July 2015 Debut of the Month Each October Cara’s family must endure the accident season when for four weeks, no matter how much their mother tries to protect them, covering every surface in padding, removing electrical gadgets, hiding knives, they will suffer falls, cuts, knocks, broken bones. It’s menacing and ominous, despite their determinedly light-hearted tone, and gritted-teeth resignation. Could these strange accidents have something to do with Elsie, who flits through Cara’s memories and is half-caught in old photos? Could there be some hidden, secret anguish that lies at the heart of it? Cara, her siblings and step-siblings are real human beings, convincing and appealing characters, and Moïra Fowley-Doyle succeeds in creating a wonderfully creepy, atmospheric story around them, and springs a shocking climax on her readers too. ~ Andrea Reece
It's the accident season, the same time every year. Bones break, skin tears, bruises bloom. The accident season has been part of seventeen-year-old Cara's life for as long as she can remember. Towards the end of October, foreshadowed by the deaths of many relatives before them, Cara's family becomes inexplicably accident-prone. They banish knives to locked drawers, cover sharp table edges with padding, switch off electrical items - but injuries follow wherever they go, and the accident season becomes an ever-growing obsession and fear. But why are they so cursed? And how can they break free?
'Eerie and edgy, dark and intense ... You'll read it in a single breathless sitting' The Bookseller
'Ghosts, secrets, and magic collide in this Irish author's astonishing debut ... A powerful novel from an exciting new talent' Kirkus
'Debut author Fowley-Doyle weaves an enchanting ghost story set in a small Irish river town, where magical elements collide with brutal realities ... An endearing coming-of-age narrative about emotionally scarred young adults trying to find their tribe' Publishers Weekly
Author
About Moira Fowley-Doyle
Moira Fowley-Doyle is half-French, half-Irish and lives in Dublin with her husband, two young daughters and one old cat. Moira's French half likes red wine and dark books in which everybody dies. Her Irish half likes tea and happy endings. Moira spent several years at university studying vampires in young adult fiction before concentrating on writing young adult fiction with no vampires in it whatsoever. She wrote her first novel at the age of eight, when she was told that if she wrote a story about spiders she wouldn't be afraid of them any more. Moira is still afraid of spiders, but has never stopped writing stories.
