The Mistletoe Matchmaker
Page 29
Oh, and, since Christmas in Ireland celebrates loving and giving and shared joy, if you turn the page you’ll find a gift from my home to yours. These easy to make chocolate truffles keep well for about a week in an airtight tin, or in the fridge. They never last that long in our house though, as they’re scrumptious with a mug of hot chocolate after a wintry walk.
Christmas Truffles
Makes 40 truffles
YOU’LL NEED:
1¼ cup dark chocolate (minimum 70 percent cocoa solids)
1¼ cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
A pinch of sea salt
A splash of Irish brandy (optional)
Chopped nuts/desiccated coconut/cocoa powder (for decoration)
METHOD:
Break chocolate into small pieces and put them into a saucepan.
In another pan heat cream gently until just bubbling and add the butter.
Once the butter has melted, pour the mixture slowly over the chocolate pieces and, whisking as you go, melt them slowly over a gentle heat. (Add a spoonful of boiling water if the mixture splits).
When it’s all come together smoothly, add the pinch of salt and splash of brandy. Pour the mixture into a bowl and leave to set for two hours in the fridge, and then bring back to room temperature.
Working quickly, make small balls of the mixture using two teaspoons and dipping the spoons in boiling water between each spoonful. Then swirl the truffles quickly, a few at a time, in a wide, shallow bowl of cocoa powder. (Swirling coats them evenly and keeps them round.) For variety, you can roll some in chopped nuts or desiccated coconut.
Pile them on a plate and settle down by a cozy fire with a book!
Read On
Have You Read? More by Felicity Hayes-McCoy
THE HOUSE ON AN IRISH HILLSIDE by Felicity Hayes-McCoy
* * *
“From the moment I crossed the mountain I fell in love. With the place, which was more beautiful than any place I’d ever seen. With the people I met there. And with a way of looking at life that was deeper, richer and wiser than any I’d known before. When I left I dreamt of clouds on the mountain. I kept going back.”
We all lead very busy lives and sometimes it’s hard to find the time to be the people we want to be. Twelve years ago Felicity Hayes-McCoy left the hectic pace of the city and returned to Ireland to make a new life in a remarkable house on the stunning Dingle Peninsula. Having chosen to live in a community that, previously, she’d only known as a visitor, she finds herself re-engaging with values and experiences, and re-evaluating a sense of identity, that she’d thought she’d left behind.
Beautifully written, this is a life-affirming tale of “a house of music and memory,” and of being reminded of the things that really matter.
“Hayes-McCoy is a lovely writer, far superior to the average memoirist. . . . She has a style that’s poetic but not showy; finely honed but easy and unforced; descriptive and evocative without seeming to try too hard.”
—The Irish Independent
“Wise, funny, and blazingly beautiful.”
—Joanna Lumley, actor, author, and television presenter
ENOUGH IS PLENTY by Felicity Hayes-McCoy
* * *
An immigrant to England in the 1970s, Felicity Hayes-McCoy knew she’d return to Corca Dhuibhne, Ireland’s Dingle Peninsula, a place she’d fallen in love with at seventeen. Now she and her English husband have restored a stone house there, the focus for this chronicle in response to reader requests for an illustrated sequel to her memoir, The House on an Irish Hillside.
The Celts celebrated the cycle of the seasons as a vibrant expression of eternity, endlessly turning from darkness to light and back again. Enough Is Plenty, a book about the ordinary small pleasures in life that can easily go unnoticed, celebrates these seasonal rhythms, and offers the reader recipes from the author’s kitchen and information on organic food production and gardening. It views the year from a place where a vibrant twenty-first-century lifestyle is still marked by Ireland’s Celtic past and the ancient rhythms of Samhain (winter), Imbolc (spring), Bealtaine (summer), and Lughnasa (autumn). In this way of life, health and happiness are rooted in awareness of nature and the environment, and nourishment comes from music, friendship, and storytelling as well as from good food.
“Magical.”
—Alice Taylor, bestselling author of To School Through the Fields
“A gorgeous book.”
—Sunday Independent
A WOVEN SILENCE: MEMORY, HISTORY & REMEMBRANCE by Felicity Hayes-McCoy
* * *
How do we know that what we remember is the truth? Inspired by the story of her relative Marion Stokes, one of three women who raised the tricolor over Enniscorthy in Easter Week 1916, Felicity Hayes-McCoy explores the consequences for all of us when memories are manipulated or obliterated, intentionally or by chance. In the power struggle after Ireland’s Easter Rising, involving, among others, Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera, the ideals for which Marion and her companions fought were eroded. As Felicity maps her own family stories onto the history of the state, her story moves from Washerwoman’s Hill in Dublin, to London, and back again; spans two world wars, a revolution, a civil war, and the development of a republic; and culminates in Ireland’s 2015 same-sex marriage referendum.
“A powerful piece of personal and political history.”
—Sunday Times (Ireland)
“Questions are explored delicately and deftly.”
—Irish Examiner
“Writing of high order.”
—Frank McGuinness, author, poet, and playwright
DINGLE AND ITS HINTERLAND: PEOPLE, PLACES AND HERITAGE by Felicity Hayes-McCoy
* * *
The tip of the Dingle Peninsula, at the westernmost edge of Europe, is one of Ireland’s most isolated regions. But for millennia, it has also been a hub for foreign visitors: its position made it a medieval center for traders, and the wildness of its remote landscape has been the setting for spiritual pilgrimage. This seeming paradox is what makes Dingle and its western hinterland unique: the ancient, native culture has been preserved, while also being influenced by the world at large. The rich heritage of the area is best understood by chatting with the people who live and work here. But how many visitors get that opportunity?
