Queenstown Books in Order

The Queenstown series is rooted in a single place, the port town once known as Queenstown and now called Cobh, and in one house that looks out over the harbour. From there, Jean Grainger follows a mother and daughter through decades marked by emigration, disaster and Ireland's struggle for independence.

In Last Port of Call it is April 1912 and twelve year old Harp Delaney lives with her mother Rose and the reclusive Henry Devereaux at the Cliff House, a Georgian home perched above the sea. Harp would rather be buried in a book than playing in the street, and she has never questioned the unusual little family they have formed. When the Titanic calls at Queenstown on her maiden voyage, the town is electrified. The ship's departure becomes a crack in Harp's own life, revealing secrets that force Rose and her daughter to make hard choices about their future.

The West's Awake moves forward to 1916. Harp is now a teenager and the Cliff House has been reinvented as a guesthouse. Business is booming, but the country is not at peace. The Easter Rising has shaken Ireland, and British troops and local rebels alike see Queenstown as a strategic point. Harp's uncle Ralph Devereaux returns, bringing menace with him, and the Delaney women's independence comes under threat just as they have begun to thrive.

In The Harp and the Rose the story enters 1920, during the War of Independence. Harp is at university, her childhood sweetheart JohnJoe is by her side, and the dream of a free Ireland feels closer than ever. Yet the fight is brutal and the enemy is not only the Crown forces. Old grudges and personal vendettas entwine with politics, putting Harp, Rose and their friends in real danger.

Roaring Liberty carries Harp across the Atlantic to New York in the early 1920s. The bright lights and jazz clubs of the city tempt her to make a new life there, especially after the bleakness of wartime at home. Still, news from Ireland, where the treaty and civil war are reshaping everything, keeps pulling at her loyalty. The book asks whether you can ever really leave behind the place that made you.

Across the four novels, the Cliff House anchors the narrative. Ships come and go, from Titanic passengers to emigrants searching for work, but the house remains a point of return. The series blends real historical events with family drama and romance, giving a human scale to headlines about revolution, war and the long reach of the sea.