Showing results by narrator "Ruairi Conaghan" in All Categories

Detective Finnegan Beck is called to a crime scene - a remote house near the rural Irish town of Cross Beg - where a dog lies whimpering beside his beloved owner’s body. At first it looks like a burglary gone wrong. But Beck spots something his colleagues didn’t. The victim, Eddie Kavanagh, was wearing his smartest clothes. He’d brushed his hair. And, on closer inspection, a small velvet box containing an engagement ring is discovered in his pocket, along with a letter to a nameless woman, which seems to suggest she’s in danger.

On a cold morning a cyclist finds the brutally-slaughtered body of a woman in her car, on a remote lane leading to the long-abandoned Irish village of Kelly’s Forge. But when Detective Finnegan Beck arrives from the nearby town of Cross Beg to investigate he notices there’s a baby’s seat in the back of the car. A bottle of baby’s milk lying in the footwell. And no child. Little Róisín isn’t the first child to go missing from that same remote location though. There was another baby girl, taken more than 50 years before, who was never found.

In a town full of liars, who can you trust? When Detective Finnegan Beck is demoted from his high-powered job in Dublin and relocated in disgrace to the small Irish town of Cross Beg, he predicts boredom will be his biggest threat. But then a beautiful local teenage girl is found strangled in the cold, dark woods a mile from town. The prime suspect is the seemingly gentle drifter who found Tanya’s body. Beck seems to be the only person who can’t escape the feeling that Tanya wasn’t killed at random.

Desmond Aloysius Limerick ("Dez" to his friends and close personal enemies) is a man with a shadowy past, certain useful hard-won skills, and, if one digs deep enough, a reputation as a good man to have at your back. He was trained as a "gatekeeper"―he can open any door, keep it open as long as necessary, and control who does―and does not―go through. Now retired from his previous life, Dez still tries to keep his skills up to date. Knocking around the country, picking up the occasional gig as a guitarist, Dez is contacted by a friend in urgent need of his musical skills.

Recently widowed, Rebecca Parcell is too busy struggling to maintain her farm in Morristown to give a fig who wins the War for Independence. But rumors are spreading in the winter of 1780 that she's a Loyalist sympathizer who betrayed her husband to the British-quite a tidy way to end her disastrous marriage, the village gossips whisper.

It's been over thirty years since Billy last called Northern Ireland home. Back then, his secret love for schoolfriend Conor was the only shining light that kept him going during troubled times. That is, until their romance was tragically cut short when Conor disappeared without a trace. Now a phone call draws Billy back home when his mother falls into a coma. While sorting through old belongings, he stumbles upon an envelope bearing his name. Inside, he finds a mysterious note and a mixtape left by Conor - dated the very day he disappeared in 1989.

Once Upon a Toon offers a unique perspective on life behind the scenes at one of England’s most famous football clubs. No other individual has had the immense privilege of working at Newcastle United in the capacity that Paul Ferris once did: as a player between 1981 and 1986, as a physiotherapist between 1993 and 2006, and finally as a key member of Alan Shearer’s management team in 2009.

Today was his first climb to the top. He knew if he was there, watching, then she would never leave him. Her name was Bernadette, and he climbed the shed every day. This is a not a football book, as such. Rather, it is a memoir by someone who happened to have superior ability at the sport during his formative years, which led him on a remarkable journey. Paul Ferris became a professional footballer and at the age of 16 was the youngest ever to play in Newcastle United's first team.

In the fascinating new audiobook from the best-selling author of Humanology, Luke O'Neill explores some of the big human questions and tells us what science has to say about topics such as gender, addiction and euthanasia. With his trademark easy wit and clever pop-culture references, Luke is a serious scientist with an amazing knack of making science accessible. If you are curious about us, this bizarre animal called the human being, this is a book for you.

The James Joyce Collection includes Joyce's 2 most celebrated novels, short fiction from Dubliners, and a selection of his poetry. Read by a wonderful Irish cast of Aoife McMahon, Aidan Kelly, and Stephen Hogan.

Taking us on an incredible journey across centuries and galaxies, accompanied by his characteristic wit, Professor Luke O’Neill explains how it all began, how it will all end and everything in between. Listeners will benefit from Luke’s insatiable curiosity for life when they dive into this ultimate journey through life and death. Among other fascinating facts, you’ll discover the science behind how we got to be so smart, why sex with a caveman was a good idea, the science of finding love, why we follow religions and how robots will become part of everyday life.

RTÉ journalist Barry Cummins has reported on the unsolved cases of Ireland’s missing for decades. In this new edition of his best-selling book, he examines the latest leads and developments of Ireland’s most high-profile missing cases, including the women who disappeared under eerily similar circumstances in the 1990s and whose bodies have never been found.

When Manny McDonnell was 12, he awoke to discover British troops surrounding his home in the toughest area of trouble-torn Belfast. Encouraged by a fiercely Republican mother, he took to the streets with other school kids, throwing bricks, bottles and petrol bombs at soldiers. Jailed at 15 for having IRA links, he became a unit commander leading deadly missions for the INLA before joining the IPLO, a group so vicious even the IRA ordered it to disband. But his decades of commitment to a free united Ireland turned to disillusion when bombs killed two little boys in mainland Britain.

Stephen Dedalus is a boy on the edge of transformation—questioning his strict Irish Catholic upbringing, the confines of his family, and the weight of tradition. As he comes of age, his inner world brims with restless ambition and a desire to escape conformity through the power of art. In this bold, lyrical, and deeply introspective novel, James Joyce traces Stephen’s journey from obedient child to fiercely independent thinker, exploring the messy, passionate formation of an artist's identity in a world that demands obedience.

Stormcrow is the first epic and thrilling Viking adventure from Sunday Times bestseller Ben Kane. This visceral story about the Norsemen who forever changed Ireland is packed with blood and intrigue, battles and magic, love and betrayal.

Professor Luke O’Neill has become one of the most well-known and trusted voices of Ireland’s COVID-19 pandemic. A world-renowned immunologist, he was thrust into the spotlight as the media and public desperately grappled to make sense of a crisis that saw the country grind to a halt. In these high-octane diaries, Professor Luke reveals what life was like behind the scenes.

What do you have in common with the 7.75 billion other people on the planet? This is the question that Professor Luke O’Neill attempts to answer in this exciting new audiobook for young listeners, adapted from his bestselling title for adults, Humanology: A Scientist’s Guide to Our Amazing Existence. Starting with the origin of life and how we as a species evolved on the plains of Africa some 200,000 years ago, Professor Luke explores what makes us interesting as a species, why we sleep, laugh and enjoy music, and our efforts to stop diseas

Native woodland is one of the most valuable resources for biodiversity in Ireland’s wet climate. Yet Ireland has the lowest forest cover of any part of Europe, with the surviving native woodland covering a tiny area of the country. Ireland lost the majority of its ancient forest centuries ago, but now is when we need it most to help solve the climate crisis. This audiobook is a celebration of Ireland’s native woodlands blended with a personal account of learning to manage a single small wood over a typical year.

Show Me the Science asks questions like, do we have control over our lives? Can we escape working in terrible jobs? Why do we need vaccinations? Are men’s and women's brains different? Will we destroy the planet? – and encourages children to apply a scientific mindset in attempting to answer them.

1994, the summer of the ceasefire. In the Northern Irish border town of Cross, after decades of violent activity protesting British rule, a community plays out its end game. Francie, a principled elder of the cause, has authorised the murder of a policeman – his teenage henchmen are triumphant at pulling it off. In the town square, the Widow Donnelly protests because her son has gone missing.