Working with her husband, Wilf Judd, Felicity Hayes-McCoy takes us on an insiders’ tour, illustrated by their own photographs, and interviews locals along the way, ranging from farmers, postmasters, and boatmen to museum curators, radio presenters, and sean-nós singers. A resident for the last twenty years, she offers practical information and advice as well as cultural insights that will give any visitor a deeper understanding of this special place.
“For those of us who have long been under the spell of the Dingle Peninsula, and for those who have yet to discover it, this book is a brilliant guide to the land, the culture, the history, and especially its people.”
—Boris Weintraub, former senior writer, National Geographic
THE LIBRARY AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD by Felicity Hayes-McCoy
* * *
As she drives her mobile library van between little villages on Ireland’s West Coast, Hanna Casey tries not to think about a lot of things. Like the sophisticated lifestyle she abandoned after finding her English barrister husband in bed with another woman. Or that she’s back in Lissbeg, the rural Irish town she walked away from in her teens, living in the back bedroom of her overbearing mother’s retirement bungalow. Or, worse yet, her nagging fear that, as the local librarian and a prominent figure in the community, her failed marriage and ignominious return have made her a focus of gossip.
With her teenage daughter, Jazz, off traveling the world and her relationship with her own mother growing increasingly tense, Hanna is determined to reclaim her independence by restoring a derelict cottage left to her by her great-aunt. But when the threatened closure of the Lissbeg Library puts her personal pla
ns in jeopardy, Hanna finds herself leading a battle to restore the heart and soul of the Finfarran Peninsula’s fragmented community. And she’s about to discover that the neighbors she’d always kept at a distance have come to mean more to her than she ever could have imagined.
Told with heart, wry wit, and charm,The Library at the Edge of the World is an empowering story about the meaning of home and the importance of finding a place where you truly belong.
“A delicious feast of a novel. Sink in and feel enveloped by the beautiful world of Felicity Hayes-McCoy.”
—Cathy Kelly, bestselling author of Between Sisters and Secrets of a Happy Marriage
“A charming and heartwarming story.”
—Jenny Colgan, New York Times bestselling author of The Café by the Sea
“Engaging . . . sparkling and joyous.”
—Sunday Times (London)
“Much like a cup of tea and a cozy afghan, The Library at The Edge of the World is the perfect book to hunker down with. Prepare to be transported.”
—LibraryReads
SUMMER AT THE GARDEN CAFÉ by Felicity Hayes-McCoy
* * *
The Garden Café, next to Lissbeg Library, is a place where plans are formed and secrets shared, and where, even in high tourist season, people are never too busy to stop for a sandwich and a cup of tea.
But twenty-one-year-old Jazz—daughter of the town’s librarian Hanna Casey—has a secret she can’t share. Still recovering from a car accident, and reeling from her father’s disclosures about his longtime affair, she’s taken a job at The Old Forge Guesthouse, and begun to develop feelings for a man who’s strictly off-limits. Meanwhile, involved in her own new affair with architect Brian Morton, Hanna is unaware of the turmoil in Jazz’s life—until her manipulative ex-husband, Malcolm, reappears trying to mend his relationship with their daughter. Rebuffed at every turn, Malcolm must return to London, but his mother, Louisa, is on the case. Unbeknown to the rest of the family, she hatches a plan, finding an unlikely ally in Hanna’s mother, the opinionated Mary Casey.
Watching Jazz unravel, Hanna begins to wonder if secrets which Malcolm has forced her to keep may have harmed their beloved daughter more than she’d realized. But then, the Casey women are no strangers to secrets, something Hanna realizes when she discovers a journal, long buried in land she inherited from her great-aunt Maggie. Ultimately, it’s the painful lessons of the past that offer a way to the future, but it will take the shared experiences of four generations of women to find a way forward for Hanna and her family.
“Felicity Hayes-McCoy’s latest novel is a triumph. This is clear-eyed storytelling in a romantic setting, but it’s doing far more than weaving a beguiling tale. . . . This book and this journey spill across generations and the result is a deeper meditation on what divides us and what restores us to ourselves and each other.”
—Irish Central
“The landscape and the cadence of the villagers’ language leap off the page. Fans of Debbie Macomber’s Blossom series will enjoy this trip to Ireland.”
—Booklist
Also by Felicity Hayes-McCoy
FICTION
The Library at the Edge of the World
Summer at the Garden Café
NONFICTION
Dingle and Its Hinterland: People, Places and Heritage
A Woven Silence: Memory, History & Remembrance
Enough Is Plenty: The Year on the Dingle Peninsula
The House on an Irish Hillside
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
P.S.™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.
THE MISTLETOE MATCHMAKER. Copyright © 2019 by Felicity Hayes-McCoy. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Originally published in Ireland in 2017 by Hachette Books Ireland.
Cover design by Sarah Brody
Cover photographs © Emily Bourne / Arcangel; © Getty Images: mrdoomits, Robin_Hoood; © Shutterstock
FIRST U.S. EDITION PUBLISHED 2019.
Digital Edition OCTOBER 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-279907-4
Version 08172019
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-279906-7 (pbk.)
ISBN: 978-0-06-295446-6 (library edition)
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