I was a small child when I saw Elizabeth’s photograph in the newspapers. She'd been stolen when she was a few months old and reunited with her family four years later. Many decades afterwards, I traced the photograph for research purposes. It was exactly as I remembered: a confused, little girl who'd believed she was an adored, only child until she was removed from the woman who stole her. Perhaps she’s the reason I’m fascinated by books about children reared under an assumed identity. Such books have offered me a glimpse into another world where such an act is committed and set against a fascinating, informative background.
I’m fascinated by lighthouses. This interest was fostered by my late father, a merchant seaman whose life depended many times on their guidance. So, it was easy to love this book, where I learned about their inner workings through Tom, the meticulous lighthouse keeper.
When he was joined on his remote island by his wife, Isobel, it was the inner workings of their minds that captivated me as they struggled with an ocean that had offered them a longed-for child and a crisis of conscience that was exposed in its searing complexity by the illuminating lighthouse beam.
The years-long New York Times bestseller and Goodreads Best Historical Novel that is “irresistible…seductive…with a high concept plot that keeps you riveted from the first page” (O, The Oprah Magazine)—soon to be a major motion picture from Spielberg’s Dreamworks starring Michael Fassbender, Rachel Weisz, and Alicia Vikander, and directed by Derek Cianfrance.
After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season, Tom brings a young,…
I’m a radio buff. First thing in the morning and last thing at night, I listen on my phone to voices from around the world. It’s a far cry from the scenario that unfolded in The Watch House, which is why I love this book about the early days of wireless.
Set on Rathlin Island, where Guglielmo Marconi conducted his wireless experiments, it explores an era where technology and superstition clashed head-on. I’m familiar with old Irish superstitions and the fate of children whose origins were suspect. Throughout this beautifully written novel, I was on tenterhooks as the young, unhappily married Nuala learned a new language from one of Marconi’s engineers. A language transmitted by air through codes, signals, and numbers, and also through secret glances and whispered forbidden words.
'McGill writes about life, love and telegraphy with a poet's clarity' The Sunday Times *An Irish Times Book of the Year 2018*
As the twentieth century dawns on the island of Rathlin, a place ravaged by storms and haunted by past tragedies, Nuala Byrne is faced with a difficult decision. Abandoned by her family for the new world, she receives a proposal from the island's aging tailor. For the price of a roof over her head, she accepts.
Meanwhile the island is alive with gossip about the strangers who have arrived from the mainland, armed with mysterious equipment which can…
As a writer, I'm intrigued by collaborations between authors. It must be an exhilarating experience to co-write a book, but are there also difficulties as the authors merge their different genres and styles into a seamless narrative?
This book had a theme that interested me, and I was keen to see how two minds could work in creative tandem. Did the authors develop different characters? Did they write alternating chapters? Did they disagree over elements of the plot? Curiosity as well as sheer enjoyment carried me through this colorful and nail-biting story about a stolen child and the earth-shattering effects it had on the lives of two very disparate women.
A mother with a dark secret... A daughter dying to tell.
When 3-month-old Max is abducted, his parents are plunged into their worst nightmare. Devastated mum Sarah only took her eyes off him for a second, but that doesn't stop her guilt. Even husband Jake can't hide his anger that their little boy went missing on her watch.
By contrast there are smiles and celebration at a caravan park in Lincolnshire, as baby Blaze is introduced to the Star family. Jenna and Gary are delighted with the new addition to their family. He is their fourth child and a real…
This is a book that lingered in my memory long after I finished reading it. I could identify with the challenging behavior of a teenage daughter and also with the fraught preparations involved in creating the perfect Christmas dinner. From the opening page, I was totally engrossed in the interaction between Holly and her daughter, yet filled with uneasiness as the often banal exchanges between them gave way to a darker, more sinister reality involving Tatiana’s adoption.
This book chilled me as much as the snow that fell throughout that dreadful Christmas Day but also consumed me until the very last page.
“Leave-the-lights-on-tonight frightening, with a quiet edge of horror that is much more effective than gore.” — NPR
From Laura Kasischke, the critically acclaimed and nationally bestselling poet and author of The Raising, comes a dark and chilling thriller that combines domestic drama with elements of psychological suspense and horror—an addictive tale of denial and guilt that is part Joyce Carol Oates and part Chris Bohjalian.
On a snowy Christmas morning, Holly Judge awakens with the fragments of a nightmare floating on the edge of her consciousness. Something followed them from Russia. Thirteen years ago, she and her husband Eric adopted…
In this wonderful, multi-layered novel, the author delves into the shameful history of mother and baby homes where babies simply ‘disappeared’ and were given new identities while their mothers were working in the laundries or still nursing their newborns.
I’m familiar with the stories of women like Eileen, Maeve, and Joanie and their lives after they left such institutions. I liken this book to a tapestry that pulled the strands of many stories together. It weaved through four generations to reach an era when society can look back in horror at what went on behind high walls. And, yet, as Aimee, a confident child of Generation Z, discovered on a night out with friends, the path that women take is still fraught with danger.
Two women meet in a Dublin café on a winter afternoon – an encounter that will change both their lives forever.
Tess has no idea who this woman Maeve is, or why she has approached her like this, out of the blue. She says that she has important information about Tess’s younger son, Luke, and she insists that Tess needs to listen.
As Maeve’s story unfolds, Tess has the strangest feeling that she knows her from somewhere – but she can’t locate her in any of her memories. As the evening darkens and the café around them seems to grow…
Was the ghost of the stolen child, Elizabeth, tugging at my memory when the words "I stole you" ran through my mind one afternoon? Those three words were repeated over the following days. Without the slightest idea as to how I’d use them, I wrote them down and left them to mellow. When I eventually returned to my laptop, they had been transfused with energy, and this book flowed from me with an ease I’d never experienced with my previous books.
"I stole you." They were the words Gaby’s father whispered to her before he died. Was his brain affected by morphine? Had he meant to say, ‘I love you?’ As she tried to convince herself that she’d misheard him, her life began to change in ways she could never have imagined.
I grew up a fan of an evening news segment called “On the Road with Charles Kuralt.” Kuralt spotlighted upbeat, affirmative, sometimes nostalgic stories of people and places he discovered as he traveled across the American landscape. The charming stories he told were only part of the appeal; the freedom and adventure of being on the open road ignited a spark that continues to smolder. Some of my fondest memories from childhood are our annual family road trips, and I still jump at the chance to drive across the country.
Head West in 1865 with two life-long friends looking for adventure and who want to see the wilderness before it disappears. One is a wanderer; the other seeks a home he lost. The people they meet on their journey reflect the diverse events of this time period–settlers, adventure seekers, scientific expeditions, and Indigenous peoples–all of whom shape their lives in significant ways.
This is a story of friendship that casts a different look on a time period which often focuses only on wagon trains or gunslingers.
After four years of adventure in the frontier, Win Avery returns to his hometown on the edge of the prairie and tracks down his childhood friend, Jeb Dawson. Jeb has just lost his parents, and, in his efforts to console him, Win convinces his friend to travel west with him―to see the frontier before it is settled, while it is still unspoiled wilderness.
They embark on a free-spirited adventure, but their journey sidetracks when they befriend Meg Jameson, an accomplished horsewoman, lost on the Nebraska prairie. Traveling together through the Rocky Mountain foothills, they run into Gray Wolf, an Arapaho…
