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Life
1934; b. Belfast; moved to Darlington, N. East England, c.1974; author of eight novels between Ties of Love and Hate (1993) and Suspicious Minds (2010), variously set in the 1950s and 1970s, and dealing with affairs of the heart; she has been called Belfast’s answer to Catherine Cookson by the Sunday World; married with three sons.
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Works
Fiction, Ties of Love and Hate (Piatkus 1993; Warner 1994), 326pp.; The Wasted Years (1993); For Better, for Worse (1996); Full Circle (1998); A Matter of Trust (2000); Playing with Fire (2001); Best Laid Plans (2003); Painful Decisions (2007); Sworn to Secrecy (London: Time Warner 2005), 452pp.; Suspicious Minds (London: Sphere 2010),
Omnibus editions: For Better, For Worse; Playing with Fire (2003); Best Laid Plans; Sworn to Secrecy (2009).
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Notes
Sworn to Secrecy (1971): At the height of the Belfast troubles Tess Maguire yearns for a happy domestic life and her ever-faithful boyfriend Tony is about to propose to her. But Bob, the boyfriend of her best friend Theresa Cunningham, a successful dress-maker, declares his feelings for her one night, and she has to address her own feelings for him. Meanwhile, her widowed mother marries her long-standing partner Dan who comes with his beloved grandson Jackie whose father died in a motorcycle accident and whose mother Colette decamped for Canada shortly after his birth. But now Colette suddenly shows up and embarks on a custody battle that reopens old wounds.
Suspicious Minds (2010): Maura Brady, the apparently happy wife of Adam and mother of Danny, is suspicious when Adam’s old flame Evelyn comes to Belfast, knowing that he married her on the rebound, as political temperature rises in the city around them. [Called her eighth novel in Books Ireland, Dec. 2010.]
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