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....

An ordinary day. An ordinary bank. An ordinary street in an ordinary town. Nothing ever happens until one day a shocking robbery turns life upside down for five people - Cillian, a police detective; Martha, the woman he thought was the love of his life; Tobias, who came to Ireland after World War II and now lies in a coma, shot in the bank robbery; Roman, the young Polish teenager who is suspected of pulling the trigger; and his mother, Rosa the cleaner, who dreamed of a better life for herself and her son - and things will never be ordinary again.

For 13 years Pen and Cara have had a tumultuous relationship crammed with bickering and intimacy, recrimination and desire. When Cara dies in a car crash, Pen is left to cope with a secret widowhood. Along with that burden comes a hidden story of painful and pleasurable memories. With humour and poignancy, Hood follows Pen through the week of Cara’s death; through the paralysis of grief and the ecstasy of nostalgia to a point where mourning and making a new life melt into one.

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....

On the idyllic Pine Road, three women are looking for a fresh start.... Martha was a force of nature, but since moving to Dublin under mysterious circumstances, she can't seem to find her footing. Robin was the 'it' girl in school. Now she's back at her parents' with her four-year-old, vowing that her ex is out of the picture for good. Edie has the perfect life, but she longs for a baby, the acceptance of her neighbours, and to find out why her dream husband is avoiding their dream future.

Children today grow up in an increasingly volatile, complex and uncertain world. Theirs is a generation disempowered from steering their lives while society’s systems are failing to provide the support they need. Yet, a country only prospers when its children—from all walks of life—thrive, meaning that the United Kingdom now faces some consequential choices. Raising the Nation builds a compelling case showing why we must nurture smart, strong and kind children to one day inherit the stewardship of society.

Bridget Kittrick, headstrong and independent, is ready to show her worth when she's left in charge of her family's estate. She meets Lincoln Huntley, a man with a mysterious past which only heightens her attraction to him. A vicious neighbour, Mr Roache, holds a grudge against the family and orchestrates for Bridget to be kidnapped by wanted men, bushrangers, who take her deep into mountainous country to a hideout. The Boss, Donovan, is unlike any other man Bridget has known and he soon shows her a side to him that pulls at her heart.

One cold spring morning in County Cork, two fishermen find a bundle of rags floating in the Blackwater River. It is the mutilated corpse of a retired music teacher. His hands and feet are bound, and his neck bears the mark of a garrotting wire. The Garda want to wrap this case up before the press get hold of it. But when a second man is found murdered, the body bearing all the same marks as the first, it looks like the hallmark of a serial killer...

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.

Tessa's life as an activist and volunteer worker takes a hit after a fall. At the ripe young age of 69, she's no longer able to live alone and decides to take in two lodgers for free. After the recent death of his brother, Conn is riddled with grief and determined to make amends. A free room seems too good to be true—until he meets the other lodger.

Grace sees her boyfriend Henry everywhere. In the supermarket, on the street, at the graveyard. Only Henry is dead. He died two months earlier, leaving a huge hole in Grace's heart. But then Henry turns up to fix the boiler one evening, and Grace can't decide if she's hallucinating or has suddenly developed psychic powers....

A mother always knows best. Doesn't she? For single mum Kate O'Hara, there was no decision to make. Her daughter, Rosie, is one of a small percentage of Irish children with a disorder that prevents her from being vaccinated against measles. All Kate can do is hope that herd immunity keeps the disease at bay and her little girl safe. For Madeleine Harrington, it was a leap of faith she wasn't prepared to take. Which is why she and her husband decline measles jabs for their daughter, Clara.

Father Aloysius Walsh spent the last years of his life painstakingly collecting evidence of a yearlong killing spree, unparalleled savagery that blighted Ireland's borderlands at the end of the 1970s. Pinned to his bedroom wall, a macabre map charts the grim territory of death - victims, weapons, wounds, dates - and somehow, amid the forest of pins and notes, he had discerned a pattern.

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.

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.

One wet winter night, two women meet on a bridge. One is Tess Taylor, a personal trainer on the way to meet her boyfriend for date night. The other is Kate King, a celebrity married to a handsome billionaire who just happens to make her cry. In the cold, dark evening, there is nothing to link them together but the bridge they shiver on. Little do they know they'll each hold the key to the other's future marriage....

Like any married couple, Allie and Tony have had their fair share of heartache. But when Tony's actions force Allie and her young sons out of their home, things take a turn for the worse. Without her husband around, Allie must cope with two inquisitive children - as well as the reappearance of her estranged father. So when her eldest Mark befriends next-door neighbour Jeremy, Allie's glad he's found a distraction. The trouble is that Mark believes Jeremy is Santa Claus and that he can put the family back together.

Andrea and Lexi thought they would be best friends for ever. Through thick and thin, growing pains and wild nights out, they were inseparable. But it was their biggest adventure that was to tear them apart: travelling through Australia, Andrea and Lexi are involved in a catastrophic accident. Andrea is left scarred but her best friend is nowhere to be found. What happened to Lexi? Two years later, Andy's scar means she's too scared to go out into the real world.

Lissadell House, Sligo, 1913. Lily and her friend Nellie are young housemaids in service in the Big House - they work for Lady Mary and Sir Josslyn Gore-Booth at Lissadell. As well as her housework and duties, Lily helps out in the local school of needlework - she hopes it might be a step on the way to her dream of being a teacher. Though they work hard, there’s lots of fun to be had at Lissadell - like friendship, fun and madcap bicycle rides with Sir Josslyn’s niece Maeve, daughter of the famous Republican Constance Markievicz.

Everyone deserves to find that one person who's meant for them, don't they? Honest and wise, poignant and warm, this is completely absorbing storytelling for fans of Jojo Moyes and Marian Keyes. Vinnie is an ordinary man. Ellen is an ordinary woman. Ellen is unable to move on after a terrible accident that left her mentally and physically scarred. Taxi driver Vinnie is struggling to cope with bringing up two children on his own. Everyone deserves to find that one person who's meant for them, don't they?