Showing results by narrator "Roisin Rankin" in All Categories

After decades of dereliction and inner-city neglect, Barrack Street, Cork is finally being excavated. The work uncovers the skeletal remains of six men, scattered around the site, their hands and feet all bound, all clearly killed violently, but many decades, even centuries, ago. When a seventh body is found, Detective Garda Alice McCann knows immediately this one is different. It's female, for a start, and considerably more recent. Who was she? And who killed her?

Beatrice Alright is the queen of silver linings. She can find a spark of hope in any situation. Even when her partner delivers earth-shattering news that leaves Bea and their four-year-old, Ellie, without a home, she refuses to panic. Because Bea believes that what she does have is more important–her job at St Helen’s Hospital, which offers a warm, dry shelter for her and Ellie to stay while she figures things out. By day Bea cleans the wards, by night she tucks her daughter into bed between mops and buckets. And tries so hard to hold on to hope.

Descendants of the founder of the Guinness beer empire, they were the toast of 1920s high society, darlings of the press, with not a care in the world. But Felicity knows better. Sent to live with them as a child because her mother could no longer care for her, she grows up as the sisters’ companion. Both an outsider and a part of the family, she witnesses the complex lives upstairs and downstairs, sees the compromises and sacrifices beneath the glamorous surface. Then, at a party one summer’s evening, something happens that sends shock waves through the entire household.

Princesses Daphne, Beatriz, and Sophronia have trained their entire lives for one purpose: to bring down nations. Their mother, Empress Margaraux of Bessemia, is determined to rule the continent of Vesteria, and her daughters are her weapons. Promised for marriage since birth, they are her ticket across enemy lines. And also her decoys.

Twenty-nine-year-old Lily Buckley planned to be happily married and in her dream job by now. Instead, she’s been single since being left at the altar three years ago, and works at her local paper, writing stories about giant vegetables at the village fete and a dog who looks exactly like Chewbacca. Not quite what she was dreaming of. So when Lily’s allowed to write her own column it’s exactly what she’s always wanted - except there's a catch. She has to do one thing every week that scares her then write about it.

Empress Margaraux has had plans for her daughters since the day they were born. Princesses Sophronia, Daphne, and Beatriz will be queens. And now, age sixteen, they each must leave their homeland and marry their princes.

Ranka is tired of death. All she wants is to be left alone, living out her days in Witchik’s wild north with the coven that raised her, attempting to forget the horrors of her past. But when she is named Bloodwinn, the next treaty bride to the human kingdom of Isodal, her coven sends her south with a single directive: kill him. Easy enough, for a blood-witch whose magic compels her to kill. Except the prince is gentle, kind, and terrified of her. He doesn’t want to marry Ranka; he doesn’t want to be king at all. And it’s his sister who seems to be the real threat.

They were promised for marriage since birth, and raised to bring down kingdoms, but the true destiny of the triplet princesses of Bessemia has always been to die—and one of them already has. Since Sophronia’s murder, princesses Daphne and Beatriz have discovered the truth: they are pawns in their mother’s game, which will end with her as empress of not just Bessemia but the entire continent of Vesteria. Only the princesses have their own plans.

Katie Collins has barely ever left her tiny Irish village of Ennisbawn. Why would she? With its tightknit community, friendly local pub, surrounded by glistening lakes and perfectly mysterious forests, it’s a place of peaceful beauty. Or it was peaceful. Until Callum Dempsey turned up. Part of a hotshot (and, Katie has to admit, hot is annoyingly apt for him...) development team with zero eye for beauty or charm, he’s not only building a hideous hotel just outside the village, he’s also just announced a plan to knock down Ennisbawn’s only remaining pub.

Most students would kill to be selected for the prestigious Law and Literature course at Franklin University. But for Jessie Mooney, admittance into this campus inner circle is about more than social cachet and access to distinguished alumni: It’s her chance to get close to charismatic professor Jay Crane. Since the moment she discovered their secret relationship, Jessie’s been convinced Crane is to blame for the events leading to her sister’s death, and she’ll do anything to hold him accountable.

