Jean Grainger Founding author Follow

Hello and thanks for taking time out to check out my page. If you're wondering what you're getting with my books, then think of the late great Maeve Binchy but sometimes with a historical twist. I was born in Cork, Ireland in 1971 and I come from a large family of storytellers, so much so that we had to have 'The Talking Spoon', only the person holding the spoon could talk! I have worked as a history lecturer at the university, a teacher of English, history and drama in secondary school, a playwright, and a tour guide of my beloved Ireland.

I am married to the lovely Diarmuid and we have four children. We live in a 150-year-old stone cottage in Mid-Cork with my family and the world's smallest dog, a chi-chon called Scrappy-Do.

My experiences leading tour groups, mainly from the United States, led me to write my first novel, The Tour. My observances of the often funny, sometimes sad but always interesting events on tours fascinated me. People really did confide the most extraordinary things — the safety of strangers, I suppose. The sequel, Safe at the Edge of the World, follows Conor O'Shea once again as he takes another motley crew on a tour of Ireland, this time with a very odd couple aboard who seem to be hiding something. The third Tour book in that series is called The Story of Grenville King. In it Conor gets an opportunity to renovate and run an old castle as a five-star resort, but something isn't quite right, and the castle has many secrets. The fourth Conor O'Shea book is called The Homecoming of Bubbles O'Leary and features a group of friends taking their friend Bubbles home to Ireland from New York, one last time.

My first World War 2 novel, So Much Owed, is a family saga based in Ireland following the Buckley family of Dunderrig House. The story opens in the trenches of WW1 at the end of the war and moves to tranquil West Cork. As the next generation of the Buckley family find themselves embroiled once again in war, the action moves from Ireland to wartime Belfast, from occupied France to the inner sanctum of German society in neutral Dublin. The history of the period was my academic specialty so I'm delighted to be able to use it in a work of fiction.

Shadow of a Century is set in New York in 2015 as well as in Dublin during the events of Easter Week 1916, where Irish men and women fought valiantly to rid our island of British imperialism. While not my academic specialty, I loved researching this book. My husband, most fortunately for me is an expert on this era and so I didn't have to go too far for assistance. The story features three very strong women, united through a battered old flag. It's essentially a love story, but with a bit of intrigue thrown in for good measure.

Under Heaven's Shining Stars, was published in 2016 and is set in my home city of Cork. This time it's against the backdrop of 1950s and '60s Ireland and it really is a book about friendship, family and the Catholic church. I have a deep personal affinity with all of my characters but this book is especially close to my heart. I wrote a novella called Letters of Freedom after hearing a woman on the radio one day explaining how being raised in state care prepared a person so poorly for the realities of independent living. Her story was so moving I was inspired to write a short novella there and then. Carmel's story really seemed to touch people, and I got such a huge reaction from readers all over the world, many of them telling me the most extraordinary stories from their own lives.

I wrote a sequel. The Future's Not Ours To See, which follows Carmel as she ventures forth into a world she knows so little of is out now. The third Carmel and Sharif book, What Will Be, is also available and it finishes the story of this woman who spent her entire childhood believing something that wasn't true. She returns to Ireland, very reluctantly and discovers that in order to go forward she has to first make peace with her past.

My next book, What Once Was True, tells the story of a big old house in Co Waterford during WW2. Two families live there, the impoverished Keneficks who own it and the hard-working Murphys who work for them. Life has remained unchanged for centuries but when war comes, it means everything changes and people have to question what once was true. This book was selected by BookBub readers as in the top 19 Historical Fiction books of 2018. The sequel to this, Return to Robinswood, continues the story.

My latest book, The Star and the Shamrock, is about two little German Jewish children who find themselves on the Kindertransport out of Berlin. They end up in Northern Ireland and it was a real labour of love. The research was harrowing at times, but I hope I've done justice to the stories of so many children who escaped the Nazi terror, often never again to see their parents. This is a book of hope in dark times, of the enduring power of love and the incredible resilience of the human spirit. Many of the people who have reviewed my books have said that you get to know the characters and really become attached to them, that's wonderful for me to hear because that's how I feel about them too. I grew up on Maeve Binchy and Deirdre Purcell and I aspired to being like them.

If you buy one of my books I'm very grateful and I really hope you enjoy it. If you do, or even if you don't, please take the time to post a review. Writing is a source of constant contentment to me and I am so fortunate to have the time and the inclination to do it, but to read a review written by a reader really does make my day.