For eighteen year old Lena O'Sullivan, life is predictable and dull. A future of hard work, marriage to a local boy, and a family of her own one day is all she has to look forward to. People from her background know not to expect too much, but Lena yearns for something different. Malachy Berger was different, for him, the world is at his feet. An only child of a wealthy, if peculiar father, a large inheritance, a beautiful house and a fine education are his due. Nobody is in favour of Lena and Malachy’s friendship, but why not? What harm are they doing? Why is everyone so dead set against it?

For three young boys, Liam, Patrick, and Hugo, life in Ireland of the 1960s proves to be both idyllic and flawed. Living in close proximity but leading vastly different lives, the bonds of friendship bind these young men as they grow, dream, and navigate the storms of youth.

London 1940. As the war rages in Europe, Rose Brown steps on board a ship bound for America, hoping to escape the danger. She's frightened, but her widowed mammy and three sisters in Ireland need the money she earns as nanny to the rich Townsend family. But while Rose plays with baby Sarah in the salty spray on deck, disaster strikes, and the ocean liner begins to sink. In the chaos, Rose and the baby are separated from the family.

The day Titanic sails from Queenstown, taking with it the hopes and dreams of so many, Harp’s life too is devastated. The small port town is shaken to its foundations at the loss of the unsinkable ship, but the revelation of a long-held secret means that Harp and Rose have a much more pressing issue to solve, one that could destroy them if they cannot find a solution.

Life is calm and fairly predictable. Until something unthinkable happens in our sleepy backwater. A crime, but not like anything I've ever seen before. It's a complete mystery. And it's up to me to solve it.

Mary Doyle arrives in Dublin in 1913, doomed, she fears, to a life of domestic service. Instead, however, she finds herself deeply affected by the social and political turmoil of a fledgling nation struggling for independence. Suddenly, all that was once inevitable is no longer a certainty as she is embroiled in the very heart of the Easter Rising.

In the first book, What Once Was True, two families, one of grandeur and one of the working class, navigate the conflicts associated with the looming war ahead. Despite delusions of grandeur, Lord and Lady Kenefick and their adult children live a life of decayed opulence as the money needed to keep such a house and grounds ever dwindles.

Carmel, a forty year old Irish woman is living a life that’s fine, not exciting or awful, just fine. She has a house, a husband, it’s all ok. She never had kids, but that’s just life, right? She knows she should be grateful. She’s better off than a lot of people. Then one day, out of the blue, she gets a Facebook message, from a total stranger. With information that could transform her life, for better or for much worse.

Dr. Richard Buckley returns home to his wife and beloved hometown of Dunderrig, weary and heart-sick over the horror and pointlessness of The Great War. Soon, trouble is coming from all sides—Richard’s unhappy wife leaves Dunderrig, and a Nazi occupied Europe marches steadily closer to home. In the blink of an eye, the peace he’d craved and enjoyed since his days on the battlefield are gone. Meantime, James and Juliet come of age in a world on the brink of chaos, where the remnants of rebellion at home have snowballed into the horrors of yet another world war.

Queensland, Australia, 1936 Sister Claire McAuliffe has been called from Dungarvan, County Waterford, to do God’s work in Jumaaroo, Queensland. Along with four other sisters, she is charged with setting up a Catholic school for the education of the gold rush families. But life between the tropical Australian rainforest and the azure ocean is far from the spectacular paradise it seems. Sister Claire finds life challenging in more ways than she can count—but far more worrying is the constant presence of the much-loved mayor of Jumaaroo, Joseph McGrath.

When Cissy Ryan’s real mother comes to claim her from the workhouse, it’s not how she imagined. Her family’s tumbledown cottage has ice on the inside of its windows and is in an isolated, poverty-stricken village in the muddy Irish countryside. But when Cissy is allowed to help neighbour Colm Doyle and his horse named Blue on their milk round one morning, Cissy starts to feel as though friendship could get her through anything.

Londoner Madeleine Grant is studying at the Sorbonne in Paris when she marries charismatic French journalist Giles Martin. As they raise their son, Olivier, they hold on to a tenuous promise for the future. Until the thunder of war sets off alarms in France. Staying behind to join the resistance, Giles sends Madeleine and Olivier to the relative safety of England, where Madeleine secures a job teaching French at a secondary school. Yet nowhere is safe. After a devastating twist of fate resulting in the loss of her son, Madeleine accepts a request from the ministry to aid in the war effort.

Iowa, 1967. Nursing school roommates BettyKay and Kitty don’t have much in common. A farmer’s daughter, BettyKay has risked her family’s disapproval to make her dreams come true away from her small rural town. Cosmopolitan Kitty has always relied on her beauty and smarts to get by and to hide a devastating secret from the past that she can’t seem to outrun. Yet the two share a determination to prove themselves in a changing world, forging an unlikely, powerful bond on a campus unkind to women.

Aleen Cust has big dreams. And no one―not her family, society, or the law―will stop her. Born in Ireland in 1868 to an aristocratic English family, Aleen knows she is destined to work with animals, even if her family is appalled by the idea of a woman pursuing a veterinary career. Going against their wishes but with the encouragement of the guardian assigned to her upon her father’s death, Aleen attends the New Veterinary College in Edinburgh, enrolling as A. I. Custance to spare her family the humiliation they fear.

Widowed young, Genevieve Prentice dedicated her life to raising her four children. Now, though, they’re all grown and scattered to the wind, and Genevieve is ready for a change. In a flash of inspiration, she puts her home on the market and heads to Lake in the Clouds, Colorado, to renovate a rustic waterfront lodge with her sister. But just as they begin, Genevieve gets the shock of a lifetime: the arrival of her son.