Showing results by narrator "Deirdre O'Connell" in All Categories

Brought to you by Penguin. Family life is enough of a juggle without ... The In-Laws Amanda. Katie. Melanie. Three wildly different women with one big problem – their impossible mother-in-law, Nancy. When an unexpected crisis hits the family business, the sisters-in-law find themselves...

Daydreamer Nora has inherited all of her grandmother's worldly belongings. Nora dreads seeing her beloved grandmother's possessions go, but she's determined that item by item, memory by memory, she will find the perfect new owners. When she opens The Memory Shop in the front of her grandmother's house, the community is gradually drawn inside, and Nora begins transforming the lives of those around her through the objects she pairs them with.

Traumatised by the death of a child in her care, top London paediatrician Claire seeks refuge on remote Selkie Island in the wilds of the Irish Sea with her husband Daniel and their baby daughter Kitty. Hidden away in Daniel’s old family home, Claire hopes to be as cut off from her guilt as she is from the mainland, but can she find peace in a place so full of its own secrets? Twenty years earlier, Daniel’s parents left the island in a boat and never made it to the mainland.

Suzanne suffered five heart attacks and made it through open heart surgery. But even that pales in comparison to the horrors she faced as a young girl. Her childhood became the ‘stuff of nightmares’ after her father passed away and her mother, unable to get a job in Ireland, had to seek work in London. So ‘Mammy’ was forced into the heart-breaking decision to put Suzanne and her five siblings into church-run orphanages in Dublin while she worked away. It was just meant to be temporary.

When 12-year-old Ciaran Devine confessed to murdering his foster father, it sent shock waves through the nation. DCI Serena Flanagan took Ciaran's confession after days spent earning his trust. He hasn't forgotten the kindness she showed him - she hasn't left his thoughts at all. But was there more to this case than the police uncovered? When concerns are brought to DCI Flanagan, the years of lies begin to unravel, setting a deadly chain of events in motion.

Off the west coast of Ireland lies a lonely island, isolated and wilfully forgotten. Some say there hasn't been a child born on the island for thirty years. Others speak of strange deaths there, decades ago. But no one really knows what happened. Locals believe that the dark times are behind them. They are mistaken. Grace, adopted at four years old, has never known where she came from. A mysterious phone call leads her back to the island where she was born – and where a terrible evil has been disturbed.

A warm, spellbinding tale of friendship, love and second chances from this number one best-selling author. Behind the brightly coloured doors of Miller's Avenue live people with very complicated lives...When Yvonne in number seven joins an online dating website, she's looking for something more than friendship but, after a series of disastrous encounters, decides to shut down her account. Is she shutting out her only chance of finding love? While next door Dan, still reeling from his wife's desertion, signs up for a cookery course....

Two different worlds collide when Luke Kiernan wakes up in hospital to find the man he’s hated since childhood at his bedside. Past deceits and dark family secrets are unearthed, and with them the promise of a fresh start with two women who are intent on helping Luke and his father mend their lives.

After 26 years of marriage Lily and Charlie separate. Lily moving on with her new fiancé Joe, and Charlie, with his new, younger, girlfriend Chloe. Even Lily and Charlie's grown-up children Polly and Thomas have come to terms with their parent's new lives. But when Lily's mother dies, Lily and Charlie decide to get the family together for one last weekend in the old family summer home - a weekend that just happens to be their 30th wedding anniversary. As the whole family gathers with their respective partners, home truths come out and secrets are divulged. By the end of the weekend, everything will have changed - but for better or for worse?

Every bouquet tells a story. And every story begins at Blossom & Grow, a tiny, jewel-like flower shop in the heart of Dublin. Here, Lara works her magic: translating feelings into flower arrangements that change hearts and lives. But what about her own heart? Has she really healed since she lost her chance to be a mother? What will happen when her own story takes a sudden turn?

When Charlotte Daly wins a scholarship to the prestigious St Thomas’s school, her mother Ali – who has struggled to bring Charlotte up as a single mum – is so proud. She hopes this opportunity will mean a better life for her clever, brilliant daughter. Ali worries, however, that Charlotte is having a hard time fitting in with her new, wealthy peers. So when Charlotte is invited to a sixteenth birthday party by popular boy Ollie, Ali pushes her to go. Just before midnight, Charlotte calls Ali to come pick her up. She’s shaking and silent: it’s obvious something has happened.

When 18-year-old Mary Hazard touched down in post-war Putney to begin her nurse’s training, she could never have known that it was the beginning of a colourful career that would still be going 60 years later – one of the longest ever serving NHS nurses. For Mary, raised in a strict convent...

Vanishing Landscapes tells the story of how plants disappeared from our daily lives one by one. First were apples, then household medicines like saffron, cloth dyes like woad, grapes for making wine, and then, eventually, the timber and reeds we used to build our houses and the wheat we grew for our bread. In their place came the first corporation, the first factory, the banking system, private property, global trade, and modern medicine.

Leading psychotherapist Stella O’Malley has walked many miles on ‘Planet Teen’. She understands difficult teenagers – she was one herself, and as a psychotherapist she has spent many hours working alongside unhappy adolescents. Stella takes parents inside the teenage brain and provides practical advice for each of the key milestones teenagers need to tackle during adolescence to become happy, healthy adults.

Childhood friends Juliet, Rebecca, Rose, and Matthew grew up in a small village outside Dublin. Now privileged, wealthy, and powerful, they appear to have it all. But when Juliet is involved in a suspicious accident and lies trapped between life and death at the bottom of a cliff, a secret that has been hidden for years threatens the seemingly perfect lives of the close-knit group.

The fallout from DCI Serena Flanagan's last case, which saw her home invaded and her husband attacked, has left her family fractured.

Serena is asked to sign off on the suicide of a severely disabled businessman whose widow's close relationship with the local reverend starts to sound an alarm. But with no evidence to back her up, have Serena's instincts led her astray? Serena's determination to unlock the mystery of what happened in that house may cost her her job - and her family.

A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR A powerful, thought-provoking novel about two sisters who must reclaim themselves after their lives are dramatically upended from one of our finest authors Alison Donnelly has suffered for love. Still stuck in the small Northern Irish town where she was born...

When Molly Jackson’s wedding is postponed for Declan, her fiancé, to go abroad on business, Molly is left reeling from the shock. But whilst seeing Declan off at the airport, she bumps into Luke, her childhood sweetheart. Seeing Luke again, she realises that she has an opportunity, while Declan is away, to put a few of the ghosts in her past to rest.

After a freak accident and eight weeks in a coma, Suzie Connors' family are elated when their mother finally wakes up absolutely fine. Except she's not. Blissfully unaware of her children's shock at having to deal with the changes in their mum, Suzie intends to live life to the fullest, with or without their approval. Then her daughter, Sharon, is faced with some major issues of her own, and the one person she would have turned to - her mother - is no longer there for her.

Zoe Hall has wanted to be an actress ever since she can remember. When she discovers that her husband, Ed, has been cheating on her, she decides now is the time to return home to Ireland. And finally she gets her lucky break - a part in a new play in an acclaimed Dublin theatre. Little does she realise that soon she will be torn between her past and her future....