Margins
Mags Munroe trilogy book cover 1
Mags Munroe trilogy book cover 2
Mags Munroe trilogy book cover 3
Mags Munroe trilogy
Series · 5 books · 2022-2024

Books in series

The Existential Worries of Mags Munroe book cover
#1

The Existential Worries of Mags Munroe

The Mags Munroe Series

2022

My twelve-year-old daughter frequently moans that Ballycarrick is the most boring town in Ireland. Nothing ever happens here. She’s right. And as the local police sergeant, this is something I’m delighted about. I’ve enough to worry about - the polar ice-caps, the evil monster that’s shrinking my trousers, not to mention the hot flushes - without having to be like one of those gritty Netflix cops, chasing criminals down alleyways and busting drug deals. So, life is calm and fairly predictable. Until something unthinkable happens in our sleepy backwater. A crime, but not like anything I've ever seen before. It's a complete mystery. And it's up to me to solve it.
Growing Wild in the Shade book cover
#2

Growing Wild in the Shade

A Mags Munroe Story

2022

If you want to disappear, start again, make a new life, a small Irish village is probably not the wisest place to go, since anonymity is not something we do well here. The arrival of someone new is always a cause for twitching curtains and whispered conversations. But here, like everywhere, people have their secrets, and as the local sergeant I’m expected to have my eyes peeled for anything unusual. And I do. Usually. Until I don’t, and the consequences are potentially fatal.
Each To Their Own book cover
#3

Each To Their Own

A Mags Munroe Story

2023

There are some days when being the Garda Sergeant of a small Irish town really tests me. Having to police my family and friends is a necessary evil, but when I’m faced with arresting half the children in the town, and discovering someone close to me among the offenders, well, those days I really wish I’d chosen a different career. Irate parents are not my only problem unfortunately, as I’m then called to manage a baying mob of strangers, bearing placards and demanding change. I’m all for peaceful protest, but these people were threatening the vulnerable, and I’m just not having that. So, after a very long week, I just want to go home and put my feet up, when a dramatic, decades-old secret is revealed. It shocks everyone in the family to the core, and it feels like everywhere I turn, where once there was trust and honesty, now there are nothing but lies. I usually know what to do for the best, but faced with this, I’m unsure. Should I trust my instincts and bend the rules, or should I apply the law to the letter?
Closer than you think book cover
#4

Closer than you think

2024

Mags Munroe is juggling a lot. A Gen Z new Garda recruit who lectures everyone on political correctness, teenage daughters who are determined to fill the house with unruly animals, a mother-in-law that is not improving with age, and a husband with a loud new hobby. So, when an eccentric old couple move to Ballycarrick, claiming to be a witch and a warlock, she thinks why not? What harm could they do? But their presence is fascinating some and infuriating others, and both sides want her involved. Her husband’s old girlfriend is back in town, and the rumour mill starts turning, and relationships Mags has relied on all her life seem suddenly precarious. Just when she's at boiling point, she finds herself faced with a professional situation so unlikely it’s almost laughable, but as things unfold, what seemed like a joke is no longer funny, as sinister influences take a keen interest in Ballycarrick, but why?
Chancing your Arm book cover
#5

Chancing your Arm

2024

There is never a dull moment in Ballycarrick as Sergeant Mags Munroe upholds the law while juggling family, friends and work. When the internationally acclaimed racehorse, Chance Your Arm, goes missing in Ireland, there is pandemonium. The bane of Mags’ life, Detective Inspector Duckie Cassidy, leads the investigation and Mags is more than happy to let him to it. She has plenty going on already, without adding a high-profile missing horse to her caseload. An unexpected call from the charming Conor O’Shea, owner of the exclusive hotel Castle Dysert, explaining that he has a guest badly in need of help with a delicate matter results in an unusual brush for Mags with the world of celebrity. Between a missing horse and a troubled star, Mags is also navigating family feuds, a heartbreaking bereavement and a leaky church roof. And to cap it all, she’s been railroaded into being matron of honour at a wedding. Despite her best efforts, Mags finds herself embroiled in both the horse and the celebrity cases and it soon becomes clear that neither situation is as it appears.

Author

Jean Grainger
Jean Grainger
Author · 54 books

Jean Grainger was born in Cork, Ireland. She has been a tour guide of her beloved home country, a teacher, a university lecturer and a playwright. She began writing fiction at the suggestion of her clients on tours, many of whom were sure all the stories she told them would make for a great book. Her first book, The Tour, has become a Number 1 bestseller on Amazon. It tells the story of a disparate group of American visitors to Ireland, who, along with their Irish tour guide have a life changing experience in the magical Emerald Isle. Her second book, So Much Owed, is a family saga set during the Second World War. The story centres on the Buckley family of West Cork and how their lives are pulled in different directions as they become embroiled in the war. It is a sweeping family saga of intrigue and romance against the background of occupied Europe. In her third novel, Shadow of a Century, she tells a tale of a battered old flag found in New York in 2016, a century after it was used during the Easter Rising, when Ireland made her final bid for freedom from Great Britain. This tells the story of a journalist who uncovers a story, one with much more to it than a flag. Her fourth novel, due out in Spring 2016, Under Heaven’s Shining Stars, is set in the 1970s in Cork, Ireland and is a novel about friendship. Three boys, Liam, Patrick and Hugo, though from very different backgrounds are united in a deep but often times challenging friendship. As their lives progress, only by staying strong, can they prevail. Or fail. Her novella, Letters of Freedom, tells the story of Carmel, stuck in a pointless marriage, when a figure from her past emerges and changes everything with a ‘like’ on Facebook. This quick read will touch your heart. She lives in Cork with her husband and her two youngest children. The older two come home occasionally with laundry and to raid the fridge.

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