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

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.

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.

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.

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?

Farm girl Veronica McDermott is desperate to find more to life than peeling potatoes. Persuading her family to let her attend college in Dublin, she has no idea what she is getting into. Recruited to type for Eámon De Valera, she is soon caught up in the danger of those fighting for Ireland's independence from Britain. The attentions of a handsome British soldier do not go unnoticed by Veronica's superiors. But when she is tasked with earning his affections to gather intelligence for Sinn Féin, it isn't long before her loyalty to her countrymen and her feelings are in conflict.

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.

In the middle of Cork, in the middle of the day, a fire crackles in a local dance studio. Thirteen women, all promising stars of Irish folk, die in the blaze, their young lives cut short by a tragic accident. But where others see tragedy, DCI Katie Maguire sees murder. This is not the first fire to sweep through Cork. And in one previous case, the victims were dead before the fire was started. As Katie Maguire investigates the strange, obsessive world of competitive Irish folk dancing, she must face her most chilling killer yet.

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.

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.

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....

When 18-year-old Mary Hazard touched down in postwar 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 in rural south Ireland, working in her first London hospital was a shocking and life-changing experience. Against a backdrop of ongoing rationing and poverty, she saw for the first time the horrors of disease...

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?

Lynn Stephens' life has been tough recently, thanks to Vincent Boland, the manager at four-star hotel she works in. But, after standing up to him, she is delighted when she is vindicated and feels she can move on. But the consequences of crossing Vincent are more far-reaching than Lynn knows. It’s not long before she realises that this man still has the capacity to destroy her and all she holds dear.

When Alannah was 23, she met a man who was older than her - a married man - and fell in love. Things happened suddenly. They met in April, in the first bit of mild weather, and in August, they went to stay in rural Ireland, overseen by the cottage's landlady. Six years later, when Alannah is newly married to another man, she sees the landlady from afar. Memories of those days spent in bliss, then torture, return to her. And the realisation that she has been waiting - all this time - to be rediscovered.

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.

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.

I talked to my mother the night she died, losing myself in memories of when we were happiest together. But I held one memory back, and it surfaces now unbidden. I see a green postbox and a small hand stretching up to its oblong mouth. I am never sure whether that hand is mine. But if not mine, whose? Louise Redmond left Ireland for London before she was 20. Now, more than two decades later, her heart already breaking from a failing marriage, she is summoned home.

A powerful, thought-provoking novel about two sisters who must reclaim themselves after their lives are dramatically upended. Alison Donnelly has suffered for love. Still stuck in the small Northern Irish town where she was born, working for her father's real estate agency, she hopes to pick up the pieces and get her life back together. Her sister Liz, a fiercely independent college professor who lives in New York City, is about to return to Ulster for Alison's second wedding.

Of all the dangers that she faced, the greatest was discovery. Dublin 1702....and Irish beauty Kit Kavanagh has everything she could want in life. Newly married, she runs a successful alehouse with her beloved husband Richard. The wars that rage in Europe over the Spanish throne seem a world away. But everything changes on the night that Richard simply disappears.

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.