Showing results by author "Helen FitzGerald" in All Categories

Fran hates Ash Mountain, and she thought she’d escaped. But her father is ill and needs care. Her relationship is over and she hates her dead-end job in the city, anyway. She returns to her hometown to nurse her dying father, her distant teenage daughter in tow for the weekends. There, in the sleepy town of Ash Mountain, childhood memories prick at her fragile self-esteem, she falls in love for the first time and her demanding dad tests her patience, all in the unbearable heat of an Australian summer.

When her disastrous Australian love affair ends, Lou heads to Edinburgh for a fresh start, moving in with her cousin. But after a week of partying, she starts the only job she can get...working at a halfway house for very high-risk offenders On her first solo night shift, Lou wakes to discover that she has been locked in her room, and is being held hostage. With no one to turn to but the other residents–all of them dangerous criminals–Lou is forced to rely on her own resources.

Mary Shields is a moody, acerbic probation officer dealing with some of Glasgow’s worst cases, and her job is on the line. Liam Macdowall was imprisoned for murdering his wife, and he’s published a series of letters to the dead woman, in a book that makes him an unlikely hero - and a poster boy for Men’s Rights activists. Liam is released on licence into Mary’s care, but things are far from simple. Mary develops a poisonous obsession with Liam and his world, and when her son and Liam’s daughter form a relationship, Mary will stop at nothing to impose her own brand of justice.

Bronny, a young Australian, finds herself down and out in London. She's a sweet girl who has spent her teenage years in a fearful, cautious bubble. She's never taken drugs, had sex or killed anyone. Within six weeks she's done all three. A group of backpackers break into an abandoned London townhouse seeking a rent-free life of debauchery. They don't realise someone's already there: A terrified woman bound and gagged in the basement. 'The Devil's Staircase' combines a chick-lit voice and a dark crime noir environment.

Returning to Scotland to organise her wedding, Catriona is overcome with the jitters. She decides to tie up loose ends before settling permanently in Tuscany, and seeks out her ex-boyfriends. Only problem is, they all end up dead and Catriona is the prime suspect.

Desperate to enjoy their empty nest, Jen and Andeep downsize to the countryside, to forage, upcycle and fall in love again, only to be joined by their two 20-something daughters, Asha and Camille. Living on top of each other in a tiny house, with no way to make money, tensions simmer, and as Jen and Andeep focus increasingly on themselves, the girls become isolated, argumentative and violent.

When sixteen-year-old Abigail’s mother dies in Scotland—leaving a faded photo, a weirdly cryptic letter, and a one-way ticket to America—she feels nothing. Why should she? Her mother abandoned her as a baby to grow up on an antinuclear commune and then in ugly foster homes. But the letter is a surprise in more ways than one: her father is living in California. What’s more, she has an eighteen-year-old sister, Becky. And the two are expecting Abigail to move in with them