Showing results by narrator "Caroline Lennon" in All Categories

From the earliest human civilizations through to the present day, the stories of countless influential women – leaders, artists, warriors, scientists and more – have been ignored, forgotten, or actively suppressed. You've probably not encountered the likes of Fatima al-Fihri (an Islamic World visionary who founded the world's first university), Ching Shih (the most successful pirate in history), or Huda Sha'arawi (a pioneering Egyptian feminist leader, suffragette, nationalist, and founder of the Egyptian Feminist Union), but that's about to change.

There is the secret of Birdy's dead grandmother's cat - how the boys tortured it and Birdy Flynn had to drown her in the river to stop her suffering. There's the secret of Mrs Cope, the popular teacher who touched Birdy in the cupboard. There's the secret of the gypsy girl at school, whom Birdy likes, but she can't tell anyone. Because Birdy's other secret is that while she plays and fights as good as the boys, she is a girl, and she doesn't always feel like a girl is supposed to.

Andrea and Lexi thought they would be best friends for ever. Through thick and thin, growing pains and wild nights out, they were inseparable. But it was their biggest adventure that was to tear them apart: travelling through Australia, Andrea and Lexi are involved in a catastrophic accident. Andrea is left scarred but her best friend is nowhere to be found. What happened to Lexi? Two years later, Andy's scar means she's too scared to go out into the real world.

Families are complicated! Molly’s dad seems so lonely. He lives on his own, he won’t get a pet and he doesn’t get on with his brother.... Best friends Molly and Beth suspect his problems lie in his past, but what can two 13-year-olds do about that? Well, when they have a time-travelling door, maybe they can do something! The girls go back to 1975 hoping to right some wrongs - if they can navigate 1970s cars, food and boybands. And if the colourful fashions don’t blind them first!

It begins with a singing and dancing septet in dusty church halls. But it is not the sisters’ dancing that fills the seats: it is the torrents of hair they let loose at the end of each show. And their hair will pull them out of poverty, to the salons of Dublin and the palazzi of Venice. It will bring some of them love and each of them loss. For their fame and fortune will come at a terrible price...

County Armagh, 1845. Married to the local blacksmith, young Sarah Hamilton spends her days looking after John and his apprentices at the forge, and her happiness is strengthened by the steady love of her husband and the beautiful green landscape of her home on Drumilly Hill. But when tragedy strikes, her life is changed forever. As the crops across Ireland begin to fail and the textile industry struggles to adapt to new methods, Sarah isn't the only one enduring hardships.

Through hard work and determination, Ivy Rose Murphy has come up in the world. She still begs for discards from the homes of the wealthy which lie only a stone’s throw from The Lane, the poverty-ridden tenements where she lives. She repairs and sells these discards in Dublin market. With her talent for needlework and a team of neighbourhood helpers, she has also begun to supply an upmarket shop in Grafton Street with beautifully dressed dolls. Then Ivy’s wealthy friend Ann Marie Gannon, with her beloved camera, spends a day at the airport photographing planes.

Georgina Corrigan is dead! It must be true. It has been printed in the newspapers. How does one prove one is not dead? Georgina is forced to seek assistance from her well-connected friends to establish that she is indeed alive and well and living in Percy Place. The accident that caused the death of her unlamented husband has had other ripple effects, and a young woman is being forced to flee all that she knows.

What if something happened long ago that still makes you sad? Graham is Molly and Beth’s favourite uncle, so they really want to help him fix the past – and as the girls know of a mysterious door that can take them back in time, maybe they can! But how can they find who they’re looking for without apps or social media? And what will the girls make of the '60s, where the hairstyles are wild, the slang is weird and no one’s heard of ciabatta?

No one in Carniskey has ever understood what led local fisherman Sean Delaney to risk his life in a high storm in the dead of night. Three years on from that tragic night, his wife, Alison, is struggling with grief and increasing financial worries. She has grown distant from her daughter and estranged from her friends and fellow villagers, particularly her best friend, Kathleen, who harbours a secret of her own. But the arrival of an outsider artist and lifelong nomad, William, offers Alison a new perspective on life and love that threatens to unearth the mysteries of the past.

