Nicola Pierce – författare

An enthralling novel of two intertwining stories based on real events in 19th century Ireland and the Canadian Arctic.Two ships Arctic-bound, HMS Erebus and Terror, leave London in 1845, captained by the aging Sir John Franklin. How long they’ll be gone depends on the ice. Meanwhile, second-in-command, Francis Crozier, worries about their inexperienced crew.  In Derry, little Weesy Coppin dies of a fever but, as far as her sister Ann and brother William are concerned, her spirit returns to haunt them. While an anxious world waits for news of the Artic explorers, the Coppin family try to understand what is going in their home. But, then, one night, all is revealed when the truth literally steps out of the shadows.

O'Connell Street is at the heart of Dublin. It has been through name changes and revolutions, destruction and rebuilding and remained at the heart of the story of Ireland for centuries. Nicola Pierce explores the people, the history, the buildings and the stories behind the main street in our capital city.Packed with stories of the people connected to the streets, from the subjects of the statues, to the sculptors that created them, from those who owned and developed the street since the days of St Mary’s Abbey in 1147, to those who worked and lived there through the centuries and all the drama and scandals that went on both on the street and behind closed doors.O'Connell Street will also feature more personal, anecdotal stories of the cinemas, meeting under Clery’s clock, buying engagement rings at The Happy Ring House, witnessing motorcades such as the Apollo XIII coming down the street, the heyday of film stars staying at the Gresham, and scandals and murders on the street.

In 1849, the Thomas Arbuthnot set sail for Australia. Onboard were 194 Irish girls.I heard the emotion in Sarah’s voice as she asked, ‘Will we ever come back?’‘Come back where?’‘Home,’ said Sarah. ‘Do you think we will ever see Ireland again?’Maggie and Sarah are on their way to Australia. Their homes and their lives have been devastated by famine, with death coming to so many. Even when they sought refuge in the workhouse they found horror and heartbreak there.When the girls are given the chance of a new life on the other side of the world, they know they have to say yes – no matter the price.On board ship, they are caught in between worlds. How will they find the courage and strength to build new lives in a strange land?

WINNER History Book of the Year, An Post Irish Book Awards.Throughout history, the stories of women’s lives and work have been overshadowed by those of men.Wives, especially, disappear, unacknowledged as patrons and champions of their husband’s work, as collaborators, muses, carers and managers of the family domain.Great Irish Wives shines a spotlight on ten such wives: Matilda Tone, Mary O’Connell, Constance Wilde, Charlotte Shaw, Emily Shackleton, Annette Carson, Sinéad de Valera, Margaret Clarke, George Yeats and Beatrice Behan.The men in this book are household names, from Wolfe Tone and Daniel O’Connell to Oscar Wilde and BrendanBehan, and they all have one thing in common: they married women who enabled them to pursue their dreams,even if that meant courting death or outrage. Nicola Pierce tells the stories of these truly remarkable women.

Fifteen-year-old Samuel Scott died while building the Titanic. As the ship sails to her doom, his ghost moves restlessly alongside the passengers and crew: Frederick Fleet: the young look-out who spotted the iceberg and who survived in a life-boat with (the unsinkable) Molly Brown; Howard Hartley Wallace: the heroic band-leader who played ragtime music as the freezing waters lapped at his feet; Harold Bride: the junior radio operator whose messages echoed on, long after the ship had disappeared to its icy grave …

Derry, 1689.An anonymous letter is read out saying that every last Protestant man,woman and child is to be murdered. Panic takes hold. Two teenage boys, Daniel and Robert Sherrard, help close the city gates against the approaching Catholic army.The siege has begun.Bombs rain down. Behind the walls, tensions grow day by day. Trapped, the people are injured, dying, starving. But there is no going back …Daniel and Robert are drawn into a fight to the end.'this fantastically written book will hook you from the start... this is historical fiction at its best.' The Guardian on City of Fate