Jennifer Johnston

As a child Alec, heir to the big house and only son of a bitter marriage, formed a close friendship with Jerry, a village boy who shared his passion for horses. In 1914 both enlisted in the British Army � Alec goaded by his beautiful, cold mother to fight for King and Country, Jerry to learn his trade for the Irish Nationalist cause. But amid the mud of Flanders, their relationship is tested by an ordeal beyond the horror of the battlefield�

How Many Miles to Babylon?

Arnold and the other kids in Ms. Frizzle's class head underwater to explore sea life, learning about lemon sharks, nurse sharks, spiny dogfish sharks, blue sharks, and remoras.

The Great Shark Escape

Derry in the 1970s: teenager Joe Logan is growing up in the teeth of the Troubles, having to cope with embittered parents, a brother who's been away and come back with money and a gun in his pocket, harsh school teachers, and the constant awareness of the military presence in the background. Central to the story is the friendship that tentatively grows up between Joe and Kathleen, a young school-teacher who brings a fresh perspective to his familiar world.

Shadows on Our Skin

Sally , a successful actress, has been told by her husband Charlie that he is leaving her. Sally begins to doubt herself and wonders if she is difficult to live with. She reminisces her childhood years and her lonely secretive unmarried mother who kept her at home with her, not allowing her to mix with other children. Sally wonders who she really is, and contacts her grandfather a reserved, dignified old Bishop.

Grace and Truth

Psychological thriller stripping bare the lives of a family overwhelmed by more than one of the seven deadly sins. By the author of S̀hadows on our skin'.

The Invisible Worm

The Captains and the Kings, The Railway Station Man, Fool's Sanctuary

The Essential Jennifer Johnston

Helen has retreated to the remote north-west coast of Ireland to paint the sea and the shore, and to be alone with her past. English war hero Roger Hawthorne has settled in the neglected railway station house nearby. Mutilated and sick at heart, with the help of a young lad he has begun painstakingly to restore the derelict branch line station. Soon Roger and Helen form a bond which, over gramophone music, dancing and champagne, deepens into love. But Helen, enjoying her first taste of happiness in years, is to learn just how brutally fleeting it can be.

The Railway Station Man

In a house overlooking Dublin Bay, Mimi and her daughter Grace are disturbed by the unexpected arrival of Grace's daughter Polly, and her striking new boyfriend. The events of the next few days will lead both of them to reassess the shape of their lives. For while Grace's visitors focus her attention on an uncertain future, Mimi, who receives a messenger of a very different kind, must begin to set herself to rights with the betrayals and disappointments of the past.

Two Moons

Late summer near Dublin, 1920, and up at the great house there are still cucumber sandwiches for tea. Slipping away from Aunt Mary and dotty Grandfather, 18-year-old Nancy has escaped down to the shore to dream in the beach hut - longing for her life to begin.

The Old Jest

Shadows on our Skin

A Novel

The Captains and the Kings

Mamma and Boo go for a walk in the wood and see weird tracks.

A Walk With Mamma

The Nightingale and Not the Lark

Winner of the Author’s Club First Novel Award: Alone with melancholic memories of his past, a widower finds new life after striking up a friendship with a village boy In County Wicklow, south of Dublin, Mr. Prendergast lives alone in the Big House of his village. A remnant of the long-gone days of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy, Prendergast’s mansion has been witness to many of the most important years of his life, including his childhood, marked by his mother’s open preference for his older brother, Alexander. Following Alexander’s death in the First World War, Prendergast traveled the world, returning home decades later to a greatly changed place. Now in the 1970s, his wife and daughter are both gone, leaving the house an empty monument to his isolation and melancholy. But when the young, redheaded Diarmid arrives on Prendergast’s doorstep, the boy’s thrill at the house’s history sparks an unlikely friendship—one that revives in Prendergast a sense of vitality and sets in motion a final, fateful confrontation with the outside world he’d shunned for so many years.

A powerful novel, by one of Ireland’s preeminent writers, of two damaged people and their fateful, restorative friendship For Laurence, trauma came in the form of a random act of violence that claimed his wife and daughter a decade ago. For Clara, it was something she has kept hidden, confined to her own memory and unknown to those closest to her. By chance, they meet atop a cliff overlooking Dublin Bay, where Laurence finds Clara standing uncomfortably close to the edge. Days later they encounter each other again, this time at a pub, and begin a tentative friendship rooted in their kindred heartbreak. Through conversations at once witty, somber, and cuttingly honest, they find a soothing sense of connection and respite from their own lonely grieving. Poignant and engrossing, The Gingerbread Woman is a stirring novel of love and mourning, and of the unlikely friendship that leads two broken people toward a renewed sense of hope.

The Gingerbread Woman

Twinkletoes, Mustn't Forget High Noon, Christine

Three Monologues

James Douglas plans a daring escape from a deserted Coney Island funhouse, where three teen-age racketeers have imprisoned him

Jennifer Johnston

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