White Rose - A Novel

For Mary, that means being remembered for her tragic losses, even if she'd rather get on with her life. For her cousin Ivan, as close as a brother, the gossip is all about how his wife took the kids and ran off with her new lover. For Mary's friend Penny, it's an old romance that didn't work out quite right, and a current affair with a bottle of vodka.

Then Sam Sullivan rents the cottage next door to Mary, and within hours the whole town is talking about the film-star-handsome American. When Sam hurts his back while helping his new neighbor and spends the next week confined to a mattress on her floor, gossip runs rampant. But neither Kenmare nor Mary know about the secrets Sam is so successfully hiding....

For Mary's circle of friends, Sam's arrival marks more than one change. And Mary -- whose unlucky history has kept her apart from the crowd much of her life -- has finally found a man with whom she feels she might truly connect. But so long as both are captive to memories they dare not reveal, the past is a barrier that will keep them forever alone.

In this powerful novel, Anna McPartlin perfectly captures the drama, the emotion, and the laughter of a small Irish community, for those who fit in -- and those who don't. Apart from the Crowd mixes wit and insight to create an engrossing tale that will keep you reading to the very last page.

When bride-to-be Harri Ryan ends up at the ER with a panic attack on her wedding day, her twin brother, George, jokes that she's the most glamorous patient there. But this is no joke. It's Harri's second try at the wedding, and when she returns to her Dublin apartment, her fiancé, James, has already packed his belongings. Harri doesn't want to lose him, but she doesn't know how to convince James it won't happen a third time.

George, who knows Harri better than anyone, has a hunch there's more to the story than cold feet. He confronts their parents, who are acting strangely -- as if they're hiding a secret. And the truth they reluctantly reveal devastates both twins. Now, not only has Harri lost James, but George's relationship with his partner, Aidan, begins to fall apart, and both twins have to fight to hold on to those they love -- and to themselves. As the world they thought they knew crumbles around them, can Harri and George find a way to pick up the pieces before it's too late?

In her newest novel, talented young Irish writer Anna McPartlin paints a rich, multi-textured picture of ordinary people swept up in a scandal they never could have imagined. As Sure as the Sun manages to tickle your funny bone, tug at your heartstrings, and remind you never to give up on love.