"Not for the faint of heart, Long's story is a gritty, grueling, and heartbreaking testament to one girl's unbreakable spirit."—Publishers Weekly, starred reviewWhen Martha Long's feckless mother hooks up with the Jackser ("that bandy aul bastard"), and starts having more babies, the abuse and poverty in the house grow more acute. Martha is regularly sent out to beg and more often steal, and her wiles (as a child of 7, 8) are often the only thing keeping food on the table....

Lilly and Ceily Carney are only seven and twelve when their mother is cruelly taken from them, leaving them at the mercy of the Church and the authorities.This is a terrifying prospect in 1950s Dublin, where it is likely that the girls will end up in one of Ireland’s notorious Magdalen laundries – a fate they are determined to escape.When Father Flitters and the ‘Cruelty’ people arrive to take the children into care, Lilly and Ceily resist, and a riot breaks out. The girls ...

Sixteen-year-old Martha's luck is finally changing. Taken in by a kind young priest, Father Ralph Fitzgerald, and his wealthy mother, she gets a taste of "how the other half lives" and resolves to make a better life for herself once and for all. Soon she's off to school to become a secretary: her ticket to a respectable middle-class existence. But even as her fortune improves--she has a roof over her head, food in her belly, and the freedom to do as she pleases--the love and community she ...

The next installment of the Ma books—all bestsellers in Ireland and the UK—brings readers on the journey of Martha's first months of freedom in Dublin after leaving the convent where she spent her early adolescence.In the latest chapter of Martha Long's autobiographical series, Martha is for the first time on her own: discharged from the convent, she's finally 16, the age she'd long dreamed of as the doorway to her freedom from the whims of cruel adults. "...

After numerous arrests for shoplifting, Martha is sent to the convent where, the judge rules, she is to get an education. Martha is relieved to be out of the clutches of her horrible drunken stepfather, Jackser, and her feckless mother, Sally, but anxious about what awaits. Her days in the convent are steady, predictable, safe--everything that her life had not been prior to being sent away. But as she says, "You can have a full belly, but your heart can be very empty." Put to back-breaking...

Lily and Ceily Carney are only seven and twelve when their mother is cruelly taken from them, leaving them at the mercy of the Church and the authorities.This is a terrifying prospect in 1950s Dublin, where it is likely that the girls will end up in one of Ireland’s notorious Magdalen laundries – a fate they are determined to escape.When Father Flitters and the ‘Cruelty’ people arrive to take the children into care, Lily and Ceily resist, and a riot breaks out. The girls ar...

Marion Dante always knew she would be a nun. She was her mother’s ‘‘sin offering’’, pledged to God even before her birth. So, at the age of fourteen, she entered a convent.Ten years later, she was wrestling with doubts and misery. Shunned by the nuns, her only ‘‘family’’, she set out on the long road to freedom. But freedom was a terrifying prospect. Like a caged bird she clung to her prison bars.Wearing a short skirt, ordering a cup of tea in a café, making everyda...

After her years in domestic service, Winifred Foley married and started a family. But, while scraping a living as a charwoman in a rundown north London tenement, she continued to long for her home in the Forest of Dean and the cherished relatives she had left behind. Determined to give their children the rural upbringing she had enjoyed, the young couple moved to an isolated, crumbling cottage not far from the Forest. But even in the 1950s they lacked heating or running water, and money wa...

Sarah Foster’s parents have been fighting a constant battle with poverty, disease and crime. When her father, Will, is involved in a terrible accident at work, their lives became even harder.But Will’s good deeds of the past pay off as John Rayner decides to rescue the Fosters. John provides them with work and a house on the estate owned by his wealthy family. It is at this new home on the crumbling coastline of Holderness that Sarah is born – and grows into a bright and beautiful ...

**From the “wholly original” author of The Right Thing comes this heartfelt story of a young woman’s yearning for a better life in the heart of Louisiana (**Bret Lott, New York Times–bestselling author)Eighteen-year-old Lireinne Hooten has always been on the lowest rung of the ladder. Abandoned by her mother, Lireinne lives with her stepfather in an old trailer and spends her days working at the world’s largest alligator farm.Shy and overw...

The inspiration for the Hallmark Hall of Fame film Christmas Everlasting, “a feel-good goldmine” from the New York Times bestselling author (USA Today).Years of long workdays and little sleep as a political campaigner are about to pay off now that Lucy Toomey’s boss is entering the White House. But when her estranged older sister, Alice, unexpectedly dies, Lucy is drawn back to Nilson’s Bay, her small, close-knit Wisconsin hometown.

From bestselling author Kristina McMorris comes an ambitious and heartrending story of immigrants, deception, and second chances.On a cold night in October 1937, searchlights cut through the darkness around Alcatraz. A prison guard’s only daughter—one of the youngest civilians who lives on the island—has gone missing. Tending the warden’s greenhouse, convicted bank robber Tommy Capello waits anxiously. Only he knows the truth about the little girl’s wherea...