life is something that Tess Maguire yearns for. Yet the political and social unrest are sending ripples of uncertainty through every aspect of her life. Whilst her partnership with her friend Theresa Cunningham in a dressmaking firm is successful, it's beginning to affect her romantic interests. Theresa's boyfriend Bob always seems to be near Tess. Near enough, one night, to declare his true feelings for her....

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...

Forensic investigator Reilly Steel is back in Florida, hoping that a relaxing stay at the home of her old FBI mentor Daniel Forrest will help her. But Reilly soon finds herself drawn into a local investigation, a gruesome murder where the body of a woman has literally been torn in two. And when...

A widow spends weeks haunting a cemetery, desperate to track down an unknown woman who keeps leaving flowers on her husband’s grave; A daughter searches a foreign city for her father, trying to understand why he disappeared forty-five years ago; A former gay lover of Roger Casement stands among the crowds at his state funeral in 1965, paying silent homage to the closeted world they were forced to inhabit at the dawning of the Irish State. A writer at a book launch comes face to face with the person secretly responsible for his success.

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.