Australia and New Zealand
THE STOLEN CHILD
May 1959. From one side of St. Brigid’s Island, the mountains of Connemara can be glimpsed on the distant mainland; from the other, the Atlantic stretches as far as the eye can see. This remote settlement, without electricity or even a harbor, has scarcely altered since its namesake saint set up a convent of stone huts centuries ago. Those who live there, including sisters Rose and Emer, are hardy and resourceful, dependent on the sea and each other for survival. Despite the island’s natural beauty, it is a place that people move away from, not to—until an outspoken American named Brigid arrives to claim her late uncle’s cottage.
Brigid has come for more than an inheritance. She’s seeking a secret holy well that’s rumored to grant miracles. Emer has good reason to believe in inexplicable powers. While her sister Rose is beautiful, blessed with fertility and a deep love for her husband, Emer is cursed with both being unlovely and possessing a punishing gift — the power to harm with the touch of her hands. Despite her own strange abilities Emer fears that she won’t be able to save her young son, Niall, from a growing threat. As months pass and Brigid carves out a place on the island and in the sisters’ lives, a complicated web of betrayal, fear, and desire culminates in one shocking night that will change the island, and its inhabitants, forever.
Steeped in Irish history and lore, The Stolen Child is a mesmerizing descent into old world beliefs, and a captivating exploration of desire, myth, motherhood, and love in all its forms.
Early Praise for The Stolen Child
"Magical realism of the best kind, utterly devoid of whimsy."
– Kirkus, Starred Review
“Steeped in dark Irish mythology, The Stolen Child is a piercing exploration of regret and desire, longing and love. It is a gorgeously written, inventive, and compelling novel.”
– Ayelet Waldman, author of Love and Treasure
“Oh, my! I could not help but surrender to Lisa Carey’s dark, dazzling, quintessentially Irish plot, her lush prose, and her magical, gratifying ending. The Stolen Child is completely and utterly ravishing.”
– Monica Wood, author of The One-in-a-Million-Boy
“Some books set up house inside your soul. The Stolen Child is one such book. Utterly magnificent.”
– M.R. Carey, author of The Girl With All the Gifts
“St Brigid's Island is the sinister, seductive home to several individualistic, spiky women. These women know that their world is peopled with more than can be seen and they collude with and push against those sources, often with frightening results. The Stolen Child is a gorgeously written book about female bonds and the ferocious pull of motherhood. Compelling, eerie and beautiful.”
– Nuala O'Connor, author of Miss Emily
“Startling, bewitching and new; the world of Lisa Carey’s The Stolen Child is less a tiny island than a multi-layered universe. Fierce and vivid in its portrayals of community, superstition, sexuality and the human need to believe and to connect, it’s a novel which resists sentiment and instead plunges into the visceral quick of myth and legend, while keeping a clear and intelligent eye on the reality of how people are. Carey's women in particular are unforgettable: this is a novel to devour.”
– Belinda McKeon, author of Tender
“The Stolen Child is captivating — savage and tender, with a deep respect for the transcendent truths that lie in human pain. It grabs you, shakes you to your core and keeps you turning those pages. Leaving you reeling, sated and in love with its characters, landscape and utterly believable magic.”
– Mia Gallagher, author of Beautiful Pictures of the Lost Homeland
Novels
EVERY VISIBLE THING
Five years ago the eldest Furey son, Hugh, ran off into the night and never returned. His parents, estranged by grief, are trying to put the tragedy behind them after a long, exhausting, and fruitless search. His mother, recovering from an emotional breakdown, has lost herself in a new career; Hugh's father, having abandoned his faith and his position as a theology professor, now cares halfheartedly for their two remaining children. Left more or less to fend for themselves, ten-year-old Owen and fifteen-year-old Lena struggle to hold on to their brother's memory—an increasingly self-destructive obsession that gives rise to angel fantasies, drug use, quixotic quests, and dangerous experimentation that will ultimately force a damaged family to confront its past and find a future.
LOVE IN THE ASYLUM
Can love save those who believe they are beyond redemption? In and out of a swank north-eastern rehab centre more than a dozen times in ten years, Alba Elliot, a 25-year-old children's book writer and manic-depressive, believes she is a hopeless case. But an unlikely relationship with Oscar, a 30-year-old drug addict whose “recreation” has cost him everything, and a century-old story hidden in the institution's library bring about changes that Alba could never have imagined.
Brought together by fate, influenced by forces as beautiful and powerful as they are unforeseen, Alba and Oscar will slowly rise from the ashes of despair and self-destruction and, in the midst of righting an old wrong, begin to heal their battered spirits. A beautifully crafted, heartfelt tale of tragedy and triumph, Lisa Carey's moving third novel is a testament to the surprising resilience of the human heart.
IN THE COUNTRY OF THE YOUNG
On a stormy November night in 1848, a ship carrying more than a hundred Irish emigrants ran aground twenty miles off the coast of Maine. Many were saved, but some were not — including a young girl who died crying out the name of her brother.
In the present day, the artist Oisin MacDara lives in self-imposed exile on Tiranogue — the small island where the shipwrecked Irish settled. The past is Oisin's curse, as memories of the twin sister who died tragically when he was a boy haunt him still.
Then on a quiet All Hallows' Eve, a restless spirit is beckoned into his home by a candle flickering in the window: the ghost of the girl whose brief life ended on Tiranogue's shore more than a century earlier. In Oisin's house she seeks comfort and warmth, and a chance at the life that was denied her so long ago.
For a lonely man chained by painful memories, nothing will ever be the same again.
THE MERMAIDS SINGING
There is an island off the west coast of Ireland called Inis Murúch — the Island of the Mermaids — a world where myth is more powerful than truth, and love can overcome even death. It is here that Lisa Carey sets her lyrical and sensual first novel, weaving together the voices and lives of three generations of Irish and Irish-American women.
Years ago, the fierce and beautiful Grace stole away from the island with her small daughter, Gráinne, unable to bear its isolation. Now Gráinne is motherless at fifteen, and a grandmother she has never met has come to take her back. Her heart is pulled between a life in which she no longer belongs and a family she cannot remember. But only on Inis Murúch can she begin to understand the forces that have torn her family apart.
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