Georgina Corrigan is worried. The first women sent to her Percy Place home by the BOBs - an organisation which supports women escaping difficult home lives - are ready to step out into the world again. Some have found opportunities in Dublin, others in New York. Will those travelling to America find employment with the Harvey Company? Thousands try every year to become Harvey Girls - young women who serve in restaurants and hotels on the railway line. Will they be successful when so many fail?

Brianna Kelly has worked at Ballymacool House and Boarding School since she was a wee girl and will likely die there. Despite a sense that she was made for something more, Brianna feels powerless to change her situation, so she consoles herself by exploring the Ballymacool grounds, looking for hidden treasures to add to the secret trove beneath the floorboards of her room.

It's the week before Christmas. Catherine Berlin sits alone gazing at a bank of monitors, each capturing a slice of a vast industrial estate. A van appears: two men delivering crates, moving quickly. Her boss tells her to ignore them, but she can't. Berlin's scars have faded, but she still walks with a limp. Broke, she's working nights as a relief CCTV operator, and looking for something more substantial. Her heroin habit is under control - only just. The night shifts end, but now Berlin herself is being watched.

It is 1942, and the Second World War has been going on for three wearying years. Work is hard and hours long in the four Ulster mills in Northern Ireland where Alex Hamilton struggles to keep overworked machines going, just as his wife Emily tries to provide food and comfort not only for their own son and daughters, but for the many young American soldiers stationed nearby.

When ex-cop-turned-P.I. Maggie Doyle scores a lucrative undercover job at the makeup counter at a fashionable Galway department store, she expects discounted lipstick and an easy paycheck. She should know better. After an altercation with a customer leads to a dead body in Maggie’s bathtub, she realizes there’s more to the department store case than missing cash. Can she catch the killer before the holidays? Or will the festive season end in an explosion of tinsel and turmoil?

When Eva and Kate find an old diary, they end up determined to right old wrongs! But they can't spend all their time living in the past as the present, too, is throwing all sorts of challenges at them....

Your family are always there for you...aren't they? For Tara, Vee, Niall, and Damian, the children of the Shine family, their parents have seen them through thick and thin. In fact, Gus and Joan's lifetime of hard work has given their children a very comfortable start in life. But with the Irish economy in crisis - money is thin on the ground and perhaps it's time to for the younger generation to learn a few home truths. As the children are forced to live a life without the Bank of Mum and Dad.

It is 1960, and Clare Hamilton is returning home to her beloved Armagh to marry Andrew Hamilton, her childhood sweetheart. They plan to live in Andrew’s ancestral home, which they intend to run as a guest house. Their ambition is to buy back the land of the former family estate so that Andrew can quit his hated job and farm the land. At first, things go well, and the guest house prospers, but the 1960s are a time of change. Air travel becomes increasingly affordable and bookings decline. And the increasing political turmoil and religious tensions too close to home make them wonder if, despite all their efforts, their project might fail.

Fun, feisty Eva Gordon's never been one to shy away from helping her friends - whether they want her help or not - but this time she might have found a problem that's too big even for her.... When Eva and her family head to Seacove for their summer holidays, she's looking forward to seeing Kate again, but it turns out things have gone very wrong for Kate. Her granny's in the hospital, and with no else to look after her, Kate's hiding out at home by herself, afraid she's going to be taken into care.

Touchy Subjects is about things that make people wince: taboos, controversies, secrets, and lies. Some of the events that characters crash into are grand, tragic ones: miscarriage, overdose, missing persons. Other topics, like religion and money, are not inherently taboo, but they can cause acute discomfort because people disagree so vehemently. These stories are about the spectrum of feeling that runs from awkwardness through embarrassment to shame.