Showing results by narrator "Aoife McMahon" in All Categories

After months of training, former Long Island homicide detective Maggie D'arcy is now officially a Garda. She's finally settling into life in Ireland, and so is her teenage daughter, Lilly. Maggie may not be a detective yet, but she's happy with her community policing assignment in Dublin's Portobello neighborhood.

On an isolated beach set against a lonely windswept coastline, a pale figure sits serenely against a sand dune staring out to sea. His hands are folded neatly in his lap, his ankles are crossed and there is a faint smile on his otherwise lifeless face. Months later, after a fruitless investigation, the nameless stranger is buried in an unmarked grave. But the mystery of his life and death lingers on, drawing the nearby villagers into its wake. From strandings to shipwrecks, it is not the first time that strangeness has washed up on their shores.

Exciting stories, extraordinary creatures, and compelling gods, goddesses, and heroes come together in this compendium of Norse myths - first told long ago by the Vikings. Hear about Thor, the god of thunder, and how he once disguised himself as a bride to seek revenge on a giant and retrieve his powerful hammer - Mjölnir - and how Sif, the goddess of fertility, had her long golden hair cut off by Loki, the trickster god. Each myth is told with thrilling immediacy, in language that is easy for children to understand, while retaining the awe and intrigue of the original tales.

When Vicky Phelan delivered an emotionally charged statement from the steps of the Four Courts in April 2018 - having refused to sign a nondisclosure agreement in the settlement of her action against the HSE - she unearthed the medical and political scandal of our times. It would emerge that, like Vicky, 220 other women who were diagnosed with cervical cancer were not informed that a clinical audit - carried out by the national screen programme CervicalCheck - had revised their earlier, negative smear tests. Their cancers could possibly have been preventable.

When Sarah falls for Matthew, she falls hard. So it doesn't matter that he's 20 years older. That he sees her only in secret. That slowly but surely, she's sacrificing everything else in her life to be with him. Sarah's friends are worried. Her father can't understand how she could allow herself to be used like this. And she's on the verge of losing her job. But Sarah can't help it. She is addicted to being desired by Matthew. And love is supposed to hurt. Isn't it?

Durraghglass is a beautiful mansion in Southern Ireland, now crumbling in neglect. The time is the present - a present that churns with the bizarre passions of its owners' past. The Swifts - three sisters of marked eccentricity, defiantly christened April, May and Baby June, and their only brother, one-eyed Jasper - have little in common, save vivid memories of darling Mummy, and a long lost youth peculiarly prone to acts of treachery.

From the opening story about a married woman who takes a trip to the city with a single purpose in mind - to sleep with another man - Antarctica draws you into a world of obsession, betrayal and fragile relationships.

When Marianne’s carefully constructed life and marriage fall apart, she is forced to return to Ancaire, the ramshackle seaside house perched high on a cliff by the Irish Sea. There she must rebuild her relationship with her mother, Rita, a flamboyant artist and recovering alcoholic who lives by her own rules. Marianne left home when she was 15 following a traumatic and tragic incident. She never planned to return, and now she has to face the fact that some plans don’t work out the way you wanted them to.

Last year, DS Katie Maguire and her team destroyed the biggest drug trafficker in Cork. So how is the city's drug trade at an all-time high? Meanwhile, a spate of violent attacks which leave victims severely disabled has brought confidence in the Garda to an all-time low. As Katie investigates, she realises that the two cases might be connected. Someone is using brain-damaged victims to smuggle drugs into the country. And the only way to find out more is to go in undercover....

As temperatures soar across Europe during the hottest summer for 40 years, a series of hoax terrorist attacks is generating panic in London. Then a bus blows up on Oxford Street, and the hoaxes have suddenly become real. Student Brioni O’Brien has been desperately trying to contact her older sister since she unexpectedly returned early from travelling, so when Marissa’s bag is found near the site of the explosion, she fears the worst.

Chrissy Livingstone grieves over her dad's sudden death. While she cleans out his old things, she discovers something she can't explain: seven photos of schoolboys with the year 1987 stamped on the back. Unable to turn off her desire for the truth, she hunts down the boys in the photos only to find out that three of the seven have committed suicide…. Tracing the clues from Surrey to Santa Monica, Chrissy unearths disturbing ties between her father's work as a financier and the victims. 

A-list actress Shauna Jackson has the perfect life. Fame, fortune, marriage. Or so it seems. Running from a scandal, Shauna must return to the place that changed her life 20 years ago, the idyllic Greek island of Ithos. Captivated once more by her island escape, bittersweet memories resurface of one summer, one unforgettable man, and a long-hidden secret. Can Shauna take the chance to confront her past?

Maddie is restless in London. She has friends, a job and a sort-of boyfriend, but something in her life is missing. Then she visits the ancient village of Walditch, deep in the Dorset countryside. Something stirs in her, and on a whim she buys a centuries-old cottage and moves there three months later. Her friends think she's crazy, but for Maddie it feels like coming home. Late at night in the cottage, Maddie hears strange noises and sees mist gathering indoors and out.

When Frank Woods at number 79 Primrose Square comes home to a surprise birthday party thrown by his wife and adoring children, it is his guests who get the real surprise. Finding himself alone, he befriends the cantankerous Miss Hardcastle, who hasn't left her home for decades, and Emily Dunne - fresh out of rehab and desperate to make amends. As gossip spreads through Primrose Square, every relationship is tested, and nothing in this close-knit community will ever be the same again....

Lily Fleury used to love visiting her eccentric grandmother Sylvia in Ireland, taking long sunset walks on the beach and exploring the nooks and crannies of the family’s old home Magnolia Manor. But when she arrives from Dublin broken-hearted, hoping to heal in Sylvia’s warm embrace, she finds the once ornate Georgian house in disrepair and the gardens wildly overgrown. Sylvia has always been fiercely independent, but Lily can’t believe she hasn’t told anyone she’s been struggling.

When a couple holidaying in the small Irish village of Doolan disappear one night, leaving their child behind, Chrissy Livingstone has no choice but to involve herself in the mystery surrounding their disappearance. As the toddler is taken into care, it soon becomes apparent that in the close-knit village the couple are not the only ones with secrets to keep.

All but lost and forgotten, Human Fairies were exiled from Earth to another planet in the Milky Way. After their King’s death, they rage a dark war to see who will inherit the throne. The Pink Fairy, the most powerful sorceress in the land, foretells of a child born in a dungeon. But the child’s evil uncle, Markolous, has a very different plan for her. The Pink Fairy encounters several unusual comrades and enlists their aid to save Clarissa and fulfill the Human Fairy prophecy to bring light back to their world.

This is a story of true love and deep soul connection, about being the sole carer for a spouse with terminal cancer, about when to love means to let go and about what the author has learned from her grief following her husband's death in 2018.

A little girl finds herself inside a bouncy ball that takes her all the way up to the stars. On the way, she meets monkeys and birds and even a crocodile! When she comes back down, the Earth is different - cleaner, brighter, happier, and filled with wonders such as a lollipop tree and a real, live teddy bear!

Is it possible to be young, progressive and a Catholic? Ellen Coyne is about to find out.... 'You know, this isn’t a Catholic country anymore,' someone proudly declared in a Dublin pub where Ellen Coyne was celebrating the repeal of the Eighth Amendment. About to turn 30, like many her age, Ellen had left the Church a long time ago, but she had never stopped believing in and talking to God. Now, she suddenly realised she wasn’t quite ready for this statement to be true, however much of a contradiction it seemed to present with some of her most strongly held views.