by Carol Coffey
Fiction with an edge
‘A strong plot and clever storytelling ...
giving the novel that unputdownable quality’
Irish Independent
The Pact
Also published by Poolbeg Crimson
THE BUTTERFLY STATE
Wrong time, wrong place, or could
a ten-year-old be guilty of murder?
Tess Byrne has a secret. Alone and forgotten in an institution for troubled children for the past ten years, Tess has kept the secret with her. But now, at the age of twenty-one, she is coming home.
Waiting for her at home on the farm in Árd Glen, County Wicklow, are sister Kate and brothers Seán and Ben. But why are Kate and Seán dreading Tess's return? What lies behind Seán's hostility towards his young sister? And just what is the secret that threatens to destroy the Byrne family?
Can Tess finally live the normal life she craves with the people she loves, or will their tragic family history tear them all apart forever?
Fiction with an edge
The Butterfly State
WINTER FLOWERS
‘A must-read for fans of Jodi Picoult’
Sunday Independent
When her dishevelled, eight-year-old nephew Luke comes knocking on her door in the middle of the night, Iris Fay knows her sister Hazel is in trouble again. This time, it is a house fire started by her drunken boyfriend Pete Doyle.
As Iris is drawn back into Hazel’s dysfunctional lifestyle, she is haunted by her own past and also by the childhood memories she has kept secret from her sister.
When Pete becomes an even greater threat to the family and her sons are placed in danger, Hazel realises she must turn her life around or else lose them. But then she stumbles on a pile of letters in her mother’s attic and their contents spiral her into an even darker place.
Meanwhile Iris, too, is confronted by her past when her former husband Mark suddenly comes back into her life, looking for answers.Can the sisters face up to their memories and find the future they long for? Or will the secrets of their childhood continue to destroy them and those they hold dear?
Winter Flowers
The Penance Room
Broken Hill Nursing Home is a house laden down with secrets, its residents now settled in Australia but living out their troubled lives trapped in the past.
Thirteen-year-old Christopher, whose parents run the home, is its self-appointed guardian. Deaf since childhood, his foot severed in a horrific accident, he notices what others miss. Isolated and ignored, he is obsessed with helping these damaged souls find the peace they crave.
He befriends the beautiful young Maria whose strange sadness puzzles him, then gains an ally when a mysterious young man arrives to record the extraordinary lives of the aging immigrants. Christopher eagerly awaits the transformations he expects will result from these ‘confessions’.
But will delving into the past disturb the residents’ fragile mental state and open up a Pandora’s box that was best left closed?
And can Christopher himself survive their terrible disclosures?
The Penance Room
The Incredible Life of
Jonathan Doe
Brendan Martin is an American-born loner raised in Ireland by his silent, embittered mother before escaping back to New York, where he lives and works each day in blissful isolation in the crowded city. Brendan spends his days happily labouring on building sites and his evenings drinking alone in bars and hooking up with a constant stream of one-night stands.
Following a second DUI, Brendan’s peaceful and predictable life ends abruptly and he is forced to go to live in the town of Dover, New Jersey, with his overbearing uncle. There he forms an unlikely friendship with his meek,downtrodden cousin Eileen.
Forced into completing his community service, he meets Jonathan Doe, an intriguing man living in a local homeless shelter whose amazing stories of a happy childhood in the Appalachian Mountains captivate him. Within weeks of his arrival in Dover, Brendan loses himself in the strange man’s incredible stories.
Fascinated by the fact that Jonathan Doe can no longer remember exactly where he is from, Brendan becomes obsessed with helping his new friend find his way back to the kind of home he himself has always dreamed of.
But is Jonathan’s past real or are his memories the product of a deeply troubled mind? The closer Brendan gets to the truth, the more he realises that all is not what it seems with Jonathan Doe.
The incredible Life of Jonathan Doe
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