Tarabeg Books in Order

The Tarabeg series returns to rural Ireland, to a small village on the west coast where the Atlantic weather is as changeable as people’s fortunes. Beginning with Shadows in Heaven and continuing through Mary Kate and The Velvet Ribbon, the books trace one family’s choices from the aftermath of the Second World War into the 1960s, moving between Tarabeg and the Liverpool docks.

In Shadows in Heaven we meet Michael Malone, ambitious and restless, and the two young women who love him. Rosie, the village schoolteacher, seems the obvious match in the eyes of most locals, while Sarah, daughter of a brutal fisherman, risks violence just to meet him. Michael’s decision sets off a chain of events that shapes not only their lives but also the childhood of his daughter, Mary Kate, and the future of Tarabeg itself.

Promises made and broken in this small place send ripples far beyond its harbour.

Mary Kate picks up the story in 1963, when seventeen‑year‑old Mary Kate, bitter about her father’s remarriage after her mother’s death, runs away from Tarabeg to Liverpool. She arrives with little money, few contacts and a romanticised picture of the city, and quickly discovers how unforgiving it can be. Back home, long‑buried secrets and the arrival of an American stranger stir up fresh tensions among the villagers.

In The Velvet Ribbon, Mary Kate tries to rebuild her life and find a path that connects the person she has become in Liverpool with the expectations waiting for her in Tarabeg. A charismatic American businessman has plans that could transform the village’s fortunes, but not everyone trusts his motives. At the same time, the half‑truths Mary Kate told about her time in England come back to haunt her, testing her relationships and sense of belonging.

Across the trilogy, familiar saga elements are all here: fishing boats and parish dances, harsh winters, gossip that can be protective or poisonous, and the constant pull between staying and leaving. Like Dorries’s other books, the Tarabeg novels foreground strong‑willed women and working‑class families caught between duty, desire and the need to survive.

Taken together, the series reads as one long story about what “home” really means – whether it is a remote Irish village, a crowded Liverpool street or something carried inside you – and about how far love and loyalty can stretch before they finally snap.