Showing results by narrator "Aoife McMahon" in All Categories

Abigail and her brother Benjamin have always been close. To celebrate his birthday, Abigail hires a grand old house and gathers their friends together for a murder mystery party. As the night goes on, they drink too much and play games. Relationships are forged, consolidated or frayed. Someone kisses someone they shouldn’t, someone else’s heart is broken. In the morning, everyone wakes up – except Benjamin.

Orphaned as a young child, Mirin O'Malley has been brought up by her grandparents on their isolated, rambling estate Hob's Hallow. Long ago her family prospered due to a deal struck with the mer, the terrifying creatures who live in the depths of the sea: safety for their merchant ships in return for a child of each generation. But for many years the family have been unable to keep their side of the bargain and their fortunes have suffered as a result. When Mirin's grandfather dies, her grandmother puts in train a plan to restore their glory - but at the price of Mirin's freedom.

The story of a relationship that everyone thought was forever and which is now in danger of being for never, The Break is about getting older and staying in love when life, real life, is trying to pull you apart.

When Lily McDermott walks in to find her husband of just three months in bed with a famous actress, life as she knows it is over. Lily thinks things can't get any worse when she sees photos of her husband and his new lover splashed across the glossy magazine pages, but when she loses her job, too, she is at her lowest ebb and turns to baking to soothe her soul. Wounded and broken, she has to try to pick herself up again with the help of her best friend, Frankie. With her encouragement, Lily decides to turn her hobby into a business and sets up Baked with Love.

Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in the west of Ireland, but the similarities end there. In school, Connell is popular and well-liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation—awkward but electrifying—something life-changing begins. Normal People is a story of mutual fascination, friendship and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find they can't.

One day, sitting in traffic, Stella Sweeney attempts a good deed. The resulting car crash changes her life. But in this event is born the seed of something which will take Stella thousands of miles from her old life, turning an ordinary woman into a superstar, wrenching her whole family apart. For the first time real, honest-to-goodness happiness is just within her reach. But is Stella Sweeney, Dublin housewife, ready to grasp it?

Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a distribution warehouse and asks him if he'd like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a break-up and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen and Simon are still young—but life is catching up with them.

981 AD. The Viking King of Dublin is dead. His young widow, Gormflaith, has ambitions for her son – and herself – but Ireland is a dangerous place and kings tend not to stay kings for long. Gormflaith also has a secret. She is one of the Fomorians, an immortal race who can do fire-magic. She has kept her powers hidden at all costs, for there are other immortals in this world – like the Tuatha DE Danann, a race of warriors who are sworn to kill Fomorians.

Aoife MacMurchada is just 14 years old when her father Diarmit, King of Leinster, is brutally deposed, and her family is forced to flee Southern Ireland into English exile. Diarmit seeks help from King Henry II, an alliance that leads him to the charismatic Richard de Clare, lord of Striguil, a man dissatisfied with his lot and open to new horizons. Diarmit promises Richard wealth, lands, and Aoife's hand in marriage in return for his aid, but Aoife, has her own thoughts on the matter. She may be a prize, but she is not a pawn and she will play the game to her own advantage.

On an island off the windswept Irish coast, guests gather for the wedding of the year – the marriage of Jules Keegan and Will Slater. Old friends. Past grudges. Happy families.Hidden jealousies. Thirteen guests.One body. The wedding cake has barely been cut when one of the guests is found dead. And as a storm unleashes its fury on the island, everyone is trapped. All have a secret. All have a motive.One guest won’t leave this wedding alive....

Cathy Connolly discovers the bones of a baby concealed in the hem of an old wedding dress. When the dress' original owner, Lavinia Grant, is found dead in a Dublin suburb, Cathy is drawn deep into a complex web of secrets and lies spun by three generations of women. Meanwhile, a fugitive killer has already left two dead in execution style killings across the Atlantic - and now he's in Dublin with old scores to settle. Can the team track him down before he kills again?

On Doogort East Bog, Achill Island, a body is found. The close community is stunned to learn that it's Lisa Moran, a popular teacher who disappeared two days earlier. DS Lucy Golden is assigned to the case. For her, it's personal. As an Achill native, she knows that sometimes great evil can lurk in plain sight. Having moved back from Dublin, she has spent the last 10 years trying to prove herself to her colleagues after her husband was jailed for fraud. This is her chance to put the past behind her.

Delphine has worked hard for her success, and she knows she's got everything she wants. But not everyone agrees. Her opinionated family aren't convinced that living alone with no plans to 'settle down' could possibly make her truly happy, and no one appreciates it when she drops everything, day or night, whenever her boss Conrad calls. Yet Delphine wouldn't change a thing. And when Conrad makes her a surprise offer, it's clear that her hard work is going to pay off.

Cynthia Wright is a rising star in American politics, strongly tipped as a future candidate for president. One night she is violently assaulted in her home by an intruder. She defends herself and minutes later, the intruder lies dead. Wright is hailed as a #MeToo heroine: the woman who fought back. But inconsistencies emerge in Wright's story, suggesting that the attack might not have been as random as it first seemed. When former White House troubleshooter Maggie Costello is drafted in to investigate, she finds intriguing gaps, especially over Wright's early life.

Frances is 21 years-old, cool-headed and observant. A student in Dublin and an aspiring writer, at night she performs spoken word with her best friend Bobbi, who used to be her girlfriend. When they are interviewed and then befriended by Melissa, a well-known journalist who is married to Nick, an actor, they enter a world of beautiful houses, raucous dinner parties and holidays in Provence. But when Frances and Nick get unexpectedly closer, the sharply witty and emotion-averse Frances is forced to honestly confront her own vulnerabilities for the first time.

Joanne Phillips’ ordeal began aged 13 when she was gang-raped in her bedroom by local boys. Following the trauma, she dropped out of school, was befriended by an older man and was forced into prostitution aged 16. Over the next six years, she was raped by over 500 men, starved, beaten, and transported around the country to brothels. Forced to have sex with men from all walks of life including lawyers, stockbrokers, doctors, a parish councillor, Joanne was even made to have sex with her former school headteacher—who didn’t recognise her.

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?

You'll be wincing in recognition and scratching your head in incredulity, but like Marian herself you won't be able to stop laughing at the sheer delightful absurdity that is modern life - because each and every one of us is clearly making it up as we go along. She has wonderful and tickling words of advice for those fast approaching 50.

In 2007, Cora, Faye, Anna and Julia returned home from a week together in Ibiza with secrets to keep. When they agreed never to contact each other again, all traces of their holiday were erased. Or so they thought. Now, almost seventeen years have passed since that trip and Anna's sister Kim is still picking up the pieces after Anna abruptly abandoned her life to start over in London, the occasional Christmas card her only contact ever since.

A missing girl. A case that's personal. A contract killer on Irish soil. Cat Connolly is back at work. Struggling to adjust to physical and mental scars, her workload once again becomes personal when her best friend, Sarah Jane, goes missing. Sarah Jane's a journalism student, the daughter of a decorated war correspondent, but what could she be working on that could lead to her disappearance? And how deadly will it get?