Elaine Feeney & Kathleen MacMahon

Claire O’Connor’s life has been on hold since she broke up with Tom Morton and moved from cosmopolitan London back home to the rugged West of Ireland to care for her dying father. But snatches of her old life are sure to follow her, when Tom unexpectedly moves nearby for work. As Claire is thrown back into a love she thought she’d left behind, she questions if Tom has come for her or for himself. Living in her childhood home brings its own challenges. While Claire tries to maintain a normal life – obsessing over the internet, going to work and minding her own business – Tom’s return stirs up haunting family memories trapped within the walls of the old house that looms nearby. Elaine Feeney’s Let Me Go Mad in My Own Way is a story of love and resilience, rich with history and drama, and the legacies of violence and redemption. As the secrets of the past are revealed, Claire must confront whether she can escape her history to make a future for herself – and whether finding yourself means facing yourself too. 

‘Marriage was the biggest decision of their lives and yet they made it so lightly it was barely a decision at all.’ As schoolgirls, Justine and her best friend Iseult dreamed of a future that revolved around marriage. They saw it as a happy ending, never imagining for a moment that the reality would be more complicated. Coming up to fifty, they’re still best friends. Justine has been married to Iseult’s brother for twenty-five years and lives in her childhood home. Iseult has spent her adult life abroad, her marriage clearly unhappy for reasons she won’t discuss. When Justine’s daughter suddenly announces her engagement, Justine is thrown into planning a big family wedding. Afraid that her daughter is making a mistake, she finds herself questioning the choices she and Iseult made decades earlier. This crisis of confidence tests Justine in new and unexpected ways. Other People’s Lives by Kathleen MacMahon is a captivating story about the decisions we make in a heartbeat, and their lifelong consequences.