Jean Grainger

For twenty-one-year-old Grace Fitzgerald, life is finally looking bright. Orphaned as a child and later struck down by polio, she then endured years of cold indifference at the hands of her sister Agnes.

In 1940, an unlikely friendship bridges the Atlantic. Twenty-year-old Grace Fitzgerald lives in the seemingly peaceful Irish village of Knocknashee, exchanging letters with Richard Lewis, an American war correspondent stationed in London, as World War II engulfs Europe.

As someone raised in an orphanage, Carmel knows she should be grateful for a roof over her head and a respectable family, but she would love nothing more than to escape Birr, Co Offaly and get away from her husband, the monosyllabic Bill and his horrible sister forever.

The opportunity of a lifetime lands in Peter Cullen’s lap and nothing is going to stop him taking full advantage, not even the misgivings of his wife.

In the first book, What Once Was True, two families, one of grandeur and one of the working class, navigate the conflicts associated with the looming war ahead....

Queensland, Australia, 1936 Sister Claire McAuliffe has been called from Dungarvan, County Waterford, to do God’s work in Jumaaroo, Queensland. Along with four other sisters, she is charged with setting up a Catholic school for the education of the gold rush families....

As long as Carmel stays in London, nothing can happen to shatter her perfect life. She has a wonderful marriage, a rewarding career and a great bunch of friends. As far as she's concerned, the sadness of her past can stay back in Ireland, where it belongs.

Dublin, Ireland 1915. Eighteen-year-old May Gallagher is beautiful but restless, and longs for the freedom to live her own life, to decide her own destiny. Mollycoddled as the only remaining child of middle-class parents in the suburbs, she sneaks out to the theatre when she can.

When Conor’s dream for Castle Dysert is facing ruin by circumstances outside his control he refuses to be beaten. Surely there must be a way to save everything they’ve worked so hard for?

In the turbulent and uncertain times of Ireland in 1919, the birth of two children revitalise a small town....

After a very long week, I just want to go home and put my feet up, when a dramatic, decades-old secret is revealed. It shocks everyone in the family to the core, and it feels like everywhere I turn, where once there was trust and honesty, now there are nothing but lies....

When Cullen’s Celtic Cabaret rolls into a sleepy Irish seaside town, their eccentric and theatrical presence stirs up a flurry of excitement—the public clamouring to buy tickets for the greatest show in Ireland.

The Great War is over, and the Roaring Twenties are promising a bright new future. Young people have broken free of the bonds that tied them to propriety and for the members of Cullen’s Celtic Cabaret it’s an exhilarating time to be alive.

Life is calm and fairly predictable. Until something unthinkable happens in our sleepy backwater. A crime, but not like anything I've ever seen before. It's a complete mystery. And it's up to me to solve it....

Ariella Bannon has no choice: she must put her precious children, Liesl and Erich, on that train or allow them to become prey for the Nazis....

As the world teeters on the brink of war in 1937, two young souls separated by an ocean are about to discover a connection that defies logic and time.

The port of Queenstown bustles with activity as people traverse the Atlantic either in search of new lives on foreign shores or returning to old familiar ones in Ireland....

County Waterford, Ireland. 1946. Years of neglect have left the family seat of the Keneficks almost derelict, but the new Lord Kenefick and his charming young wife Kate are determined to breathe life into the old house once more. But the shadows of the past are ever lurking....

From rural Ireland, to the glitz of 1950’s America, from the orange groves of Israel to the dark streets of post-war Liverpool, The World Starts Anew, is the fourth book in the best-selling Star and the Shamrock series....

As storm clouds of war gather over Europe, Grace Fitzgerald in Ireland and Richard Lewis in the United States find their lives irrevocably altered by the looming conflict.