Local Authors
R A P Duval
The Bear in the Woods
Set in Britain and America during a Presidential election year in the very near future, Bear in the Woods explores some of the darker and more dangerous connections within our two societies. A group of London friends find themselves at the epicentre of a murderous struggle reaching to the highest seats of power. It starts when one of their number, Bryn, begins to suspect that someone, inexplicably, may be trying to kill him. Two attempts on his life, however, are dismissed by his friends as near-miss accidents. When he goes on a winter trip to the USA to fan the embers of an old flame, a professional assassin pursues him from Chicago to Detroit, to Salt Lake City and across the snow-laden mountains of Utah. He escapes and returns to England, but finds he is no longer the target.
Ciara Hegarty
The Road to the Sea
The Road to the Sea
It is the late 1940s in rural Ireland, and Kathleen Steele has been prematurely thrust into adulthood by the death of her twin sister, Nuala. Debilitated by grief, their mother has descended into a state of near-catatonia, and it is left to Kathleen to care for her younger siblings, and her taciturn father. When a traumatised young man, Joseph Foley, mysteriously appears in the small farming community, a tentative love affair develops. But as Mrs Steele's illness deepens, Kathleen's relationship with her father grows ever more disturbing. When Kathleen agrees to marry Joseph, her mother begins to regain her health. But by then it has become clear that the events of the intervening years will cast a dark shadow over the new generation. Tender and unblinking, "The Road to the Sea" is a novel about faith and fidelity, about the heart's ability to break, and to heal. A paean to the lost landscapes and communities of Ireland, and a meditation on the responsibilities of parents, this is an exquisite debut from a young novelist of great promise.