The original 1985 edition of Children of the Poor Clares was the first book to expose the reality of the treatment of children placed in church care in Irelands post-independence horrendous industrial school system. Giving an intimate picture, covering over four decades, of life in one of these institutions, it documented the gross physical and emotional abuse, neglect, malnourishment, exploitation, lack of proper education, deprivation, and humiliation that scarred the children for life. ...

Gritty, heartrending and unputdownable – the story of two sisters sent first to an English, then an Australian orphanage in the aftermath of World War II.Rita and Rosie Stevens are only nine and five years old when their widowed mother marries a violent bully called Jimmy Randall and has a baby boy by him. Under pressure from her new husband, she is persuaded to send the girls to an orphanage – not knowing that the papers she has s...

A heart-wrenching story from the bestselling author of The Throwaway Children.Thirteen-year-old Lisa has escaped from Nazi Germany on the Kindertransport. She arrives in London unable to speak a word of English, her few belongings crammed into a small suitcase. Among them is one precious photograph of the family she has left behind.Lonely and homesick, Lisa is adopted by a childless couple. But when the Blitz blows her new home apa...

The final gripping instalment of the bestselling Four Streets trilogy which began with THE FOUR STREETS and continued in HIDE HER NAME.Christmas morning, 1963. Fifteen-year-old Kitty Doherty gives birth in a cold, unfriendly Irish convent. She knows her beautiful baby boy presents a huge danger to her family's Catholic community back in Liverpool's Four Streets. When her baby is adopted by a wealth...

The darkest sins cast the longest shadows.County Mayo, Ireland, 1947.In the worst winter in living memory, Ruby Flynn is rescued from the tiny cottage on the Atlantic coast where her family has perished. She is one of the storm orphans, taken in by nuns to be educated for a life in service. Now she must find her own way in the outside world.The FitzDeane family have a thriving shipping business in Liverpool and they also own beautiful Ballyf...

The gripping sequel to bestselling THE FOUR STREETS. Shot through with darkness, but also humour, warmth and charm.In the Four Streets in Liverpool, a dreadful murder has been committed, and 14-year-old Kitty Doherty is pregnant with the dead man's child.This secret is so dangerous that her mother, Maura, and the redoubtable Kathleen, her best friend Nellie's grandmother, decide the girls must be sp...

From bestselling author Kristina McMorris comes an ambitious and heartrending story of immigrants, deception, and second chances.On a cold night in October 1937, searchlights cut through the darkness around Alcatraz. A prison guard’s only daughter—one of the youngest civilians who lives on the island—has gone missing. Tending the warden’s greenhouse, convicted bank robber Tommy Capello waits anxiously. Only he knows the truth about the little girl’s wherea...

It is Christmas morning in 1964. For nurse Fionnuala Kennedy, it is work as usual. As she trudges through the cold streets to catch her bus, Fionnuala thinks of the secret which she has been keeping from her beloved mother and father – and of how on earth she is going to break it to them.She promises herself that she will do it that very evening, when she gets back home. None of the hospital staff are expecting very much to disturb their routine – it is Christmas Day, after all. An...

The No. 1 ebook bestseller, Sunday Times Top 10 bestseller and USA Today bestsellerThe real nightmare starts when her daughter is returned…A girl is missing. Five years old, taken from outside her school. She has vanished, traceless.The police are at a loss; her parents are beyond grief. Their daughter is lost forever, perhaps dead, perhaps enslaved.But the biggest mystery is yet to come: one week after she was abducted, th...

This is the story which sets in motion the events of Nadine Dorries's brilliant new novel Ruby Flynn.It is 1846, famine is gripping Ireland and nowhere is it crueller than in Mayo on the west coast. Owen FitzDeane of Ballyford Castle is a good landlord, but even he is powerless to save all his tenants. When he comes upon a half-dead girl beside the road, he insists on taking her back to the castle, to see if they can save her. But Eilinora is no ordinary girl and soon superstition ...

Based in the shipyards of Leith, Silver Linings follows the ups and downs of the Anderson family through the darkest days of the Second World War as they struggle to survive. When war breaks out in 1939 the Anderson family ready themselves for the worst, but nothing can prepare them for the death of matriarch Sandra while giving birth to surprise baby Rosebud. Promising her mother that she will take care of her newborn sister, pampered fifteen-year-old Kitty must abandon her dreams of a ca...

Two girls go missing. Only one will return.The couple that offers the highest amount will see their daughter again. The losing couple will not. Make no mistake. One child will die.When nine-year-old best friends Charlie and Amy disappear, two families are plunged into a living nightmare. A text message confirms the unthinkable: that the girls are the victims of a terrifying kidnapping.And when a second text message pits the two families ...