The Parting Glass

by Emilie Richards

MIRA Books

Literature and Fiction: Women's Fiction, Contemporary Romance

July 1, 2003

ISBN-13: 1551667096

Available in: Hardcover

The Parting Glass
by Emilie Richards

The Donaghue sisters have shared all the joys and struggles of a complicated past, and at the center of it all has been the Whiskey Island Saloon, a historic Irish-American pub overlooking Lake Erie that has been in their family for five generations. Megan, who runs the saloon, is planning a wedding. Casey is busy settling into the life she shares with her new husband. And Peggy has put her medical degree on hold after discovering her young son, Kieran, is autistic.

When the sisters receive a letter from a relative they have never met, Peggy believes it is the answer to her worries. Irene Tierney is an elderly woman living alone in a remote cottage in the Irish village of Shanmullin. Irene needs the Donaghue sisters' help to learn the truth about her father's death in Cleveland more than seventy-five years ago, and Peggy needs the opportunity the older woman offers. Peggy agrees to go to Ireland to care for Irene in return for a place to live and the chance to spend time working with her son.

After Megan's tumultuous wedding, Peggy and Kieran travel to Shanmullin, where she and Irene form an instant bond. Not everyone, however, is happy to have a stranger in the village. Dr. Finn O'Malley, Irene's physician and a widower with sorrows of his own, resents Peggy's intrusion into Irene's life. But neither Finn nor Peggy can resist their undeniable attraction, though it seems destined to end in heartache.

In Cleveland, Megan has heartaches, too. As her marriage falters, she allows her search for answers to Irene's past to become all-consuming. Needing her own answers, Megan flies to Shanmullin, and Casey soon joins her sisters for a reunion. As a stunning tale of secrets and self-sacrifice, greed and hidden passions unfolds, the lives of each sister will be changed forever.



Emilie Richards' Bio

Emilie Richards continues her popular Ministry is Murder Mysteries for Berkley Prime Crime with book four, A Lie for a Lie

Emilie Richards is known for her many bestselling romance and women's fiction novels. But one day a character with whom she had too much in common began to make ripples in her imagination. "You think you've seen things?" Aggie Sloan-Wilcox asked. "How many dead bodies have you found on your front porch?" And Emilie had to put away the work in progress and find out exactly what Aggie meant.

Aggie-Sloan Wilcox is a minister's partner, just like Emilie, although their husbands serve very different churches. While Emilie writes novels, Aggie has found a calling, too, she solves murders, and the tiny town of Emerald Springs, Ohio seems to have more than its share. So while Aggie raises her two precocious daughters and tries to fit into church and community life, she also searches for killers, a sometimes hazardous hobby.

A Lie for a Lie tells the story of Grady Barber, former resident of Emerald Springs, songwriter and film star, who comes back to judge the Emerald Springs Idyll, a supersized talent show that the local charity divas have staged to raise money for a new pediatric wing at the hospital. Aggie, who is trying to avoid murder scenes is persuaded to be Grady's gofer, but after days of putting up with his childish demands and outrageous manners, she is not surprised to find him dead in his dressing room.

Who hated Grady enough to kill him? Sister Nora, the ex-wife circus evangelist who wants to build a biosphere in quiet Emerald Springs to showcase global warming? Contestants from former talent shows? The teenager finalist from Aggie's own church who discovered Grady's private voice lessons came with a price? Of course Aggie doesn't agree with the local police, so she is forced to set off on her own complicated quest.

All the Ministry is Murder novels are "suggested by" Old Testament tales, and Beware False Profits is no exception. Emilie says that's just part of the fun. The series has been well reviewed and the Wall Street Journal called it "delightful," an adjective Emilie accepts with pleasure.

This award-winning author has moved frequently. Settled now in northern Virginia, the family has lived in six other states—Florida, Louisiana, California, Arkansas, Ohio and Pennsylvania—as well as Australia. She is the mother of four, the grandmother of one, and like Junie, Aggie's mother, she is a quilter. Unlike Aggie she does not solve murders, for which her husband's congregation, is grateful.