[© 2014 John Ivory. All Rights Reserved]

I attended two book launches recently for two talented writers, Louise Phillips and Susan Lanigan.

Louise Phillips launched her third book, Last Kiss, which is published by Hachette Books Ireland.

“In a quiet suburb, a woman desperately clings to her sanity as a shadowy presence moves objects around her home.

In a hotel room across the city, an art dealer with a dubious sexual past is found butchered, his body arranged to mimic the Hangman card from the Tarot deck.

But what connects them?

When criminal psychologist Dr Kate Pearson is brought in to help investigate the murder, she finds herself plunged into a web of sexual power and evil which spreads from Dublin to Paris, and then to Rome.

Will Kate discover the identity of the killer before it’s too late to protect the innocent? But what separates the innocent from the guilty when the sins of the past can never be forgotten?”

Susan Lanigan launched her debút novel White Feathers which is published by O’ Brien Press.

“Trapped by a remote father and hostile stepmother in 1913 London, Eva Downey finds love with her teacher Christopher Shandlin. But when war breaks out, her fanatical stepsister Grace forces a choice on Eva: to present pacifist Shandlin with a white feather of cowardice, or to save her sister Imelda with vital treatment in Switzerland…”

Congratulations to Louise and Susan! It’s a long, hard slog getting a novel over the finish line and I have such admiration for them both. I hope both of their books do brilliantly. Last Kiss and White Feathers are available now in all good bookshops.