Books

In Vienna 1968 three vivacious students: Manhattanite June, English Liz and Irish Moira, became best friends while studying languages, economics, arts, history and majoring in wine, men, dance and Mozart.
It’s now 2008 – 40 years later.
The Three live in London. But the wild sparks of yore have changed into dead old batteries. Moira, the former man magnet and globetrotting professional, suffers from B/B (Boreout/Burnout) and CRX (Can’t Remember Sex).  Liz, the Award-winning TV director is now considered a fossil in TV land. June still can't accept the tragic death 10 years earlier of her beloved husband Martin (the Mozart fanatic).
Then the Bigtime Scheiẞe hits all their fans. June’s son Robert gives The Three the surprise gift of a holiday in Vienna.  They return to the city of their wild youth more miserable than women on their way to the gallows. Until ....

The sparkling, modern Vienna reminds them again how to love, laugh, dance, sing and achieve. Life is for Living and how!!

DIARIES OF A CULTURED CAT

Lucia, the cultured Kerry kitty is smuggled from the lush green fields to become Wimbledon’s fluffiest illegal immigrant. To cope with the heartbreak of her sudden exile Lucia starts a journal about the lives of her new owners’ urban lifestyles and their attempts to deal with the daily round of love, loss, betrayal, revenge and ... microwave dinners. Not to mention the mad Irish aunts; Olga the designer spy; Bruiser the alcoholic pub cat; Amy the loony BBC arts producer; the Czech Secret Police; and the lost vineyards. You know. The usual!!

Desperate to play Juliet before she’s too old Nellie (18) leaves the rural wilds of Ireland and heads to Paris. The City of Lights and Love will recognize her acting talents and transform her life into one of romance and glamour. Helas! She’s in for a hell of a shock. 

Her flat is shabbier than the dog's kennel at home. Her loser friends include Hansi whose art resembles an explosion in a fertilizer factory: writer Paul, the 80’s non-answer to Hemingway: and Diana the fencing fanatic. Her French lover goes awol and she's playing an understudy corpse instead of Shakespeare's Juliet. Paris pounds her dreams to a pulp. But Nellie is staying put until that City of Lights and Love delivers the goods!

It got a dazzling review from French Radio London
Adapted as a feature film it received funding from Screen Ireland.

It's the scorching Irish Summer of 1981. In the seaside Kerry village of Dun-mo-Croi, love dreams are turning into many-splendored nightmares. Nellie falls in love with Danny. Her Grandad falls for Belinda, a visiting elderly British painter. 

One of these love affairs is truly doomed.

Booklist, the American Library Association awarded this novel Best Fiction of the Year in 1985.

MANHATTAN MEETS MINNESOTA 

In 80’s Manhattan locals joked it would be easier to find your long-lost dime in Grand Central Station than meet your soul mate. Michelle (33) and Tommy (22) are NOT panting for a soul mate.

Michelle has it all: booming antique business; vast penthouse; an adoring dog. She compares love and romance to radioactive gas. She’s had enough of both, thank you. Until young Tommy strolls into her store one May morning. ‘And of all the stores in New York it had to be hers’, to quote her best friend Gail.

Tommy, newly arrived from Minnesota, is a gifted toy inventor who can make little pigs fly and turkeys hop. He lives in a Chelsea dump with abundant animal life lurking in the walls, survives on takeouts from the Non-Chirping Chicken while his pal Russ sells his toys on the streets of Manhattan.

Michelle and Tommy's witty love story spans four seasons from the beginning of spring to the end of winter.

LOVE, TURF & ELVIS

The magic of the Emerald Isle is lauded in song and verse. The narrator, young Roisin wants to know where that magic is lurking in the green, soggy fields she, brother Ned, sisters Philly and Mairead are growing up in. They’re gasping for something exciting to happen – preferably Elvis dropping in for a dance.

Love, Turf & Elvis is a funny memoir of 4 siblings battering the boredom of the endless fresh air and the wild Irish countryside in their quest for excitement in 50’s Abbeyfeale, Co. Limerick.

It is set in a now vanished Ireland when the back roads were alive to the sound of birdsong and not battalions of 4 X 4s knocking the rare cyclist into the ditch. 

LONDON SAVES ME

Rat poison, Warfarin, helps post stroke. But in this upbeat stroke recovery book London is another vital healing ingredient.

At 54 Brigitte Downey, novelist and seasoned TV professional is off to Dubai to film a documentary on camel racing and camel surrogacy. Instead, she wakes up in Charing Cross Hospital the victim of a stroke. They save her life. But her career, health and half her hair goes down the spout. Life post stroke is grim. Until she remembers. Working on planet TV the motto was: ‘IF THERE’S A PROBLEM – JUST SOLVE IT!’ In normal parlance this means if the Virgin Mary won’t do the interview, then hassle Joseph, Gabriel or one of the goats who witnessed the Birth to go on camera.

She finds the solution. LONDON! A pot of tea in the V&A; the swans in Kew Gardens; recitals in Wren Churches; Shakespeare in The Globe. She sits and writes in all these amazing places. 'LONDON SAVES ME' is her thanks to the wonderful medics at Charing Cross Hospital and the inspirational city that saved her from Daisyland and propelled her back to life.

CHEERS LONDON! THANK YOU!