Maeve Binchy – Bickerstaff Booksellers

Tara Road

Kim — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 18:12:13 +0000

With each new book, Maeve Binchy continues a remarkable progression of sales and audience growth, reaching fans of all ages and backgrounds with her matchless wit, warmth, and sheer storytelling magic. Tara Road, her first full-length novel since The Glass Lake, again shows her incomparable understanding of the human heart in the tale of two women, one from Ireland, one from America, who switch lives, and in doing so learn much about each other, as well as much about themselves. Ria lived on Tara Road in Dublin with her dashing husband, Danny, and their two children. She fully believed she was happily married, right up until the day Danny told her he was leaving her to be with his young, pregnant girlfriend. By a chance phone call, Ria meets Marilyn, a woman from New England unable to come to terms with her only son’s death and now separated from her husband. The two women exchange houses for the summer with extraordinary consequences, each learning that the other has a deep secret that can never be revealed. Drawn into lifestyles vastly differing from their own, at first each resents the news of how well the other is getting on. Ria seems to have become quite a hostess, entertaining half the neighborhood, which at first irritates the reserved and withdrawn Marilyn, a woman who has always guarded her privacy. Marilyn seems to have become bosom friends with Ria’s children, as well as with Colm, a handsome restaurateur, whom Ria has begun to miss terribly. At the end of the summer, the women at last meet face-to-face. Having learned a great deal, about themselves and about each other, they find that they have become, firmly and forever, good friends. A moving story rendered with the deft touch of a master artisan, Tara Road is Maeve Binchy at her very best–utterly beautiful, hauntingly unforgettable, entirely original, and wholly enjoyable.

Quentins

Kim — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 18:12:09 +0000

Maeve Binchy follows the enormous success of “Scarlet Feather” with a new book, “Quentins,” that delivers the hallmark storytelling that has kept her millions of fans happy for more than twenty years. Is it possible to tell the story of a generation and a city through the history of a restaurant? Ella Brady thinks so. She wants to film a documentary about Quentins that will capture the spirit of Dublin from the 1970s to the present day. After all, the restaurant saw the people of a city become more confident in everything, from their lifestyles to the food that they chose to eat. And Quentins has a thousand stories to tell: tales of love, of betrayal, of revenge; of times when it looked ready for success and of times when it seemed as if it must close in failure. In Maeve Binchy’s magical new book you will meet new friends and old. The twins from “Scarlet Feather,” “Signora from Evening Class,” and “Ria from Tara Road” all drop by, as do a host of new friends-Mon, the ever-cheerful Australian waitress, and Blouse Brennan, whose simplicity disguises a sharp mind and a heart of gold. Quentins is presided over by the apparently unflappable Patrick and Brenda Brennan, whose efforts have made the place a legend in the life of Dubliners and visitors alike. But even the Brennans have a story, and a problem, that is hidden from the public gaze. As Ella uncovers more and more of what has gone on at Quentins, she begins to question the wisdom of capturing it all in a documentary. Are there some stories that are too sacred to be told, some secrets that must be kept? By getting to know the people that pass through the doors of Quentins, Ella has finally gotten to know herself.

Firefly Summer

Kim — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 18:12:01 +0000

“It was a summer of warmth … Kate Ryan and her husband, John, have a rollicking pub in the Irish village of Mountfern … lovely 12-year-old twins and such wonderful dreams … It was a summer of innocence … But all that is about to change this fateful summer of 1962 when American millionaire Patrick O’Neill comes to town with his irresistible charm and a pocketful of money … when love and hate vie for a town’s quiet heart and old traditions begin to crumble away … It was a summer of love that would never come again … A time that has been captured forever in Maeve Binchy’s compelling family drama … a novel you will never forget. “The secrets hidden behind lace curtains, a young girl’s first kiss, children’s summer games, unexpected pregnancies, sudden deaths. She makes us feel as if we also know the place and its people … One of those good old-fashioned stories that are as comfortable and comforting as home itself.”–The Philadelphia Inquirer”–Jacket.