Christian’s fed up of being on his own every Christmas. He doesn’t mind being alone, but he hates his family’s sad eyes and soft tones as they sit around coupled up. Because he’s actually, totally, fine. So when Megan literally bumps into Christian in a Dublin pub, they come up with a pact to see them through the holiday season. They’re going to be the very best fake dates for each other, ever. Rules are drawn up, a contract is signed on a wine-stained napkin. They will sit through each other’s family gatherings and be outrageously in love until freed from their annual obligations.

Brought up in a devout household in Ireland, Jay is now living in London with her girlfriend, determined to live day to day and not think too much about either the future or the past. But when she learns that her beloved older brother, who died in a terrible accident, may be made into a Catholic saint, she realises she must at last confront her family, her childhood and herself . . .

My world shattered when Declan disappeared five years ago. My grown-up children fell apart without their father, and it was up to me to pick up the pieces of our broken lives. I never thought I’d get married again, but then I met George. Some people might think we’re moving too fast. But as I look around on our wedding day at our little family, the sounds of laughter and clinking glasses ringing out, I know that I’ve made the right decision. Until Declan steps out the shadows. He says he still loves me, and now he’s back for good. But where has he been all this time?

Jenna Walker has suddenly found herself with no job, no boyfriend, nowhere to live—and she's been wondering for a while now if, apart from her beloved cat Bertie, she has anything to live for. She really doesn't want to turn up on her sister's doorstep, but that feels like her only option. Already stretched between her job and the demands of looking after their mother, Rosie is not happy about having yet another person to take care of. If only one thing in her life would work out the way she wants it to.

When Lily married her soul mate Connor, buffeted by the sea spray and wild winds of her coastal homeland in Maine, she never imagined she’d be planning his memorial just three years later. Connor has been lost at sea in the bleak, stormy Atlantic, leaving Lily heartbroken. But as she prepares to say good-bye to Connor for the last time, she is shocked to discover a message to him that he never told her about.

When an explosion rips through the chemistry lab at Raven’s Hill School and six girls are injured, the first thought is that it’s an experiment gone wrong. Then the guards start investigating and suspect a bomb. But – if so – who was it targeting, and why? Ella, Becky, Maeve and Mackenzie are rushed to hospital, along with the injured Frankie and Sorcha, who team up with Jess to try to find out what actually happened. But what they discover is more sinister than even they could have imagined …

Mara and her dad have lived in their van for as long as she can remember. Whatever her father does to scrape a living has kept them constantly moving, and Mara has never questioned it. That is until she uncovers a collection of notes addressed to ‘the Tider’, an individual responsible for harvesting lost time from people whose lives were cut short. But before Mara can question her father, he is taken by a dangerous group who want to use his power for evil. With the very fabric of time and space at stake, it’s down to Mara and her new friend Jan to find him before it’s too late.

It's the dawn of the 1930s and the three privileged Guinness sisters, Aileen, Maureen and Oonagh, settle into becoming wives and mothers: Aileen in Luttrellstown Castle outside Dublin, Maureen in Clandeboye in Northern Ireland, and Oonagh in Rutland Place in London. But while Britain becomes increasingly politically polarized, Aileen, Maureen and Oonagh discover conflict within their own marriages.

In 1950s Dublin, life is hard and jobs are like gold dust. Nineteen-year-old Nell Flynn is training to be a nurse and planning to marry her boyfriend, Liam Connor, when her mother dies, leaving her younger sisters destitute. To save them from the workhouse, Nell returns to the family home - a mere two rooms at the top of a condemned tenement. Nell finds work at a biscuit factory and, at first, they scrape through each week.

Amy jumps at the opportunity when she’s offered a nannying job in picturesque West Cork for the friendly and welcoming Carroll family. It’s the perfect chance for Amy to escape the suffocating city and the man who made her life hell. With two adorable children to oversee, a pair of generous employers, and more freedom than she’s enjoyed in years, everything seems wonderful. So why can’t Amy shake a creeping sense of unease? Perhaps it’s the husband’s erratic behavior.