13 Best Marian Keyes Books

Two decades after the events of Rachel’s Holiday, Rachel Walsh is now an addictions counsellor at the very clinic that once saved her. Outwardly sorted, she is still nursing old wounds when her ex-husband Luke returns to Dublin. Their reunion forces Rachel to confront buried grief, re-examine her choices and ask whether second chances are ever simple.

The Casey clan look like the perfect big, blended Irish family, forever gathering for lavish parties paid for by businesswoman Jessie. Beneath the Instagram-ready holidays lie overspending, affairs, eating disorders and old resentments. After a concussion loosens sister-in-law Cara’s tongue at a birthday dinner, buried secrets spill out and every adult has to decide what growing up really means.

Party-loving Rachel Walsh insists she does not have a drug problem; she is just having fun in New York. After an overdose and a broken heart, her family ships her to a rehab clinic in Dublin that is nothing like the luxury spa she imagined. Forced to face painful truths about addiction, family and lost love, Rachel must decide what recovery really means.

Hard-bitten private investigator Helen Walsh is broke, depressed and back living with her parents when her slippery ex Jay offers her a lucrative case: find Wayne Diffney, the missing member of a reuniting boyband. As Helen digs into Wayne’s disappearance, old demons crowd in and she must battle her own suicidal thoughts as fiercely as any outside threat.

On the day Claire Walsh gives birth to her first child in London, her husband announces he is leaving her for the woman downstairs. Reeling, Claire flees home to her eccentric Dublin family to drink, rage and slowly heal. With the help of her sisters and an unexpectedly kind new man, she starts to rebuild a life on her own terms.

Anna Walsh, once a glamorous beauty PR in New York, detonates her carefully curated life in a burst of midlife rebellion. Back in Ireland, she takes a job promoting a luxury wellness retreat in a small coastal town, only to collide with unresolved heartbreak, small-town politics and the unnerving possibility of falling in love again at forty-plus.

Ambitious magazine editor Lisa is furious when she is exiled from London to launch a glossy women’s title in Dublin. Her anxious assistant Ashling is desperate to prove herself, while Ashling’s glamorous friend Clodagh secretly resents her picture-perfect suburban life. As careers, friendships and marriages wobble, all three women must decide what success really means.

When Amy’s husband Hugh announces he needs six months away from their marriage to travel and find himself, she is left juggling work, teenagers, elderly parents and a bruised heart. As Hugh explores Asia, Amy experiments with her own freedom, questioning loyalty, desire and whether love can survive such a deliberate rupture.

When charismatic politician Paddy de Courcy announces his engagement, stylist Lola is stunned to discover he is marrying someone else. Journalist Grace knows he once destroyed her sister’s life and is determined to expose him, while other women from his past are still nursing secret wounds. As their stories intertwine, a dark history of charm, control and violence emerges.

After a drunken visit to a fortune-teller, twenty-something Londoner Lucy becomes convinced she is destined to marry within the year. As she stumbles through disastrous dates, flatmate dramas and her father’s alcoholism, she slowly realises that true love might be closer and more complicated than the fairy-tale ending she imagined.

Three women’s lives collide in the ruthless world of publishing. High-flying agent Jojo is sleeping with her married boss, her star client Lily is paralysed by writer’s block after a surprise bestseller, and Lily’s ex-best friend Gemma starts turning her heartbreak emails into a book of her own. Secrets, betrayals and second chances unfold with trademark Keyes humour.

This collection of personal essays and columns lets Marian Keyes loose on the chaos of modern life, from airline disasters and book tours to family rows, shopping addictions and bouts of the blues. Chatty, honest and very funny, it offers a behind-the-scenes look at the woman behind the bestselling novels.

Best friends Tara, Katherine and Fintan left small-town Ireland for glamorous London, but their early-thirties lives are stuck in bad habits and worse relationships. When serious illness rattles their tight trio, each is forced to confront fear, change and what happiness really looks like before the last chance saloon closes.